South Asia Censorship News

India's film makers are discussing a decision by the Indian government's to abolish the Film Certification Appellate Tribunal (FCAT).

The FCAT was set up in 1983 by India's Ministry of Information and Broadcasting to hear appeals by filmmakers aggrieved by the decision of the Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC).

With its headquarters in the capital, New Delhi, the FCAT was headed by a chairperson and had four other members, including a secretary appointed by the Indian government.

In its order earlier this week, the government said the high court and not the FCAT will now hear the appeals by filmmakers who do not agree with the CBFC's suggestions or certificates for their films.

The move has made Indian filmmakers, mainly in Mumbai-based Bollywood, angry and anxious. Alankrita Shrivastava, director of feminist film Lipstick Under My Burkha , told Al Jazeera the abolition of FCAT will make filmmakers like her more vulnerable. The director said:

If there is a disagreement with the decision of the censor board, filmmakers will have to go directly to the high court. This may cause long delays, meaning a greater financial burden on filmmakers. It is a setback for artistic freedom.

An episode of the animated comedy series South Park was previously censored on Netflix in India (and nowhere else). A crude drawing of male genitalia and breasts was blurred out from a scene in Go Fund Yourself , the first episode of the show's eighteenth season.

Netflix removed the censorship after MediaNama asked the company about it. As is often the case with internet companies, when they are embarrassed by caught with their hands in the censorship cookie jar, they respond by claiming it was all some sort of a ghastly mistake.

And again in this case, Netflix claimed it was an incorrect version and replaced it with the uncensored version.

Interestingly the censorship incident has revealed that it may be possible to work around local censorship by selecting a different interface language. It was reported that the blurring wasn't present for users in India that selected French language.

The censored episode lampoons the Washington Redskins, an American football team that recently changed its name to Washington Football Team following renewed outrage over its name, which was criticized for using an offensive slur referring to Native Americans. In one scene from the episode, which was aired in 2014, a character responds to calls to change the team's logo by simply adding a drawing of male genitalia and breasts to the imagery.

Police from the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh announced the creation of a team to snoop on people's internet searches for pornographic material. The force has hired a company to surveille searches and keep data of the people who search for porn content.

In India, pornography is banned by the government, but the initial stages of the lockdown last year saw a 95% rise in viewership . The U.P. police's internet search tracking plan is being piloted in six of the state's districts. The monitoring will now be carried out across the state, which currently has about 11.6 million internet users.

The U.P. police has outsourced its monitoring of porn searches to the company Oomuph. If Oomuph spots an internet user consuming pornography, the police's analytics team will receive information on the user and search. Porn searches on the internet will also now yield an awareness message that searchers are being tracked by the police..