Elon Musk caves to tension from India and eliminates BBC documentary criticising PM Modi from Twitter

Elon Musk has caved in to force from India and eradicated a BBC documentary criticising PM Narendra Modi from Twitter.

The two-part documentary, India: The Modi Problem, has not been broadcast in India by the BBC, but the nation’s federal authorities blocked it more than the weekend and banned folks from sharing clips on social media, citing crisis powers under its information and facts technology rules.

Twitter and YouTube were being purchased by the Indian governing administration to block all inbound links to the film in just the country, Kanchan Gupta, a senior adviser in the Ministry of Info and Broadcasting, said Tuesday. 

He later on reported that both equally platforms ‘have complied with the directions’. 

Pictured: Elon Musk and Narendra Modi. Twitter and YouTube had been ordered by the Indian authorities to block all back links to the film in just the state, Kanchan Gupta, a senior adviser in the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, mentioned Tuesday

Musk markets himself as a absolutely free speech advocate, but his operating of Twitter given that Oct has been criticised as calamitous, with massive layoffs and professionals predicting an eventual crash of the firm. 

On November 16, Twitter workers have been told that they necessary to indication a pledge to be ready to remain on in their roles exactly where they would be ‘working very long several hours at significant intensity’ or obtain 3 months of severance pay out, ensuing in a mass exodus. 

Times later on Musk announced that previous president Donald Trump would have his Twitter account reinstated, tweeting: ‘The people have spoken’. 

Immediately after a Twitter poll on the issue, Musk tweeted on December 21: ‘I will resign as CEO as soon as I obtain anyone silly sufficient to choose the position!’

The initial element of the Modi documentary, launched final week by the BBC for its Uk audiences, revives the most controversial episode of Modi’s political occupation when he was the chief minister of western Gujarat condition in 2002. It focuses on bloody anti-Muslim riots in which much more than 1,000 people were killed.

Times after India blocked the documentary and banned people today from sharing it on the web, authorities are scrambling to halt screenings of the movie at colleges and universities and restrict clips of it on social media, a transfer that has been decried by critics as an assault on press freedom.

Pictured: Elon Musk in an August 2022 (file photograph). India’s federal government blocked the documentary over the weekend and banned men and women from sharing clips on social media, citing emergency powers less than its facts technologies guidelines

Tensions escalated in the funds, New Delhi, on Wednesday at Jamia Millia University where a university student group mentioned it prepared to display screen the banned documentary, prompting scores of police officers equipped with tear gasoline and riot gear to collect outside campus gates.

Law enforcement, some in simple clothes, scuffled with protesting pupils and detained at minimum fifty percent a dozen of them, who were being taken absent in a van.

The college slice off ability and the web on its campus on Tuesday before the documentary was scheduled to be screened by a students’ union. 

Authorities claimed it would disturb peace on campus, but pupils however watched the documentary on their laptops and mobile phones after sharing it on messaging expert services like Telegram and WhatsApp.

The documentary has also triggered a storm at other Indian universities.

Authorities at the College of Hyderabad, in India’s south, have begun a probe after a scholar group confirmed the banned documentary earlier this week. In the southern state of Kerala, employees from Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party held demonstrations on Tuesday just after some scholar groups affiliated with rival political get-togethers defied the ban and screened the film.

The riots have long hounded Modi for the reason that of allegations that authorities beneath his enjoy allowed and even encouraged the bloodshed. Modi has denied the accusations, and the Supreme Court has stated it uncovered no evidence to prosecute him. Last calendar year, the country’s top rated courtroom dismissed a petition filed by a Muslim sufferer questioning Modi’s exoneration.

Pictured: India’s Primary Minister Narendra Modi (file picture)

Pictured: Police detain Pupils Federation of India activists outside the house the Jamia Millia Islamia University in New Delhi, India on January 25, 2023

Tensions escalated in the college after a college student team claimed it prepared to display a banned documentary that examines Indian Key Minister Narendra Modi’s role throughout 2002 anti-Muslim riots, prompting dozens of law enforcement equipped with tear gasoline and riot equipment to get exterior campus gates

The initial portion of the BBC documentary relies on interviews with victims of the riots, journalists and rights activists, who say Modi looked the other way all through the riots. It cites, for the 1st time, a secret British diplomatic investigation that concluded Modi was ‘directly responsible’ for the ‘climate of impunity’. 

