Hundreds of Indian Twitter accounts, including those belonging to news sites, activists and actors were suspended for more than 12 hours on Monday, after the government said users were posting content inciting violence.
The move came following weeks of protests by Indian farmers against a new agricultural law. The protests turned violent last week when the riot police were dispatched. One protester was killed and hundreds of people were injured, including police.
An Indian government official said the Ministry of Internal Affairs demanded the suspension of “about 250 Twitter accounts” that allegedly posted content aimed at fomenting the violence.
“The order was issued against accounts that used the hashtag #modiplanningfarmersgenocide, which started on January 30,” said the government source.
Those blocked – including the investigative news site Caravan India, political commentator Sanjukta Basu, activist Hansraj Meena, actor Sushant Singh and the chief executive of state broadcaster Prasar Bharti, Shashi Shekhar Vempati – have been silenced in India without notice and with little explanation, its pages carrying only the message “the account was withheld in India in response to a legal demand”.
Two popular reports linked to farmers’ protests were also blocked: Kisan Ekta Morcha and Tractor2Twitr.
There was no public explanation or detail of the government’s legal demand. The accounts were still visible outside India and were restored within the country on Monday night after about 12 hours offline.
Since November, tens of thousands of Indian farmers have organized a protest camp in Ghazipur, on the outskirts of the capital, Delhi, demanding the repeal of agricultural laws that would loosen rules on the sale, prices and storage of agricultural products. The rules have isolated Indian farmers from the free market for decades. Farmers argue that the reforms will leave them at the mercy of large agricultural companies and destroy the livelihoods of millions of families.
Narendra Modi’s government denies it, saying the reforms open up new opportunities for farmers to sell their products directly to private buyers.
The protests were one of the most serious challenges to the authority of the Modi government. Farmers make up almost half of India’s workforce.
A Twitter statement on “country retained content”He said account or content suspensions were routine, arguing that“ many countries have laws that can be applied to tweets and content from Twitter accounts ”.
“If we receive a request with appropriate scope from an authorized entity, it may be necessary to retain access to certain content in a particular country from time to time.”
It was Twitter’s policy to notify affected account holders “immediately” when they received requests to retain them, unless legally prohibited to do so.
But Vinod Jose, the editorial director of Caravan magazine, whose official Twitter account had more than 280,000 followers, told Reuters that Caravan had not received any notification from Twitter. “This is similar to censorship. The Twitter act follows several cases of sedition filed against Caravan editors for covering farmers’ protests. ”
With Reuters