Common Dreams staff
“Not a surprise. But terrifying nonetheless.”
That’s how Canadian author and activist Naomi Klein responded Sunday to news that India had requested—and Twitter had agreed—to have numerous tweets critical of the Modi government’s response to the Covid-19 pandemic blocked from the popular social media platform.
The Indian news outlet Medianama was the first to report the situation on Saturday, followed by Buzzfeed in U.S. press. According to Medianama‘s reporting by Aroon Deep and Aditya Chunduru:
Twitter has complied with government requests to censor 52 tweets that mostly criticised India’s handling of the second surge of the COVID-19 pandemic. These tweets, which are now inaccessible to Indian users of the social media website, include posts by Revanth Reddy, a sitting Member of Parliament; Moloy Ghatak, a West Bengal state minister; actor Vineet Kumar Singh; and two filmmakers, Vinod Kapri and Avinash Das.
Deep and Chunduru confirmed that several people who had their postings blocked were informed by Twitter what was coming ahead of the move and that the decision was based on a request made by the Indian government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
In response to request, a Twitter spokesperson sent Medianama the following statement:
When we receive a valid legal request, we review it under both the Twitter Rules and local law. If the content violates Twitter’s Rules, the content will be removed from the service. If it is determined to be illegal in a particular jurisdiction, but not in violation of the Twitter Rules, we may withhold access to the content in India only. In all cases, we notify the account holder directly so they’re aware that we’ve received a legal order pertaining to the account. We notify the user(s) by sending a message to the email address associated with the account(s), if available. Read more about our Legal request FAQs. The legal requests that we receive are detailed in the biannual Twitter Transparency Report, and requests to withhold content are published on Lumen.
India is currently experiencing a serious surge in Covid-19 cases—averaging over 300,000 new daily cases over the last week and oxygen supplies running low and hospitals overwhelmed—as Modi’s handling of the pandemic has come under significant scrutiny from both within the country and from abroad.
Modi’s Hindu nationalist government, reported Buzzfeed on Saturday,
also restricted dozens of tweets that criticized Modi or shared pictures of India’s overflowing crematoriums and hospitals, in addition to a tweet from the Indian American Muslim Council, a Washington D.C-based advocacy organization of Indian American Muslims. That group shared a Vice story about the Kumbh Mela, a Hindu pilgrimage attended by hundreds of thousands of Indians earlier this month, and which turned into a super spreader event.
“While hundreds of thousands of Covid patients are literally gasping for breath, the government’s alacrity in pressuring Twitter to block tweets critical of its handling of the crisis shows the administration’s moral compass continues to point in a direction that is shamelessly self-serving,” the Indian American Muslim Council said in a statement.
Rana Ayyub—a journalist who has been writing dispatches from India for the Washington Post, TIME magazine, and other outlets—reacted with scorn Sunday to the latest reports, tweeting: “Narendra Modi &BJP leaders response to reports of the Covid carnage in India. Seize properties of those talking of oxygen shortage, Suspend twitter accounts of those reporting the truth. What does one expect of a heartless regime that looks the other way as the country bleeds.”
“I’m sorry,” wrote epidemiologist and health economist Dr. Eric Feigl-Ding, “but Modi’s authoritarian government can go to hell if they dare to silence the true human suffering” now taking place in India.
(Courtesy: Common Dreams, a US non-profit media portal.)
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Another article in The Wire, “At Government Request, Twitter Takes Down Some Tweets Critical of Official COVID Handling”, adds (extract):
Twitter has withheld from public view around 50 tweets in India, a good chunk of which criticised the manner in which the Narendra Modi government has handled the COVID-19 pandemic.
According to Twitter’s filings with the Lumen database – a transparency initiative run by Harvard University’s Berkman Klein Centre which tracks content removal requests – the affected tweets have been taken down in response to a request by the Indian government.
The collection of tweets – which have been removed from public view in India, but can still be viewed by users in other countries – includes posts that sharply criticise the Modi government.
There are also, however, a few that appear to have spread fake news regarding the pandemic; at least one tweet reviewed by The Wire used a misleading photo to describe the impact of the second wave on India’s healthcare system.
A portion of the tweets appear to use a wide range of hashtags that call for resignation of the prime minister or imply that the second wave is a ‘ModiMadeDisaster’. Others take aim at the recent Kumbh Mela and compare it to the manner in which the Tablighi Jamaat controversy was viewed by supporters of the ruling party last year.
This development was first reported by Medianama.
Verified account tweets
Significantly, the content removal list uploaded by Twitter also includes a handful of tweets put out by verified accounts. This includes politicians like the Congress’s Revanth Reddy and Pawan Khera, and minister in the West Bengal government Moly Ghatak.
Most of the tweets put out by verified accounts sharply question the Modi government. For instance, Congress MP Revanth Reddy put out a tweet on April 17, saying that India was recording over 2 lakh cases, that the healthcare system was “collapsing” and that it was a “#ModiMadeDisaster”.
A screenshot of the tweet, which now cannot be viewed within India, can be found below.
A tweet by Congress party spokesperson Pawan Khera which talks about the ‘collective silence’ around the Kumbh Mela and election rallies has been taken down. A post by West Bengal minister Moloy Ghatak, which refers to Modi as “Nero” and alleges that Modi underplayed the Covid-19 situation in India, has also been removed from public view.
