AMRITSAR SAHIB, Punjab— The Indian government has once again launched a campaign to delete ‘Facebook’ pages of pro
-Khalistan organizations that are active in Punjab and abroad. Recently, the Facebook page of Sikh Youth Federation Bhindranwala was put on “limited visibility”.
Similarly, one of Sikh24’s Facebook page was put under “limited visibility”. One year ago, in June 2015, Sikh24’s Facebook page became inaccessible on several ISP’s in India. While the page remained accessible out of India, only limited number of ISP’s allowed users to access the page. The same treatment was given to a number of other pages, including Never Forget 84 and Sikh for Justice fan pages.
Sikh24 talked with their correspondent, Bhai Ranjit Singh Damdami Taksal who is the Senior Vice President of the Sikh Youth Federation Bhindranwala. Bhai Ranjit Singh informed us that their Facebook page was deleted for the fifth time. He said that the Indian government seems adamant on suppressing the voice of minorities in India.
Reiterating his stance, Ranjit Singh added that the Sikh Youth Federation Bhindranwala group was committed to follow the path enlightened by the great Sikh of the 20th century, Sant Baba Jarnail Singh Ji Khalsa Bhindranwale, and won’t stop its efforts until there is an establishment of a sovereign Sikh state.
It has become well known within the tech community that India has ramped up censorship and blocking of websites and content that the government deems inappropriate. Users report they have been unable to access sites such as popular video streaming site Dailymotion, text exchanging site Pastebin, and code development site Github. Including Github, used by software developers globally, makes many of these filters non-nonsensical and shows there is no logical tech savvy organization behind the blocking. Github is an invaluable resource for programmers who are collaborating on software development and is the lifeblood of the booming tech Industry in India.
Much of the blocking appears to be fallout of a purported circular passed by the Department of Telecommunication (DoT). The reason for the blocking last year, which included 32 websites, was attributed to the online services carrying so-called “anti-India” content. To placate western powers, India branded these as motivated by terrorist organizations such as ISIS (Islamic State).
Tech savvy Indians have turned to paid and free VPN and proxy services to get around these types of blocks.
Sikhs globally are concerned because of the history of media blockades in India. Many times, these blockades preceded violence or genocide by the government as well as other forms of state sponsored terrorism. In 1984 they banned the news media from covering the attack on Sikhs’ holiest shrine in Amritsar as well as Sikh Gurdwaras all across Punjab state. The summary executions of men, women, and children did not hold the weight in the media it would have, had reporters been on the scene to witness the atrocities.
In the digital age, India has been one step behind, allowing Sikh media in the west to use technology to educate and inform Sikhs globally. As Indian infrastructure and education has improved, so has their technical expertise. The Indian government is now seemingly following in the footsteps of other fascist and totalitarian regimes and erecting great firewalls in order to keep the masses uninformed and ignorant.