The documentary incorporates the testimony of then-British International Secretary Jack Straw, who suggests the British investigation discovered that the violence by Hindu nationalists aimed to ‘purge Muslims from Hindu areas’ and that it had all the ‘hallmarks of an ethnic cleansing’. 

Suspicions that Modi quietly supported the riots led the US, British isles and EU to deny him a visa, a shift that has since been reversed.

India’s International Ministry last week termed the documentary a ‘propaganda piece made to press a significantly discredited narrative’ that lacks objectivity and slammed it for ‘bias’ and ‘a continuing colonial mindset’. 

Kanchan Gupta, a senior adviser in the government’s Ministry of Information and facts and Broadcasting, denounced it as ‘anti-India garbage’. 

The BBC in a statement said the documentary was ‘rigorously researched’ and associated a broad range of voices and thoughts.

‘We supplied the Indian Government a right to reply to the matters lifted in the series – it declined to react,’ the statement stated.

The 2nd aspect of the documentary, released Tuesday in the British isles, ‘examines the track record of Narendra Modi’s government adhering to his re-election in 2019,’ according to the film’s description on the BBC web-site.

In current a long time, India’s Muslim minority has been at the receiving conclude of violence from Hindu nationalists, emboldened by a key minister who has largely stayed mum on these assaults because he was 1st elected in 2014.

Pictured: A Bajranj Dal activist armed with a iron adhere shout slogans in opposition to muslims as they went burning muslim retailers and attacked residences at Sahapur in Ahmedabad, on February 28, 2002. It was revenge for the February 27 attack by a Muslim mob on a teach carrying Hindu activists that remaining 58 persons dead in the Northern state of Gujarat

Pictured: Muslims, who experienced begged law enforcement to secure them the working day ahead of, sit huddled in the wreckage of their burned out houses following a mob of Hindu neighbours attacked them from throughout a avenue March 2, 2002 in Ahmadabad, India

A Hindu mob waving swords at an opposing Muslim mob in the course of communal riots in Ahmedabad, India on March 1, 2002

The ban has set off a wave of criticism from opposition parties and legal rights groups that slammed it as an attack towards push freedom. It also drew much more awareness to the documentary, sparking scores of social media people to share clips on WhatsApp, Telegram and Twitter.

‘You can ban, you can suppress the press, you can control the institutions – but the truth is the truth of the matter. It has a unpleasant routine of coming out,’ Rahul Gandhi, a leader in the opposition Congress social gathering, informed reporters at a push meeting Tuesday.

Mahua Moitra, a lawmaker from the Trinamool Congress political get together, on Tuesday tweeted a new website link soon after a prior a single was taken down. 

‘Good, lousy, or ugly – we come to a decision. Govt won’t notify us what to watch,’ Moitra reported in her tweet, which was nonetheless up Wednesday early morning.

Human Rights Watch explained the ban reflected a broader crackdown on minorities less than the Modi govt, which the legal rights group stated has frequently invoked draconian laws to muzzle criticism.

Critics say press freedom in India has declined in recent a long time and the nation fell 8 locations, to 150 out of 180 international locations, in final year’s Push Flexibility Index released by Reporters Without the need of Borders. It accuses Modi’s govt of silencing criticism on social media, notably on Twitter, a charge seniour leaders of the governing social gathering have denied.

Modi’s federal government has on a regular basis pressured Twitter to limit or ban content material it deems significant of the primary minister or his party. Past yr, it threatened to arrest Twitter team in the state around their refusal to ban accounts operate by critics right after applying sweeping new regulations for know-how and social media companies.

The ban on the BBC documentary arrives following a proposal from the authorities to give its Push Data Bureau and other ‘fact-checking’ businesses powers to take down news considered ‘fake or false’ from electronic platforms.

The Editors Guild of India urged the government to withdraw the proposal, saying these types of a change would be akin to censorship.