Azhar Qadri
SRINAGAR, Oct 3: The telecom operators today said they have been ordered by the Jammu and Kashmir Government to block user access to social networking website Facebook and video-sharing website YouTube in the Kashmir valley.
A senior minister, however, said no such order had been issued.
Officials of several private telecom companies told The Tribune that they have received the orders from the government and security agencies, which implement a ban on Facebook and YouTube.
“We had received the order on Friday last to block the Facebook and YouTube. The order has been sent to all the telecom operators in Kashmir. We have implemented the orders immediately,” an official of a telecom operator said, requesting anonymity.
A spokesperson for Bharti Airtel, which has a wide network coverage in the region, said they had blocked the websites after the government issued a directive.
“Bharti Airtel is in compliance with all government directives on public access to websites. Therefore, select websites, as notified by the appropriate authorities, have been blocked,” its spokesperson said.
Virendar Diman, nodal officer for Tata Teleservices, neither accepted nor denied that they had received the ban order. “I cannot share any such information,” he said.
Internet users in Kashmir have been complaining for the past three days that they are unable to access Facebook and YouTube. Facebook has developed a wide-ranging audience in the Kashmir region where residents, many of them youngsters, use it for socialising and debate issues of political and apolitical nature.
The Jammu and Kashmir Government, under the Indian Telegraph Act 1885, had on September 20 banned downloading and uploading of all contents related to an anti-Islam film “Innocence of Muslims”.
The film’s trailer, which was released on YouTube, had led to major unrest in the region as protests continued for nearly a week in mid-September.
In the order, issued by the state Home department, the government had warned that the two websites – Facebook and YouTube – would be blocked “if necessary”.
A state minister, however, denied such order has been issued to block the access to these two websites.
“There is no such order,” Information and Technology Minister Aga Ruhullah said.
The government has already banned airing of Pakistani news channels in the Kashmir valley saying their broadcast of events, in the aftermath of the anti-Islam film protests, could have incited violence.
(Courtesy TNS)
