India tops internet shutdowns globally for the fifth consecutive year: Report

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India has imposed the highest number of internet shutdowns globally in 2022, a new report has revealed.

The report published by Access Now - a New York based advocacy group that tracks internet freedom - said that of the 187 internet shutdowns recorded globally in 2022, 84 took place in India. The country has topped the list with highest number of internet shutdowns for the fifth consecutive year.

Ukraine suffered through 22 shutdowns imposed by the Russian military during its full-scale invasion and occupation, the second highest total globally. Iran followed with 18 shutdowns, breaking its own annual shutdown record with layers of shutdowns during massive protests around the country.

Access Now report said that authorities disrupted internet access at least 49 times in Jammu and Kashmir due to political instability and violence, including a string of 16 back-to-back orders for three-day-long "curfewstyle" shutdowns in January and February 2022.

In 2021, around 80 per cent of all shutdowns in India were in Jammu and Kashmir, compared to 58 per cent in 2022. "Authorities in regions across the country are increasingly resorting to this repressive measure, inflicting shutdowns on more people in more places," the report stated.

Setting aside Jammu and Kashmir, authorities in West Bengal -seven internet shutdowns and Rajasthan - twelve internet shutdowns - imposed more shutdowns than authorities in other regions in India, responding to protests, communal violence, and exams with disruptions that "impacted the daily lives of millions of people for hundreds of hours in 2022," according to the report.

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Last week internet was shut down by the Rajasthan government in 11 districts to prevent cheating in a competitive examination to recruit government schoolteachers.

On Wednesday, a petition was filed in the Supreme Court seeking the implementation of the "Anuradha Bhasin guidelines" for internet shutdowns.

The petitioner Chhaya Rani, an advocate practising in the Rajasthan High Court, said that as a result of the internet shutdown, judicial work also got disrupted.

This is not the first time that the Rajasthan government shut internet services for preventing or minimising malpractices during competitive exams. There was a state-wide internet shutdown last year as well, during REET 2021. The petitioner has claimed that this practice flies in the face of the decision in Anuradha Bhasin v. Union of India, in which the apex court not only laid down procedural rules for internet shutdowns, but also supplemented them with the requirement of timely reviews and non-permanence of shutdown orders.

With more than 800 million internet users, India has the second-largest digital population in the world, after China. The internet connects the country's remote rural areas with cities.

In addition to shutdowns, Access Now report added, Indian authorities have increased censorship, blocked websites, and issued takedown orders to social media platforms.

From 2015 to 2022, Indian authorities blocked at least 55,607 websites, URLs, applications, social media posts, and accounts. "These censorship acts have been steadily on the rise, with the government blocking 2.4 times, or 142 per cent, more social media posts in 2022 than 2018," the report mentioned.

It is not surprising that India is at the top of the list, Lara Jesani, a lawyer and a rights activist based in Mumbai told mid-day.

Internet shutdowns have become so common that they are broadly applied and are being normalized, she said, "The government arbitrarily shuts down the internet for long periods of time suspending daily businesses and activities of citizens."

Jesani said the state governments have been applying this "disproportionately, contrary to law laid down by the Supreme Court and in gross abuse of their power". "It has been used to silence citizens' voices of dissent and free and independent news reporting in areas where human rights violations are occurring."

Elsewhere in the Asia Pacific region, the Access Now report said, Pakistan and Bangladesh ordered shutdowns during protests, and China, Afghanistan, and Sri Lanka blocked social media services.

On April 3, 2022, in an attempt to quell widespread protests against the president's declaration of a state of emergency, the Sri Lankan Telecommunications Regulatory Commission banned all social media services across Sri Lanka.

"The shutdown accompanied a recent spike in censorship, information regulation, and isolation from the outside world - all markers of a government's descent into digital authoritarianism."

"Ongoing shutdowns in Tigray, Ethiopia since 2020, and in regions across Myanmar since 2021, highlight the cruelty of singular prolonged blackouts in exacerbating humanitarian crises. These shutdowns demonstrate a pattern of entrenchment in the use of shutdowns, where countries repeatedly use this tactic - both over time and within the annual reporting period - or persist in keeping people in the dark for extended periods," Access Now said in its report.