Anadolu – 28 February 2021. Raids on human rights defenders in Indian-administered Kashmir show continued restrictions on civil society, which impair the public’s rights to impart and receive information and debate the government policies affecting them, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet said in a statement on Friday.
Bachelet said restrictions on communications and the clampdown on civil society activists in Kashmir “remain of concern.”
“Despite the recent restoration of 4G access to mobile phones, the communications blockade has seriously hampered civic participation, as well as business, livelihoods, education, and access to health-care and medical information,” the statement said.
High-speed internet was restored on 06 February after a shutdown since 04 August 2019, when India imposed a military and communications clampdown, besides arresting thousands of pro-freedom activists.
Last October, India’s National Investigation Agency (NIA) raided the offices of the Jammu and Kashmir Coalition of Civil Society and the home of Khurram Parvez, its coordinator.
The NIA also raided the office of the Association of the Parents of Disappeared Persons, which seeks the whereabouts of thousands of Kashmiris allegedly subjected to forced custodial disappearance by Indian forces.
Global human rights groups have expressed concern over these raids. In a statement last October, Amnesty International said these raids were “an alarming reminder that India’s government is determined to suppress all dissenting voices in Jammu and Kashmir.”
Last Thursday, seven UN rapporteurs said in a statement that India’s decision to strip Kashmir’s autonomous status in 2019 and the introduction of new residency laws “could curtail the previous level of political participation of Muslims and other minorities.”
On Friday, Shehryar Khan Afridi, the head of the Pakistani Parliament’s Committee on Kashmir, asked the UN secretary-general to act on a report of UN rapporteurs and “impose sanctions on India for its demographic terrorism” in Jammu and Kashmir.
Speaking at a seminar at Nishtar Medical University in Multan, Pakistan, Afridi said top rights groups have also asked India to “immediately halt its suppression of Kashmiri voices.”
Disputed region
Kashmir, a Muslim-majority Himalayan region, is held by India and Pakistan in parts and claimed by both in full. A small sliver of Kashmir is also held by China.
Since they were partitioned in 1947, the two countries have fought three wars, in 1948, 1965, and 1971, two of them over Kashmir.
Some Kashmiri groups in Jammu and Kashmir have been fighting against Indian rule for independence or unification with neighboring Pakistan.
According to several human rights groups, thousands of people have been killed in the conflict since 1989.
On 05 August 2019, the Indian government revoked Article 370 and other related provisions from its Constitution, scrapping the country’s only Muslim-majority state with its autonomy. Jammu and Kashmir was also split into two federally administered territories.
Simultaneously, it locked the region down, detaining thousands of people, imposing movement restrictions, and enforcing a communications blackout.
Bhagwant Singh Mann said the Modi government had been shaken with the immense response received by the farmers’ protest.
Chandigarh – Panjab – India, 27 February 2021. Reacting to the announcement by Union Information and Technology Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad about new norms for social media, AAP state president Bhagwant Mann said this was another way by which the Centre wanted to silence the free voices in the democracy.
He said the Modi government had been shaken with the immense response received by the farmers’ protest.
Tech giants like Google and Facebook appear to be aiding and abetting a vicious government campaign against Indian climate activists.
Naomi Klein
New Delhi – India, 27 February 2021. The bank of cameras that camped outside Delhi’s sprawling Tihar jail was the sort of media frenzy you would expect to await a prime minister caught in an embezzlement scandal, or perhaps a Bollywood star caught in the wrong bed.
Instead, the cameras were waiting for Disha Ravi, a nature-loving 22-year-old vegan climate activist who against all odds has found herself ensnared in an Orwellian legal saga that includes accusations of sedition, incitement, and involvement in an international conspiracy whose elements include (but are not limited to): Indian farmers in revolt, the global pop star Rihanna, supposed plots against yoga and chai, Sikh separatism, and Greta Thunberg.
If you think that sounds far-fetched, well, so did the judge who released Ravi after nine days in jail under police interrogation.
Judge Dharmender Rana was supposed to rule on whether Ravi, one of the founders of the Indian chapter of Fridays For Future, the youth climate group started by Thunberg, should continue to be denied bail.
He ruled that there was no reason for bail to be denied, which cleared the way for Ravi’s return to her home in Bengaluru (also known as Bangalore) that night.
But the judge also felt the need to go much further, to issue a scathing 18-page ruling on the underlying case that has gripped Indian media for weeks, issuing his own personal verdict on the various explanations provided by the Delhi police for why Ravi had been apprehended in the first place.
