While Twitter does not comply with every request, more accounts were withheld in India in the second half of 2018 than in the rest of the world combined, according to Twitter’s transparency reports.
Caravan News
NEW DELHI — Twitter has been found complying with the Indian government’s requests to censure account sharing news and information concerning Kashmir, according to a research article by Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), an organization that promotes press freedom worldwide.
CPJ researchers found that the social networking website has complied with a number of requests made by the Indian government on the plea of local laws, security and public order. The CPJ recently issued statements urging the government to allow journalists to work freely against the backdrop of mounting media censorship. The repressive crackdown imposed by the government in Kashmir restricting press freedom is not hidden from anybody.
The article discloses that nearly one million tweets pertaining to Kashmir were withheld in the Indian region in accordance with the company’s policy of withholding content in a specific country after official requests in the form of legal notices.
While Twitter does not comply with every request, more accounts were withheld in India in the second half of 2018 than in the rest of the world combined, according to Twitter’s transparency reports, the article pointed out.
Twitter’s compliance with these requests has increased significantly since mid-2017, according to a CPJ review of the company’s transparency reports for India. It said blocking Kashmir related tweets raises serious questions about what safeguards are in place to ensure freedom of the press and the free flow of information.
The article highlighted the case of blocking of twitter handle of Kashmir Narrator, the magazine that had last year published a cover story on Burhan Wani, a popular Kashmiri militant killed in a gunfight in 2016 in Kashmir. According to CPJ’s Indian legal experts, the requests are issued with limited oversight and transparency, leaving scant avenues for appeal.
“[Section] 69A is being misused to target journalists and kill free expression that’s supposed to be guaranteed in the Indian constitution,” Raman Jit Singh Chima, the Asia policy director and senior international counsel at Access Now, a global digital rights advocacy group, told CPJ.
