Microblogging website Twitter has restricted the account of popular Sikh activist, Angad Singh Khalsa who hails from the Srinagar district of central Kashmir.
Speaking to The Kashmiriyat, Angad Singh Khalsa said that his account has been “withheld” in India after the Government of India sent a demand to Twitter to block his account in India.
“I do not know, which part of my speech or what tweet has exactly violated the law. I woke up in the morning to the news of my twitter being ‘withheld’ in India. It is totally insensible to have my account barred. This is a direct violation of freedom of expression and speech,” Angad said.
On his Facebook timeline, Angad wrote, “Sharing your opinion views points raising voice against fascist policies is not any crime but our basic right, we are not sheep & goats are any artificial intelligence set up who will work as per inputs given to us we are humans had we will react as per our aspirations we will say and share what we feel in real but such restrictions you can stop us to raise our voice & concern.”
This is not the first time, Twitter has censored voices for the Kashmir valley.
Last year, The Twitter handle of several Kashmiri groups working in Diaspora. The admins said that they were not notified of any content that violated the Twitter policy.
The Twitter handles of various Kashmiris throughout India have been suspended by Twitter including those of journalists and rights activists.
Fizala Khan, a Journalist working with The Kashmiriyat said that her Twitter handle was suspended without any reason cited for the same. “I do not understand why my Twitter handle was suspended, not just one but i made another handle and that too was suspended within two hours,” she said.
Similarly, the Social Media Ogre in 2018, took down the page Lost Kashmir History.’ The owner of the page in his personal account wrote that ‘around 6:30 PM IST, he received a few texts informing him that their Facebook page has been banned in India and Kashmir.
On 21 October, Facebook took down a video from the page of The Kashmiriyat that was the first visual available from the site of an encounter where six civilians were killed in an explosion in South Kashmir. Facebook removed the video immediately after it reached more than 40,000 people within 10 minutes of being posted, the video was circulated by 800 Facebook users in these 10 minutes.
Since the 2010 Summer Uprising, pro-resistance activists and many others were booked under charges by the Government for sharing content on Facebook and other Social Media networking websites, Shakeel Bakshi, Qazi Ahmed Yasir, two prominent pro-freedom activist were booked under Public Safety Act in 2010 and one of the charges among many was sharing ‘objectionable content’ on social media.