The police’s evidence against the young climate activist is, he wrote, “scanty and sketchy,” and there is not “even an iota” of proof to support the claims of sedition, incitement, or conspiracy that have been leveled against her and at least two other young activists.
Though the international conspiracy case appears to be falling apart, Ravi’s arrest has spotlighted a different kind of collusion, this one between the increasingly oppressive and anti-democratic Hindu nationalist government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the Silicon Valley companies whose tools and platforms have become the primary means for government forces to incite hatred against vulnerable minorities and critics, and for police to ensnare peaceful activists like Ravi in a high-tech digital web.
The case against Ravi and her “co-conspirators” hinges entirely on routine uses of well-known digital tools: WhatsApp groups, a collectively edited Google Doc, a private Zoom meeting, and several high-profile tweets, all of which have been weaponized into key pieces of alleged evidence in a state-sponsored and media-amplified activist hunt.
At the same time, these very tools have been used in a coordinated pro-government messaging campaign to turn public sentiment against the young activists and the movement of farmers they came together to support, often in clear violation of the guardrails social media companies claim to have erected to prevent violent incitement on their platforms.
In a nation where online hatred has tipped with chilling frequency into real-world pogroms targeting women and minorities, human rights advocates are warning that India is on the knife edge of terrible violence, perhaps even the kind of genocidal bloodshed that social media aided and abetted against the Rohingya in Myanmar.
“The silence of these companies speaks volumes. They have to take a stand, and they have to do it now.”
Through it all, the giants of Silicon Valley have stayed conspicuously silent, their famed devotion to free expression, as well as their newfound commitment to battling hate speech and conspiracy theories, is, in India, nowhere to be found.
In its place is a growing and chilling complicity with Modi’s information war, a collaboration that is poised to be locked in under a draconian new digital media law that will make it illegal for tech companies to refuse to cooperate with government requests to take down offending material or to breach the privacy of tech users.
Complicity in human rights abuses, it seems, is the price of retaining access to the largest market of digital media users outside China.
After some early resistance from the company, Twitter accounts critical of the Modi government have disappeared in the hundreds without explanation; government officials engaging in bald incitement and overt hate speech on Twitter and Facebook have been permitted to continue in clear violation of the companies’ policies; and Delhi police boast that they are getting plenty of helpful cooperation from Google as they dig through the private communications of peaceful climate activists like Ravi.
“The silence of these companies speaks volumes,” a digital rights activist told me, requesting anonymity out of fear of retribution. “They have to take a stand, and they have to do it now.”
The judiciary is responsible for ensuring our liberty, and habeas corpus is the usual route. But magistrates are acting as if the rule is ‘jail, and bail is above my pay grade’.
Shekhar Gupta
Op/Ed, 27 February 2021. The headline of this week’s National Interest isn’t a typing mistake. Neither is it a reference to any meat someone may detest or relish. If it sounds like a rude cheap shot, it is because it’s intended to be so.
It is inspired by a real-life parallel, to make an important point at a time when in our judicial system, the original dictum, bail is the rule, jail an exception, has been reversed.
Ask any crime reporter worth her knowledge of the IPC, what do police officers say in private about the tactic tried, tested and perfected over decades to curb crime in their districts or states.
It is called “burking” crime, because curbing crime through old-fashioned policing, investigation, prosecution is onerous and uncertain in its outcome.
It is wisest to register as little as possible. It is the safest and surest way to curb crime. Your slate then looks brilliant and annual confidential reports with ‘outstanding’ written all over them follow.
Similarly, if the prime responsibility of our judiciary is to ensure our liberty, habeas corpus is the usual instrument a citizen arrested unfairly trusts to secure redressal in the courts.
And if the default order is to deny it, it corrupts the idea as much as the police ‘improving’ its crime counts by not counting.
It is a challenge to decide which institution has declined over the recent decades, the police or the judiciary.
But today, if you are someone the powers that be don’t like, they can easily find police officers to file a case with serious sections from the IPC, never mind if they don’t have a shred (or iota, which our judges prefer in their orders) of evidence.
You might still think, certainly, they still have to produce me before a magistrate who would easily see through the police case that’s thinner on evidence than Coronil, if even that.
And once the magistrate sees that, the order will be determined by that immortal line from the legendary late Justice V R Krishna Iyer: Rule is bail, not jail.
