Delete videos of Andaman tribals, Google told
India has taken strong objection to YouTube videos which are “outraging the modesty” of aboriginal tribes of the country, mainly from the Andaman and Nicobar Islands and asked asked Google’s India office to remove them immediately or face penal action.
Tribal communities like Onge, Jarawa, Andamanese, Sentinelese and Nicobarese, among others, are listed as the aboriginal tribes under PAT (Regulation) Act of 1957 which stipulates all kinds of protection to these tribes living in the remote islands on their own. The Constitution’s Article 342 recognises these communities as Scheduled Tribes.
Recently, a strongly-worded letter from the National Commission for Scheduled Tribes (NCST) had been shot off to Google India’s manager asked him to honour the modesty of these communities and quoted
The issue was recently discussed at the 97th meeting of the NCST, headed by Nandkumar Sai, a Chhattisgarh politician and former chief of Madhya Pradesh unit of BJP. An official of the Commission has confirmed to FPJ that such a letter had gone to the Google company last week.
The letter dated July 7 to Gaurav Bhaskar in-charge Global Communication and Public Affairs of the Google office in Gurgaon says that the inappropriate videos related to Jarawas and other communities are outraging the modesty of the tribes by filming them without their knowledge and “should be removed with immediate effect” and threatened penal action in casue of failure.
Bhaskar could not be contacted for his version.
YouTube has a number of videos showing naked and objectionable photos and other daily activities of the poor, illiterate tribals from Andaman and Nicobar Islands, since 2009. FPJ was able to access a July 2009 video of Onge tribes and a July 2012 video a titled ‘Jarawa tribes first contact with outside world ?’.