The move came in the wake of weeks-long protests by Indian farmers against a
new farm bill. The protests turned violent last week when riot police
were sent in. One demonstrator was killed and hundreds of people were
injured including police officers.
An Indian government official said the home affairs ministry had demanded the suspension of “close to
250 Twitter accounts” that were allegedly posting content seeking to
foment violence.“The order was issued against accounts that were using
the hashtag that started on 30 January,” the government source said.
Those blocked – including the investigative news site Caravan India, the
political commentator Sanjukta Basu, the activist Hansraj Meena, the
actor Sushant Singh, and the chief executive of the state-run
broadcaster Prasar Bharti, Shashi Shekhar Vempati – were silenced inside
India without warning and with little explanation, their pages carrying
only the message “account has been withheld in India in response to a
legal demand”.
Also blocked were two popular accounts linked to the farmers’ protests: Kisan Ekta Morcha .There was no public
explanation or detail of the legal demand from the government. The
accounts were still visible outside India and were restored inside the
country late on Monday after about 12 hours offline.
Since November tens of thousands of Indian farmers have staged a protest camp
at Ghazipur, on the outskirts of the capital, Delhi, demanding the
repeal of agriculture laws that would loosen rules around sale, pricing
and storage of farm produce. The rules have insulated Indian farmers
from the free market for decades. Farmers argue the reforms will leave
them at the mercy of large agriculture corporations and destroy millions
of families’ livelihoods.Narendra Modi’s government denies this, saying
the reforms open up new opportunities for farmers to sell their produce
directly to private buyers.
The protests have been one of the most serious challenges to the authority of Modi’s government. Farmers
make up almost half of India’s workforce.
A Twitter statement on “country-withheld content” said suspensions of accounts or content was
routine, arguing “many countries have laws that may apply to tweets and
Twitter account content”.“If we receive a properly scoped request from
an authorised entity, it may be necessary to withhold access to certain
content in a particular country from time to time.”
