CPJ demands lifting of ban on social media services in held valley
SRINAGAR/NEW YORK: Five Indian soldiers, including a captain of Indian Army, were killed in an armed men attack on an army base in Kupwara in Indian Held Kashmir on Thursday.
As per media reports, armed men attacked a camp of the Indian occupation army in the Kupwara area and killed five army men, including two officers. Several other army soldiers were injured who were rushed to Srinagar.
As per media reports, the killed men of the occupation army included one captain and one junior commissioned officer. However, the Indian Army claimed to have killed two attackers.
On the other hand, the administration in the held Valley has slapped one-month ban on 22 social media sites, including Facebook, twitter and WhatsApp.
Unprecedented public reaction on posts and videos, showing inhuman atrocities and war crimes of the Indian Army in held Kashmir, has forced the administration to ban the social media. Yet in another development, police in the occupied Kashmir has arrested a popular woman leader Asiya Andrabi, Chairperson of Dukhtran-e-Millat (Daughters of the Nation).
Another report says that Indian troops in held Kashmir on Thursday opened fire on a crowd of demonstrators outside an army garrison where armed men earlier killed three soldiers, hitting one civilian who later died.
Police said the soldiers fired on a crowd of protesters who threw rocks at an army jeep as it emerged from the barracks, hitting a 40-year-old man. "In response they fired and injured a man. He later died," the inspector general of police for the region Javid Gillani said. Police had earlier fired tear gas and live bullets into the air to try to break up demonstrations after what one officer called "intense clashes".
The violence followed a pre-dawn assault on the garrison in Kupwara district, near the border known as the Line of Control that divides Kashmir between India and Pakistan. Army spokesman Rajesh Kalia said two attackers had been killed and search operations were in progress to see if there were any more still in the area.
Police said paramilitary reinforcements were being sent to the area, where demonstrators shouted slogans such as "We want freedom, and "Go India, go back". Meanwhile, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), an independent watchdog body, has asked India to immediately revoke a one-month ban on access to social media services in the Indian Held Kashmir where Indian security forces are attempting to crush a mass uprising against New Delhi's rule.
The order, announced on Wednesday, directed all Internet service providers to block users' access to 22 platforms, including Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, WhatsApp, and YouTube, according to news reports. "The sweeping censorship of social media under the pretext of 'maintaining peace and order' will bring neither peace nor order," said Steven Butler, Asia Programme Coordinator at CPJ. "Such broad censorship clearly violates the democratic ideals and human rights India purports to uphold."
The censorship of social media was instituted because India "has completely lost control" in Kashmir, Hilal Mir, editor of the independent newspaper the Kashmir Reader, told CPJ in a note. He credited the videos' wide circulation on social media for pushing the government to open inquiries into soldiers' conduct.
Mir told CPJ that the order to block access to social media would make it more difficult for journalists in the region to do their jobs, as they regularly use social media and platforms like WhatsApp to communicate and to report. He said that mobile phone data service had also been shut down, and worried that the censorship of social media might presage aggressive censorship of the traditional news media.