Contrary to our belief, that Krishna Iyer line wasn’t immortal. If anything, it’s been murdered and cremated routinely, and at least three times in recent days.
Check the cases of Munawar Faruqui, Nodeep Kaur and Disha Ravi. Our choice of three very young and vocal people is a conscious one.
One was facing a charge of offensive jokes he was apparently “inevitably” going to crack. So, locked up for intending to commit a crime, or for what legalese would call mens rea (motive) without a crime actually committed.
In the second, Nodeep had a charge of attempt to murder, the formidable Section 307 IPC against her. And in the third, it was worse, sedition.
In each case, the first magistrate, where a citizen needs justice and protection of her liberty most of all, acted as if on the principle that the rule is jail, and bail is above my pay grade.
Nodeep Kaur was given bail by the Punjab and Haryana High Court essentially because it found no real evidence to justify IPC 307 yet. The courts she went to earlier, at two levels in the district, didn’t see through that.
She spent 45 days in jail undeservingly. Of course, no one would call those judges to account, not even the high court.
Faruqui was denied bail in three attempts. Even the Madhya Pradesh High Court read him a sermon and sent him back to jail. The Supreme Court mercifully let Faruqui go.
But he’d already spent 36 days in jail. And even a day in jail, or your liberty denied any which way, affects you deeply. Read what he told our reporter Bismee Taskin.
Others arrested with him, Prakhar Vyas and Edwin Anthony, were given a kind of knock-on interim bail for the sake of parity with Faruqui.
But two others, Nalin Yadav and Sadaqat Khan, were denied multiple times, Nalin’s 3rd bail application was denied, along with Faruqui’s by the high court, while Sadaqat’s second bail application was denied by the trial court, which said since Faruqui only got interim bail, Sadaqat cannot be given benefit of parity for regular bail.
Mercifully, both of them finally got interim bail from the high court on Friday.
Disha Ravi was arrested by the Delhi Police in Bengaluru on a Saturday.
She was flown straight to Delhi and produced before a magistrate who sent her to five days’ police custody first, and two more later, overlooking the “sketchy and scant” evidence for the sedition charge that his additional sessions judge found later.
We celebrate the inspirational lines that judge Dharmender Rana wrote in his bail order, and we must. But the cruel fact is, a citizen was denied liberty for 10 days. Seven in a police dungeon, three in Tihar.
Forget what you think of her politics. She is a citizen entitled to the same protections of law and the Constitution as you and I.
Delhi Police say they followed the lawful process fully in her arrest and they are right. They took the help of the local police, and produced her before a magistrate within 24 hours, which is the law.
Now see it from Disha Ravi’s situation. She is whisked away on a plane, without a lawyer, produced in a court where she cannot reach a lawyer of choice, and then in the lock-up.
As if she were some Dawood Ibrahim. Now think. What if this magistrate made the same decision as Judge Rana did 10 days later and gave her bail? How soon could a young person from a distant city produce somebody to stand bail for her?
Who would have ensured she reached Bengaluru the same day? Nobody will raise this with either the Delhi Police or the magistrate.
In the same week that we celebrated the belated bail orders for these three, came the sobering word from the Allahabad High Court.
Aparna Purohit, the India content chief of Amazon Prime Video, heads the crew that produced the Saif Ali Khan-starrer OTT series Tandav, now facing multiple FIRs for alleged insults to Hindu Gods.
Denying her anticipatory bail, the judge at the High Court made the chilling observation that “actions of the applicant being against fundamental rights of majority of citizens, her fundamental right of life and liberty cannot be protected by grant of anticipatory bail”.
Hold your breath and fill your bail bonds.
And we were taught all this while that in a democratic, constitutional republic like ours, the first principle is that each individual’s rights matter foremost.
That claims or rights of any collective cannot extinguish my rights as a citizen. In democracy, you get powers with numbers. If justice is also number-driven, we are a mob. We can pick and lynch.
It is possible that Aparna Purohit will also get bail in the Supreme Court. Which will both be justice and a travesty of it.
Because, in 2014, in what is called the Arnesh Kumar case, the Supreme Court had set a stiff test for making arrests in cases where punishment was less than seven years.
Arnesh Kumar was charged under IPC section 498-A (dowry harassment etc.) and feared arrest. Denied anticipatory bail, he reached the Supreme Court.
Which gave him relief and laid down that to arrest a person on a charge attracting less than seven years in jail, a police officer has to be satisfied that it is necessary to prevent another crime, destruction of evidence or threat to witnesses.
