Pakistan: The impact of “Online Content Rules” on digital creators

Following on from last week’s look at the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority’s extremely problematic and overly broad “Removal and Blocking of Online Content Rules 2020”, Digital Rights Monitor (a Media Matters for Democracy PK project) this past week examined the fears that Pakistani digital creators and companies have concerning those same Rules.

Pakistani creatives have been able to utilise social media, streaming and video-game platforms to develop large followings that can translate into or enhance careers in the arts and the overall domestic/international digital economy. In a country where 64 percent of the population is under 30 of a total population of over 200 million, and with over 169 million cellular and 87 million broadband subscribers (according to the PTA’s own figures), this would, on paper, be great for a country with a digital economy plan and a desire to create more jobs in the midst of a global pandemic. The incoming “Online Content Rules”, however, could curtail these livelihoods, with international social media companies worried that “The Rules would make it extremely difficult for AIC Members to make their services available to Pakistani users and businesses.”

Read the Digital Rights Monitor article by MMfD’s Amel Ghani, “Social Media Rules: Uncertain Future for Digital Marketers, Content Creators” here.

India: “longest ever” internet shutdown in a democracy continues

On the 26th of November 2020, the Government of India extended its ban on 4G internet services in Indian administered Kashmir until the 11th of December 2020, continuing an internet shutdown that was enacted in August 2019 and which in December of last year was already being reported on as “the longest ever in a democracy” by the Washington Post.

Signed by the Principal Secretary of Jammu & Kashmir (the Indian government’s terminology for Indian-controlled Kashmir), the Government Order cites “well founded apprehension of enhanced efforts by Pakistan for causing public disaffection”, the “misuse of social media applications in carrying out terror activities as also in adversely impacting public order” and other claims as grounds for continuing the internet shutdown in Kashmir.

According to Access Now’s KeepItOn report, the Government of India shut down the internet 121 times over the course of 2019, which puts it ahead of Venezuela (12 times), Yemen (10 times), Iraq (8 times) and Pakistan (5 times). To quote a source in a Deutsche Welle report on India’s shutdowns earlier this month (before the new order by the Indian government):

They can become a sort of invisibility cloak for state violence," he says. "There's just a lot of things that [can] fly under the radar when connectivity is disrupted.

- Jan Ryzdak

Using data provided by the Software Freedom Law Center of India - which also runs the invaluable https://internetshutdowns.in/ - the DW report, written by by Nehal Johri, also found that after the 2014 election win by Narendra Modi and the nationalist BJP, internet shutdowns have become more frequent, with protests being cited as 57% of the reason (up from less than 40% before his election).

The extended internet shutdown in this instance was enacted hours before the August 5th 2019 revocation Article 370 of the Constitution of India, which had given Jammu and Kashmir semi-autonomous status. Protests against the revocation have led to ongoing curfews and restrictions on telecommunications, which continue to taken a toll on Kashmiris and the Kashmiri diaspora*.

The internet shutdown is also part of an ongoing and apparent crackdown on dissent in the disputed region, with Human Rights Watch reporting as recently as this October on the Indian governments using “counterterrorism operations to silence peaceful dissenters, human rights activists, and journalists”, including activists whose relatives have been “disappeared” by Indian security forces.

The Committee to Protect Journalists and Amnesty International have also looked at the crackdowns, with the former looking in particular at the sealing of the office of the Kashmir Times, whose editor – Anuradha Bhasin – had, according to Amnesty, “spearheaded the litigation in the Supreme Court of India against the shutdown of internet and telephone services in Jammu & Kashmir.”

The 2020 edition of Freedom House’s Freedom on The Net report gives India a 51/100 score (“Partly Free”). Though this is higher than Pakistan’s 38 (“Partly Free”), it’s down from last year’s 55. As the country report also mentions, this score also marks three years of dramatic and continuous decline in internet freedom in India.

*For a Kashmiri perspective on the context and abrogation of Article 370 and the lockdown’s impact, I recommend the November 11th 2019 episode of NBC’s “Why Is this Happening?” podcast, with Chris Hayes interviewing Hafsa Kanjwal, Assistant Professor of History at Lafayette College. The link also provides a complete transcript of the episode.

“The Kashmiri narrative” by Rozina Ali, Fellow at the Type Media Center, for the Columbia Journalism Review, is also worth a read.

In Brief: Nepal’s lack of real protections for online Freedom of Expression

A report by the Association for Progressive Communications and the Nepali digital rights organisation Body & Data released this week highlights the failings of the Government of Nepal to adequetly protect digital freedom of expression.

The report, Unshackling Expression: A study on criminalisation of freedom of expression online in Nepal - (which also serves as a continuation of the 2017 report, Unshackling Expression: A study on laws criminalising expression online in Asia) examines the overly broad legislative and government actions used by the Nepali government to censor freedom of expression online. It also looked at the lack of data protection measures - a predicament in Pakistan and India as well - and the lack of provisions that “allow citizens to challenge state-mandated internet shutdowns”, and can be found here.

For those that work in and on human rights across the global south, particularly in Asia, the findings of the report will feel familiar:

In Nepal, freedom of expression and opinion including sexual expression of citizens, artists and the press is frequently being criminalised and suppressed through state-sponsored surveillance and censorship along with the ambiguous laws. Additionally, it is an alarming situation that the state-posed surveillance, violation of privacy and censorship is impending through different bills and announcements of the government which could stifle the freedom of expression of the dissenting voices for a long time to come. It is critical that the state adopts an objective and human rights-based approach in developing and amending these provisions. Extensive consultation with the technical community, civil society and marginalised communities is imperative for democratic governance of a common internet.

Stark as the findings are, they also underscore the commonality not just of the problem of authoritarianism masked as social protection, but also of the necessity of working together across borders to defend fundamental rights across the global south.

(I want to thank everyone that subscribed to and shared the first issue of this newsletter. I’m excited about Citizen South and where it can go, and I’m glad - also, relieved - to see such support!)