South Asia Censorship News

India's National Commission for Protection of Child Rights (NCPCR) is moving forward with proceedings to ban the access of children to Twitter in the country until the platform completely removes all pornographic material.

NDTV reports that on May 29, a letter was issued to the secretary of the Ministry of Electronics and Information and Technology to initiate a ban on the access of children on Twitter on an immediate basis till the time Twitter makes its platform safe for children by ensuring complete removal of child sexual abuse material and pornographic material and reporting of cybercrime cases to the authorities in India.

It is unclear how NCPCR intends to effect age verification for the 1.3 billion Indians, mostly adults, that would be affected by a potential block.

According to NCPCR chief Priyank Kanoongo, Twitter was found to have given false and misleading responses during the enquiry conducted by NCPCR for the presence of pornographic material, an offense under the POCSO Act. The POCSO Act is a 2012 law to provide for the protection of children from the offenses of sexual assault, sexual harassment and pornography.

The Bangladesh Film Directors' Association's has published a proposal to run all films through an approval process under its guidance before finally submitting to Bangladesh Film Censor Board.

Other film organisations are not so impressed. Bangladesh Short Film Forum, Bangladesh Film Society, Bangladesh Film Institute, Dhaka DocLab, Bangladesh Documentary Council and Film without Film all raised concerns over the proposal. In a joint statement they said that the proposal seem absurd and ridiculous as they found no logical ground for a film to obtain a private organisation's authorisation before it is submitted to the censor board.

The statement also said that there is no rational explanation why the government grant-winning film must be released in 20 cinemas across the country and asked why public money should be spent on commercial films.

A police team from the Special Cell, an elite branch in charge of investigating terrorism and organized crime in New Delhi, descended on Twitter's offices in the city to serve a notice to the head of Twitter in India. Police also attempted to enter a Twitter office in Gurugram, a location that has been permanently closed.

The move came three days after Twitter put a manipulated media label on the tweets of half a dozen members of India's ruling Bharatiya Janata Party, in which they had accused the Indian National Congress, the main opposition party, of scheming to damage Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi for his handling of the second wave of India's coronavirus pandemic.

In an image the members circulated, they claimed that the Indian National Congress was giving special medical favors to journalists affected by the pandemic among other things. AltNews, an Indian fact-checking website, found that the image was forged. India's IT ministry then sent a letter to the company asking it to remove the labels. Twitter did not.

Twitter has censored more than 50 tweets critical of the Indian government's handling of the coronavirus pandemic, and did so at the request of the Indian government.

The 52 banned tweets are detailed in a disclosure notice on the Lumen database . The censored accounts include a sitting member of India's Parliament, two filmmakers, an actor, and a West Bengal state minister.

A Twitter spokesperson told The Verge that the company may make certain tweets unable to be viewed by people within India if the tweets violate local law. Twitter says it notified account holders before it withheld content to make them aware that the action was taken in response to a legal request from the government of India.

Indian law restricts the publication of material that the government considers defamatory, or which could incite violence.

And in case you don't think that the Indian government deserves a little criticism:

As soon as BJP government comes to power in West Bengal, COVID-19 vaccine will be provided free of cost to everyone. pic.twitter.com/gzxCOUMjpr

— BJP Bengal (@BJP4Bengal) April 23, 2021