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A worker adjusts the pyre of people who died of COVID-19 during a mass cremation ceremony at a crematorium in New Delhi on April 29, 2021.
India, a country of 1.4 billion people, has been affected by the second deadly wave of Coronavirus Disease. But even as its health care system gasps and its crematoriums burn with thousands of cremation urns, its leaders are still trying to censor the internet.
Last week, India’s IT ministry command Twitter to block more than 50 tweets seen in the country. The days that followed, New York Times, the The Wall Street Journal, and Times of India reports that Facebook, Instagram and YouTube have also taken down posts critical of the government. In the last week, ordinary people running WhatsApp and Telegram groups to help people find medical oxygen and hospital beds have complain threats asking them to shut down and the police in the state of Uttar Pradesh Complaint filed against a man demanding medical oxygen for his dying grandfather on Twitter, claiming he was “spreading misinformation.” On Wednesdays, posts with the hashtag #ResignModi disappear from Facebook in a few hours. And although the company restored it and stated that the Indian government did not ask to censor it, it did not provide details on why the hashtag was blocked.
These incidents – which occurred days apart as criticism of the Indian government was at its height – highlight the shrinking space for dissent in the world’s largest democracy. As social unrest Against an increasingly authoritarian government, it has cracked down on social media, one of the last remaining free spaces for citizens to express their opinions. New regulations gave the government broad powers to restrict content, forcing US tech platforms, seen as a key market for India, to strike a balance between growth and free speech. .
This is not the first time the Indian government has attempted to censor online speech. In 2012, before Modi came to power, the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government of India command internet service providers to block more than a dozen Twitter accounts, including those belonging to right-wingers.
Apar Gupta, director of digital rights organization Internet Freedom Foundation, told BuzzFeed News: “But now, the frequency and scale of censorship is increasing. “India’s current internet censorship is directly related to social criticism of government policies.”
In February, the government of India command Twitter removed more than 250 tweets critical of the government’s handling of protests over the new agriculture law. Although Twitter has blocked most of the accounts, it has unlocked those belonging to journalists, activists and politicians, despite threats of imprisonment from the Indian government.
“India’s current internet censorship is directly related to social criticism of government policies.”
Over the weekend, India’s IT ministry attempted to explain its reasoning in an unsigned Word document it shared with the press and accessed by BuzzFeed News.
The “[g]overnment welcomes criticism, real requests for help as well as suggestions in the collective fight against COVID19,” the note said. “But action must be taken against users who abuse social media during this grave humanitarian crisis for unethical purposes.”
The ministry cites a handful of the 53 tweets it ordered to block as examples of problematic content. There were four tweets calling the coronavirus pandemic a conspiracy theory, and another four containing “old and unrelated images of patients and corpses”. At least two of these four cases are authentic examples of misinformation, fact-checkers from India’s Alt News and Newschecker outlets who checked the images told BuzzFeed News.
In an example of how thin the line between removing dangerous rumors and censoring political expression can be, the Department offered no explanation for any other content that was ordered down. An examination by BuzzFeed News of the rest of the restricted tweets found that at least some of them appeared to offer legitimate criticisms of the Indian prime minister. For example, one of the restricted tweets belonged to Moloy Ghatak, a minister from the state of West Bengal. He accused Modi of mismanaging services and exporting vaccines when there was a shortage in India.
Neither Ghatak nor the IT ministry responded to requests for comment
One of the restricted tweets in India belonged to Pawan Khera, the national spokesman for the National Congress of India, India’s main opposition party. The tweet posted on April 12 showed images from the Kumbh Mela, a Hindu religious gathering held earlier this month in which millions of people bathed in a river even as the Coronavirus infections are increasing rapidly. Both ordinary Indians and the global press criticized the Indian government for allowing the gathering to take place. In her tweet, Khera contrasted India’s lack of response to Kumbh Mela with an incident that happened last year, when members of a Muslim group were accused of spreading the coronavirus as the country spread there are less than 1,000 confirmed cases.
“Why is my tweet on hold?” Khera told BuzzFeed News. “That’s the answer I needed from the Indian government.”
“What law am I breaking? What rumors am I spreading? Where did I cause the panic? These are the questions I need answered,” said Khera, who sent a Legal requirements to the IT Department and Twitter this week.
“If I don’t get a response from them, I’ll take them to court.”
“If I don’t get a response from them, I’ll take them to court,” he said. “I need legal relief to protect my right to free speech.”
Twitter did not respond to a request for comment.
Experts say the ministry’s note does not provide enough reason to order social media platforms to censor posts. “Since when did the government start sending disinformation takedown notices?” Pratik Sinha, editor of Alt News, asked. “And why are only these tweets quoted [out of 53]? ”
Social media platforms are not the only places that have seen a crackdown. Over the past few weeks, volunteer networks of WhatsApp and Telegram groups that are promoting calls to help and get people access to medical oxygen, lifesaving drugs and hospital beds have sprung up across the country. But in the last few days, some of them have disbanded. According to a report On Indian news website Quint, volunteers running these groups received calls from people claiming to be from Delhi Police asking them to shut down.
Delhi Police refuse this, but by then, people were appalled. A network of WhatsApp groups run by more than 300 volunteers disbanded a few days ago even though they did not receive calls. “We decided not to lose the opportunity,” the group’s founder, who wished to remain anonymous, told BuzzFeed News. “[I felt] frustrated and angry. ”
Experts say one of the biggest problems with this situation is the lack of transparency – from both the government and the platforms. Last week, Twitter detailed the IT Department’s order on Lumen, a Harvard University database that allows companies to disclose takedown notices from governments around the world. But Facebook, Instagram and Google did not comment on the alleged censorship in one of their largest markets, to the public or to BuzzFeed News when asked.
“They haven’t even made a public statement about this,” said Gupta of the Internet Freedom Foundation. “The main task of transparency lies with the government, but there is absolutely no transparency of the platforms.”