Further, a check-list for arrest is to be duly filled, with reasons clearly stated and produced before the magistrate, but at least in Munawar’s case, among the ones I mentioned earlier, this was allegedly observed in cavalier breach.
Travesty it will be because not everyone, in fact not most people so denied, will have the wherewithal to reach the highest court. Even if they do, they would have spent weeks in jail already.
And indeed, even if the court insists on the seven-year-sentence test it set in the Arnesh Kumar case, the police-political nexus couldn’t care less. Sedition, with life sentence, is their favourite weapon against those they want in jail, if only for a few weeks.
In the interest of achieving mutually beneficial and sustainable peace along the borders, the two DGMOs (Directors General of Military Operations) agreed to address each other’s core issues and concerns which have prop-ensity to disturb peace and lead to violence
Ashok Tuteja
New Delhi – India, 26 February. In a major development in their chequered relationship, India and Pakistan have agreed to strictly observe all bilateral agreements and understandings and cease firing along the Line of Control (LoC) with effect from the midnight of 24/25 February.
“In the interest of achieving mutually beneficial and sustainable peace along the borders, the two DGMOs (Directors General of Military Operations) agreed to address each other’s core issues and concerns which have propensity to disturb peace and lead to violence,” said a joint statement issued by the two sides today.
It said the DGMOs of the two sides reviewed the situation along the LoC and all other sectors in a free, frank and cordial atmosphere.
Both sides reiterated that existing mechanisms of hotline contact and border flag meetings would be utilised to resolve any unforeseen situation or misunderstanding.
The joint statement is being considered an attempt by both nations to adhere to the ceasefire agreement that was reached between them in 2003.
Despite the hostility in the bilateral relationship from time to time, the two countries have maintained contact at the DGMOs level over the hotline since 1987.
In the last few years, ceasefire violations between the two countries have increased considerably, leading to heightened tensions and a large number of casualties on both sides.
Pakistan escalated the situation after India stripped Jammu and Kashmir of its special status in August 2019. In December, data from security agencies showed Pakistan violated ceasefire across the LoC in Jammu and Kashmir 5,100 times, highest in 18 years.
The violations claimed 36 lives and injured over 130. The joint statement, which could bring down the temperatures between the two nuclear-armed neighbours, came two days after India permitted Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan to use Indian air space while travelling to Sri Lanka.
Yesterday, Chief of Army Staff, General M M Naravane had expressed confidence that with continued engagement with Pakistan, there could be some sort of an understanding.
Pakistan Army chief, General Qamar Javed Bajwa had also recently called for resolving the Jammu and Kashmir issue in a “dignified and peaceful” manner.
New Delhi – India, 25 February 2021. The Delhi Sikh Gurdwara Management Committee’s tireless efforts today bore fruit when its team of lawyers succeeded in securing bail for 18 farmers arrested by the Delhi police about 26 January’s incident.
These 18 farmers were facing severe criminal charges, like an attempt to murder and robbery, after being indicted in three false FIRs registered in Alipur and Nangloi police stations.
Sharing the development with the media, DSGMC president Manjinder Singh Sirsa informed that the Delhi police had falsely imposed severe criminal charges on these farmers so that their release could be delayed for a long time.
“With the grace of the Almighty Lord, our lawyers have succeeded in securing bail for them,” he added.
He extended a vote of thanks to the team of lawyers comprising Jagdeep Singh Kahlon, Harmeet Singh Kalka, Rakesh Chahal, Jaspreet Rai, Jaspreet Dhillon, Parteek Kohli, Sankalp Kohli, Advocate Kapil Maidaan, Gurmukh Singh, Jasvir Singh, Arshpreet Singh, and Neelam Singh. They are working day and night for the release of arrested farmers.
Sirsa expressed hope that the legal team of DSGMC will succeed in getting released all the arrested farmers by the end of next week. “I assure the families of these arrested farmers that we’ll continue our legal fight till acquittal of all these farmers,” he added.
To date, the DSGMC’s legal team has secured bails for more than 50 arrested farmers, and most of them have been released after filling of surety bonds.
The organization launched an anti-India campaign called Referendum 2020. The aim was to create a separate country called Khalistan for Sikhs.
The “Tukde-Tukde gang” is building a plan of expansion and is now germinating the idea of separatism on the soil of West Bengal and Maharashtra.
