MUMBAI: Indian activists who rely on social media to share information in times of tension are being frustrated by a wave of Internet shutdowns, with 22 sites closed in Kashmir this week alone.
The clampdown in India — only Iraq closes as many sites each year — has hit doctors who treat rural patients via WhatsApp, and silenced journalists covering street protests.
“It impacts crisis response and fuels rumors that can trigger further violence,” said Ramanjit Singh Chima at Access Now, an advocacy group that is backing a global #KeepitOn campaign against the wave of Internet shutdowns.
“At the same time, it prevents journalists from freely reporting, and citizens from sharing information.” Chima said a whole new way of information sharing was hit by the clampdown, citing examples of ordinary people offering shelter to their peers or relief agencies sourcing information from the ground during terror attacks and disasters.
This week, the northern state of Kashmir ordered the shutdown of 22 social media sites, mobile phone message applications and video sites following street protests against alleged abuses by Indian forces.
The ban includes Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp, Skype, Reddit and YouTube.
The home ministry says shutdowns help check violence.
“Messages and images that are spread through social media platforms during communal tension and ethnic conflicts can lead to such situations spiralling out of control. There is no option but to suspend the Internet,” an official said.
Street protests have flared in recent weeks as thousands of Kashmiris vent anger against alleged abuses by Indian forces after a video emerged of a local man tied to the front of an army jeep and used as a human shield.
The video circulated widely on social media, as have images of students throwing stones at security forces.
While Kashmir has often shut mobile Internet services during previous times of unrest, banning social media is a first.
“It is a dangerous trend,” Chinmayi Arun, executive director at advocacy Center for Communication Governance in Delhi, said.
Besides Kashmir, where shutdowns have sometimes lasted weeks, Internet clampdowns have also hit Gujarat, Haryana, Bihar, Rajasthan, Maharashtra and Uttar Pradesh.
Few countries rely so heavily on the Internet, be it to conduct business, share information or socialize.
India is the world’s largest Internet consumer base after China, and a majority of its 450 million subscribers access the Internet through a mobile handset.
Along with Iraq, India had the most Internet shutdowns in the world last year, according to the US-based Brookings Institution. Economic losses from shutdowns in the year to June 2016 totalled $968 million, the most for any country, it said.
But the clampdown also hurts free speech, denies poorer citizens access to health advice and curtails online educational opportunities, said Mishi Choudhary, legal counsel at advocacy Software Freedom Law Center in Delhi.
“With an increasing number of services being pushed online, and the preference for a cashless economy, Internet shutdowns hurt small businesses and poorer individuals most,” she told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.
Doctors are cut off from chatting online with patients and are unable to access patient data or seek second opinions on cases, said Lubna Khan, a physician and activist.
“We are unable to provide care when and where it is needed. We are in a pathetic state,” she said.
Internet shutdowns rob Kashmiri activists of lifeline
Internet shutdowns rob Kashmiri activists of lifeline
UK’s Starmer calls Trump’s remarks on allies in Afghanistan ‘frankly appalling’
- Britain lost 457 service personnel killed in Afghanistan, its deadliest overseas war since the 1950s
LONDON: British Prime Minister Keir Starmer called US President Donald Trump’s comments about European troops staying off the front lines in Afghanistan insulting and appalling, joining a chorus of criticism from other European officials and veterans.
“I consider President Trump’s remarks to be insulting and frankly appalling, and I’m not surprised they’ve caused such hurt for the loved ones of those who were killed or injured,” Starmer told reporters.
When asked whether he would demand an apology from the US leader, Starmer said: “If I had misspoken in that way or said those words, I would certainly apologize.”
Britain lost 457 service personnel killed in Afghanistan, its deadliest overseas war since the 1950s. For several of the war’s most intense years it led the allied campaign in Helmand, Afghanistan’s biggest and most violent province, while also fighting as the main US battlefield ally in Iraq.
Starmer’s remarks were notably strong coming from a leader who has tended to avoid direct criticism of Trump in public.
Trump told Fox Business Network’s “Mornings with Maria” on Thursday the United States had “never needed” the transatlantic alliance and accused allies of staying “a little off the front lines” in Afghanistan.
His remarks added to already strained relations with European allies after he used the World Economic Forum in the Swiss ski resort of Davos to again signal his interest in acquiring Greenland.
Dutch Foreign Minister David van Weel condemned Trump’s remarks on Afghanistan, calling them untrue and disrespectful.
Britain’s Prince Harry, who served in Afghanistan, also weighed in. “Those sacrifices deserve to be spoken about truthfully and with respect,” he said in a statement.
’WE PAID IN BLOOD FOR THIS ALLIANCE’
“We expect an apology for this statement,” Roman Polko, a retired Polish general and former special forces commander who also served in Afghanistan and Iraq, told Reuters in an interview.
Trump has “crossed a red line,” he added. “We paid with blood for this alliance. We truly sacrificed our own lives.”
Britain’s veterans minister, Alistair Carns, whose own military service included five tours including alongside American troops in Afghanistan, called Trump’s claims “utterly ridiculous.”
“We shed blood, sweat and tears together. Not everybody came home,” he said in a video posted on X.
Richard Moore, the former head of Britain’s MI6 intelligence service, said he, like many MI6 officers, had operated in dangerous environments with “brave and highly esteemed” CIA counterparts and had been proud to do so with Britain’s closest ally.
Under NATO’s founding treaty, members are bound by a collective-defense clause, Article 5, which treats an attack on one member as an attack on all.
It has been invoked only once — after the September 11, 2001 attacks on New York and Washington, when allies pledged to support the United States. For most of the war in Afghanistan, the US-led force there was under NATO command.
POLISH SACRIFICE ‘MUST NOT BE DIMINISHED’
Some politicians noted that Trump had avoided the draft for the Vietnam War, citing bone spurs in his feet.
“Trump avoided military service 5 times,” Ed Davey, leader of Britain’s centrist Liberal Democrats, wrote on X. “How dare he question their sacrifice.”
Poland’s sacrifice “will never be forgotten and must not be diminished,” Defense Minister Wladyslaw Kosiniak-Kamysz said.
Trump’s comments were “ignorant,” said Rasmus Jarlov, an opposition Conservative Party member of Denmark’s parliament. In addition to the British deaths, more than 150 Canadians were killed in Afghanistan, along with 90 French service personnel and scores from Germany, Italy and other countries. Denmark — now under heavy pressure from Trump to transfer its semi-autonomous region of Greenland to the US — lost 44 troops, one of NATO’s highest per-capita death rates.
The United States lost about 2,460 troops in Afghanistan, according to the US Department of Defense, a figure on par per capita with those of Britain and Denmark. (Reporting by Sam Tabahriti and Elizabeth Evans in London, Stine Jacobsen in Copenhagen and Terje Solsvik in Oslo, Malgorzata Wojtunik in Gdansk, additional reporting by Andrew MacAskill, Muvija M and James Davey in London and Bart Meijer in Amsterdam; Writing by Sam Tabahriti; editing by Gareth Jones, Andrew Heavens, Ros Russell and Diane Craft)
