Censorship

Facebook’s Kashmir censorship continues: Video report on Mannan Wani taken down from news portal’s page

Srinagar: Amidst the ongoing clampdown on news pages and accounts for publishing and sharing the photographs of scholar-turned-militant Mannan Wani, Facebook has taken down news portal Kashmir Walla’s video featuring the militant’s father’s voice in the background.

Mannan Wani along with his associate Ashiq Hussain Zargar of Tulwari Langate were killed in a gunfight with the Indian armed forces in the Shatgund area of Handwara town.

Mannan being a Phd scholar rose to fame after he joined Hizb ranks in January this year. After his killing, Facebook in Kashmir was flooded with his photographs. Some rare photographs of Mannan surfaced shortly after his killing, with social media being flooded with content.

Facebook users shared extensively the funeral video of Manan Wani that was watched by millions of netizens.

ALSO READ: #JournalismIsNotACrime: Facebook censors news pages, profiles for posting Mannan Wani’s images in Kashmir

Since the past couple of days, Facebook India has blocked multiple news pages and personal accounts of users for the same.

Academics, journalists and the pages of local newspapers are among those who have had photos, videos and entire accounts deleted by Facebook in the past after they posted about recent events in Kashmir.

In June, Activist Marry Scully, who is vocal about condemnation of human rights abuses in Kashmir, was banned by Facebook for 30 days for ‘linking Kashmiri and Palestinian struggles’.

ALSO READ: Activist Marry Scully censored by Facebook for ‘linking Kashmiri and Palestinian struggles’

In the video, which is available on Kashmir Walla’s YouTube channel, Mannan’s father, Bashir Ahmad Wani, questions the continuing rise of militancy in Kashmir since 1989 as scenes of his son’s funeral play out.

He talks about the responsibility of the journalists to ‘show the other side’ and challenges the society ‘to nurture a child like Mannan’.

Controversies

Over the past one year, the social media giant headed by Mark Zuckerberg has been embroiled in controversies ranging from censoring dozens of posts and user accounts in 2016, for poorly handling user account information by being susceptible to breaches or letting third parties use such information as tools for analysing voter tendencies.

A documentary series by Channel 4 Dispatches has revealed that moderators at Facebook are protecting far-right activists by preventing their pages from getting deleted even after they violate the rules set up by the social media giant.

Recently, an internal company briefing produced by Google and accessed by Breitbart News argues that due to a variety of factors, including the election of President Trump, the “American tradition” of free speech on the internet is no longer viable.

The briefing titled the ‘Good Censor’, admits that Google and other tech platforms now “control the majority of online conversations” and have undertaken a “shift towards censorship” in response to unwelcome political events around the world.

One such conflict zone which braves this online control is Indian Administered Kashmir. The Google Censor document mentions that ‘Facebook and Twitter were implicated in governmental censorship of clashes between rebels and Indian authorities in Kashmir.’

“The platforms removed posts and suspended accounts about the events, including images of rebel Burhan Wani’s funeral, highlighting the platforms’ complicity with government censorship as they attempted to stay on the right side of global authorities,” the report says.

The start: Burhan Wani

Slain Hizbul Mujahideen commander Burhan Wani was killed on July 8, 2016. Upto 30 people died in the violent protest that spread across Kashmir. The police raided newspaper offices and seized thousands of printed copies.

Mobile phone coverage, landlines and internet services were curbed throughout the region, except in the capital of Srinagar.

The censorship started after the internet blew up with viral images of Burhan Wani’s funeral, with users posting it as their profile picture, or simply sharing it through their accounts.

Many found their accounts to later be blocked or even deleted, with targets including Dibyesh Anand, an academic at the University of Westminster; Dar, an academic at UC Berkley and California State or Mubashir Bukhari, a journalist writing for Kashmir Monitor.

Facebook’s response to the posts being removed were that the post ‘violated community standards’ and that “one of our main priorities is the comfort and safety of the people who use Facebook, and we don’t allow credible threats to harm others, support for violent organizations or exceedingly graphic content on Facebook.”

In a statement, Facebook said: “There is no place on Facebook for content that praises or supports terrorists, terrorists organisations or terrorism. We welcome discussion on these subjects but any terrorist content has to be clearly put in context which condemns these organisations and or their violent activities. Therefore, profiles and content supporting or praising Hizbul Mujahideen and Burhan Wani are removed as soon as they are reported to us. In this instance, some content was removed in error, but this has now been restored.”

The Washington Post had reported that the account of Arif Ayaz Parrey, an editor with an environmental magazine in New Delhi, was disabled for more than a day. Parray administered the Facebook account of a discussion group called the Kashmir Solidarity Network, whose page was also removed.

Professor Dibyesh Anand of London’s Westminster University said his posts about the actions of Indian armed forces, which have drawn criticism for their heavy-handed tactics, were removed more than twice.

#JournalismIsNotACrime: A look at recent events

Apart from Facebook, a clampdown pattern on journalists reporting or photographing on gunfights between militants and armed forces has erupted in the past couple of days.

Journalists covering the gunfight in Fateh Kadal area of Srinagar city were physically assaulted and abused by the armed forces near the site of the gunfight on Wednesday.

The journalists were performing their professional duties when the SOG and CRPF personnel started hitting them. At least ten journalists were physically assaulted up by the forces.

ALSO READ: #JournalismIsNotACrime: List of Journalists killed and attacked in Kashmir proves otherwise

“There was no stone pelting going on,” a journalist from news agency ABP told FPK spoke over the phone. “All of us were just standing there, reporting from the ground and talking to DIG Kashmir when suddenly, there was a lot of shouting by the security men and then they started beating us. My cameraman was first hit on his left elbow. While I tried to stop them, I was also beaten. The DIG tried to intervene, but they completely disregarded him. Then SP North Kashmir also started beating a few people. I’m not sure if they were journalists.”

Moreover, the images of three journalists in Kashmir being physically assaulted by the Jammu and Kashmir police and Central Reserve Police Forces (CRPF) surfaced on Friday.

ALSO READ: #JournalismIsNotACrime: Arrested journalist Aasif Sultan’s judicial remand extended till October 1

The three journalists working with Srinagar based Kashmir Walla, had reportedly been detained in Nawab Bazar area of Srinagar city. Eyewitnesses said that the forces beat them up badly and took them away in a Rakshak vehicle.

On Friday, as the clashes between youth and the armed forces were reported from some areas of the city, the three journalists were outside the office premises when the forces barged at them.

The three journalists are identified as Online News Editor of the Kashmir Walla, Saqib Mugloo, Features Writer, Kaiser Andrabi and Multimedia Journalist, Bhat Burhan.

 

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