Even as the demand for a separate country for Sikhs under the guise of the farmers’ movement is growing, a Khalistani organization named “Sikhs for Justice” (SFJ) has started working on its new scheme on West Bengal and Maharashtra.
This organisation operates from the US and is operated by Gurpatwant Singh Pannun.
Pannun is accused of promoting the Khalistan demand in India by getting funds from Pakistan and several cases of treason have been registered against him in India.
And now, while BJP is aiming to wrest the power from the ruling Trinamool Congress (TMC) in the upcoming West Bengal Assembly elections and staging a political turmoil to unseat the Shiv Sena government in Maharashtra, “Sikhs For Justice” (SFJ) sent a communique to the chief ministers of West Bengal and Maharashtra Mamata Banerjee and Uddhav Thackeray, respectively counselling the anti-Modi leaders to unilaterally declare the independence of the territories of West Bengal and Maharashtra from India.
We now demand that Gurpatwant Singh Pannun should be arrested immediately and the Indian government should talk to the United States regarding this issue.
America, which considers itself the champion of democracy, should now think about the conspiracy theories that are being hatched in its land.
SJF’s letter dated 23 February addressed to Banerjee and Thackeray counsels to “unilaterally declare the independence and secession of West Bengal and Maharashtra from the Union of India to safeguard the prosperity, ethnicity, identity, language and culture of the Bengali and Marathi peoples from the Indian hegemony which denies diversity and imposes ahistorical homogeny”.
Who is Gurpatwant Singh Pannun?
1) Pannun runs a law firm in American. He has offices in New York and California.
2) Additionally, Pannun has two properties at Amritsar in Punjab, which were seized by the National Investigation Agency (NIA) last year.
3) Pannun is an alumnus of Panjab University, where he studied law. Even though he has studied law in India, he is instigating the people of India in the name of law and now wants to break the country.
Khalistani organization Sikhs for Justice was established in the US in the year 2007.
The organization is completely banned in India and is also on the NIA’s radar.
We tell you five things related to Sikhs for Justice and Gurpatwant Singh Pannu, which proves that the organisation wants to break India:
1) The organization launched an anti-India campaign called Referendum 2020. The aim was to create a separate country called Khalistan for Sikhs by making a referendum in Punjab.
2) The same organisation wrote a letter saying that on 26 January in India, the person who will hoist the Khalistan flag at India Gate will be given a reward of USD 2.5 million which is approximately Rs 1 crore 82 lakh.
Nothing happened at India Gate on that day, but at the Red Fort, some people hoisted the flag of a particular religion and also challenged the Constitution of India.
3) The Government of India has banned the organization under the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act in July 2019.
4) At present, Pannun has control over the organisation and he has several cases of treason registered in India. In July 2019, the Punjab Police had also registered two new sedition cases against Pannun.
5) Pannun, who demands Khalistan, gets funding from Pakistan for this mission.
The labour rights activist was arrested by Sonipat Police on 12 January
Vikas Vasudeva
Chandigarh – Panjab – India, 26 February 2021. Labour rights activist Nodeep Kaur was on Friday released from a Haryana jail after the Punjab and Haryana High Court granted her bail in a case in which faces charges of attempt to murder, rioting among others, in an incident at Haryana’s Kundli of Sonipat district.
The 24-year-old activist, who was in the Karnal jail, was released after the bail order.
Her counsel Arshdeep Singh Cheema told The Hindu that she was released late in the evening. She was arrested by the Sonipat Police on 12 January.
Who is Nodeep Kaur and why was she arrested?
Earlier in the day, Justice Avneesh Jhingan observed in his order that while dealing with the bail application, it would not be appropriate for the court to go in detailed discussion with regard to merits of the allegations.
“The contentions are being considered only for purpose of deciding grant of bail. As per the case of the petitioner, she was heading a peaceful protest for getting wages of the workers. On the other hand, the case of the State is that it was a case of vandalism and hooliganism.”
Petitioner’s contention
As per the pleadings, the petitioner, along with some workers, was making a peaceful protest outside a factory premises in Kundli to raise grievances regarding non-payment of wages to some of the labourers.
Whereas the case of the State was that the protest turned violent, police officials were attacked and in the process, injuries were inflicted to police personnel. There was also an attempt to snatch weapons from the police.
Nodeep Kaur’s bail plea speaks of custodial torture
“… It would be appropriate to say that the right to peaceful protest is circumscribed by a thin line. The crossing of line may change the colour of protest. It would be subject matter of trial as to whether the line for peaceful protest was crossed in the alleged incident or not.
