India Accused of Censorship for Blocking Social Media Criticism Amid Covid Surge
26 Avril 2021 - 1:33PM
Dow Jones News
By Newley Purnell
India's government ordered Twitter Inc., Facebook Inc. and
Instagram to block about 100 social media posts criticizing its
handling of the exploding Covid-19 surge in the country, sparking
public anger and allegations of censorship in the world's most
populous democracy.
Officials said the legally binding order was designed to tackle
what it called attempts in recent days to spread
coronavirus-related misinformation and create panic by posting
images of dead bodies taken out of context. Twitter, which received
many of the takedown requests, blocked the posts in India, though
they remained visible outside the country.
"Certain people are misusing social media to create panic in
society," India's Ministry of Electronics and Information
Technology said in a statement Monday, when asked about the blocks.
It didn't specify which laws were used to issue the orders.
Many people on social media reacted with outrage. They said that
the posts and others--some from senior opposition politicians--were
political speech, arguing that Prime Minister Narendra Modi hasn't
done enough to curb India's mammoth coronavirus surge, which shows
no signs of slowing down from setting global records.
India recorded more than 350,000 new cases on Monday as
hospitals are overwhelmed, oxygen is in short supply and
crematoriums are running out of space. India has logged more than
2,000 deaths a day for six straight days and it is now the
epicenter of the global pandemic.
Many people in the country of 1.3 billion have taken to social
media in recent weeks to appeal for oxygen supplies for loved ones,
ask for donations for medical expenses and question how a pandemic
that once seemed under control in the country turned into a
national crisis.
A Twitter spokeswoman said that upon receiving valid legal
requests, it restricts access to material when it is illegal in a
particular jurisdiction but doesn't violate Twitter's rules.
India said it blocked at least one post on Facebook and
Instagram that used Covid-19 to incite "religious passions." A
spokeswoman for Facebook, parent company of Instagram, declined to
comment. An Instagram spokeswoman didn't immediately respond to a
request for comment.
One of the tweets blocked in India was from Pawan Khera, a
spokesman for India's main opposition party, the Indian National
Congress. In the tweet, he said the ruling Hindu nationalist
party--the Bharatiya Janata Party--failed to concede that a massive
religious festival that brought millions of Hindu pilgrims to the
banks of the holy river Ganges--along with political
rallies--contributed to the spread of Covid-19.
"Our main concern is the secrecy in the censorship," said Apar
Gupta, executive director of New Delhi-based Internet Freedom
Foundation, a digital rights organization. "Any legal order for
directing blocking of websites should contain reasoning and be made
public. Neither of these steps are being carried out right
now."
Mr. Gupta said the material appeared to be blocked under section
69A of India's Information Technology Act, which allows New Delhi
to block material that threatens national security.
"Today hundreds of thousands of Indians belonging to all faiths
are literally gasping for breath," the Washington, D.C.-based
Indian American Muslim Council, an advocacy group, said in a
statement. The government's "alacrity in pressuring Twitter to
block tweets critical of its handling of the crisis shows the
administration's moral compass continues to point in a direction
that is shamelessly self-serving," it said.
"The government welcomes criticisms," the IT Ministry said in a
statement about its moves to block material related to Covid-19,
"but it is necessary to take action against those users who are
misusing social media during this grave humanitarian crisis for
unethical purposes."
Last year Mr. Modi's government cited that act when it banned
TikTok, a video-sharing app owned by Beijing-based ByteDance Ltd.,
and dozens of other Chinese apps after a border clash between
troops from the two nations.
India's government has threatened to jail employees of Facebook,
its WhatsApp unit and Twitter in direct response to the companies'
reluctance to comply with data and takedown requests, The Wall
Street Journal reported previously.
Twitter earlier this year blocked, unblocked, and blocked again
hundreds of accounts in India for posting material that New Delhi
deemed inflammatory during long-running protests by farmers.
Separately, New Delhi in February set out sprawling new rules to
govern internet firms like Twitter, Facebook and WhatsApp. It said
the new guidelines were needed to counter increasing amounts of
fake news and violent content online.
India is a critical growth market for global tech firms as
hundreds of millions of consumers connect to the internet for the
first time. Facebook has more users in India than any other country
and last year said it would spend $5.7 billion on a new partnership
with an Indian telecom operator to expand operations in the
country. India is Twitter's fastest-growing market.
A spokeswoman for the IT Ministry didn't respond to a query
about the legal mechanism it used to remove the content, or to
criticism that it is being opaque about censoring material that is
critical of the government.
Write to Newley Purnell at newley.purnell@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
April 26, 2021 07:18 ET (11:18 GMT)
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