from the who-is-the-streisand-of-bollywood? dept
Who’s the Barbra Streisand of Bollywood? There’s a brand new documentary, produced by the BBC about India’s Prime Minister, Narendra Modi. Particularly, the documentary is concentrated on Modi’s relationship with India’s Muslim group, together with his obvious position throughout some anti-Muslim riots (the place over 1,000 individuals had been killed) twenty years in the past. And, apparently, it doesn’t make Modi look excellent. I do know this as a result of India has banned the documentary. And can also be demanding that clips of the documentary be removed from the internet.
And Twitter (and YouTube) have complied.
The 2-part documentary “India: The Modi Query” has not been broadcast in India by the BBC, however India’s federal authorities blocked it over the weekend and banned individuals from sharing clips on social media, citing emergency powers below its data expertise legal guidelines. Twitter and YouTube complied with the request and eliminated many hyperlinks to the documentary.
After all, doing so appears to only be drawing more attention to the documentary.
The ban has solely introduced extra consideration to this system, with many individuals, together with opposition politicians, protesting the transfer and offering hyperlinks to obtain it.
There actually needs to be a time period for that sorta factor.
Anyway, this is the reason we mocked Elon’s professed “free speech absolutism” when he made claims about how his view of free speech was that it meant “that which matches the legislation.”
Besides, that’s not supporting free speech. It’s supporting free speech suppression by governments. Certainly, as we identified (and had been mocked for by Musk’s very vocal followers for), Twitter truly has a fairly lengthy historical past of fighting back against government censorship in that nation. Certainly, Musk whined about Twitter’s actions to struggle without spending a dime speech in India.
For those who imagine in free speech, meaning standing up in opposition to authorities censorship. Not bowing all the way down to it. That’s not free speech in any respect. (And sure, YouTube must also not cave to this type of nonsense, however YouTube hasn’t been operating round taking as robust a “ethical” stance as Musk has).
Both method, college students in India are literally exhibiting Musk and YouTube what combating without spending a dime speech appears to be like like as they’re refusing to back down:
“They’ll shut one display, and we are going to open lots of,” mentioned Aishe Ghosh, one of many scholar activists who attended.
The Indian authorities is now arresting students for making an attempt to display the documentary, exhibiting far more assist and dedication to precise free speech than Elon Musk ever has.
Filed Beneath: censorship, documentary, free speech, india, narendra modi
Corporations: twitter, youtube
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