Considering the material placed on record before this court, the issue with regard to invoking of Section 307, 332, 353 and 379-B IPC would be a debatable issue and to be considered during the trial,” observed the judge.
Mr Jhingan said the petitioner was in custody since 12 January. Albeit the matter was under investigation but that itself would not be a sufficient ground to deny personal liberty to the petitioner, he added.
“At this stage, no comment is being made on the video-recording produced in the pen drive before this court. However, it will suffice that the petitioner shall maintain a restrain while being on bail to ensure that no law and order issue arises due to her actions.
Petitioner is ordered to be released on bail subject to her furnishing surety bonds to the satisfaction of the Chief Judicial Magistrate-Duty Magistrate concerned,” said the order.
Social media giant Facebook has banned Myanmar’s military and its affiliates from its platforms.
The company said it acted after deciding “the risks of allowing the Tatmadaw [Myanmar military] on Facebook and Instagram are too great”.
The military has used Facebook to boost its claim of voter fraud in the 2020 election.
More than half of Myanmar’s 54 million people use Facebook, which for many is synonymous with the internet.
Facebook had just days earlier already banned the military’s main page for breaching its guidelines following the 1 February coup.
Since the military seized power, it has arrested protesters, ordered internet blackouts and also banned social media platforms, including Facebook.
Facebook said in a statement late on Wednesday that it saw the “need for this ban” following the “events since the 1 February coup, including deadly violence”.
At least three protesters and one policemen having been killed in violence at rallies against the coup, which removed the South-east Asian nation’s elected government.
The social media platform also said it will also be banning Tatmadaw-linked commercial entities from advertising on the platform, adding that these bans would take effect immediately and would remain “indefinitely”.
It added that the ban would not cover government ministries and agencies engaged in public services, like the Health and Education Ministry.
The military and the internet
Protests are taking place on an almost daily basis on the streets of Myanmar, also known as Burma.
Police create a barricade and take guard on the road where protesters are protesting against the military coup.
They have continued despite a thinly-veiled threat earlier this week by a military-linked broadcaster which suggested it would use lethal force against protesters.
Critics also say the military is trying to stamp out dissent online, by periodically shutting off access to the internet. It also temporarily blocked access to Facebook earlier.
Article 77 of Myanmar’s Telecommunications Law, passed in 2013, is used by the government to cut off telecommunications during a national emergency.
Activists have for years been raising the alarm about Facebook’s role in spreading hate speech in Myanmar.
Long before the latest coup, there were fears that Facebook had the ability to amplify religious tensions in the country, which is majority Buddhist.
In 2014 the extremist anti-Muslim monk Ashin Wirathu shared a post alleging that a Buddhist girl had been raped by Muslim men. It went viral on Facebook.
Days later a mob descended on those accused of being involved and two people died in the ensuing violence. A police investigation later found that the monk’s accusation had been completely fabricated.
In 2017, Facebook was again put under the spotlight for its role in violence against the Rohingya minority.
A Reuters report found more than 1,000 posts, comments and images on Facebook attacking the Rohingya and Muslims.
Army chief Min Aung Hlaing, now the country’s military ruler, was found to have referred to Rohingya as “Bengalis”, reinforcing the notion that they are immigrants from Bangladesh even though many have been in the country for generations.
Facebook eventually banned Min Aung Hlaing and a number of other high-profile army figures. It was the first time Facebook had banned any country’s military or political leader.
A UN report in 2018 had found Facebook to be “slow and ineffective” in tackling hate speech. The “extent to which Facebook posts and messages have led to real-world discrimination and violence must be independently and thoroughly examined,” it said.
Facebook had then also acknowledged that many in Myanmar relied on the platform for information, “more so than in almost any other country”.
Kundu has been a vocal opponent of the BJP-led government in the state; he has also been actively supporting the farmers’ agitation
Deepender Deswal – Tribune News Service
Hisar – Haryana – India, 25 February 2021. Income Tax officials on Thursday conducted raids at the residences and offices of MLA Balraj Kundu at Rohtak and Gurugram.
They also conducted a raid at the house of Kundu’s relative in Hansi in Hisar district. IT officials accompanied by police reached the house of Maina Maan, mother-in-law of Kundu, at Vakil Colony in Hansi.
Kundu, an independent MLA from Meham in Rohtak, has been a vocal opponent of the BJP-led government in the state. He has also been actively supporting the farmers’ agitation.
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