J&K suspends 22 social media sites
The Jammu and Kashmir government on Wednesday suspended 22 social media sites, including Facebook, WhatsApp and Twitter, for a month as students’ protests refused to die down in the restive state.
The home department order came amid an existing ban on 3G and 4G mobile services, which got suspended on April 17. Broadband has also been reduced to 2G speed.
“... Any message or class of messages to or from any persons or class of persons relating to any subject or any pictorial content through the following social networking sites shall not be transmitted in the Kashmir valley, with immediate effect, for a period of one month or till further orders, whichever is earlier,” the government said in the order.
It said the step was being taken because “... it has been felt that continued misuse of social networking sites and instant messaging services is likely to be detrimental to the interest of peace and tranquillity of the state.
“Whereas anti-national and inimical elements largely succeed in transmitting unverified objectionable inflammatory material/content through the medium of these social networking sites and internet messaging services without any accountability, thereby endangering public life and property and causing unrest/disharmony in the state.”
The order, signed by principal secretary to the the government, home department, RK Goyal, lists 19 other platforms apart from Facebook, Whatsapp and Twitter. There is QQ, WeChat, QZone, Tumblr, Google+, Baidu, Skype, Viber, Line, Snapchat, Pinterest, Telegram, Reddit, Snapfish, uploading video on YouTube, Vine, Xanga, Buzznet and Flickr. Surprisingly, some noted, Instagram is not on the list.
The government has also moved the Jammu and Kashmir high court and filed a caveat against any public interest litigation aiming to stop the ban. “Any message or class of messages aimed at a person or class of people shall not be transmitted through any means in Kashmir for one month,’’ the state government said in the caveat.
The move left youngsters like Mehraj Din, a PhD scholar in Islamic Studies at the Kashmir University, scrambling for solutions. He has been selected for a prestigious summer programme in Ihsan Academy in Istanbul, Turkey and had a scheduled Skype interview, the final step in the selection, next week.
But Skype is on the banned list. “I am looking for a possible alternative. I have written to the Academy about the situation,” he said.
Student protests have become a new challenge for the administration in Kashmir where the law and order situation has gone downhill after the killing of Hizbul Mujahideen militant Burhan Wani last summer.