UN special rapporteur David Kaye has issued a statement expressing concern about the draconian level
to which the Indian government has taken its communications blackout in
Kashmir since revoking the region’s historic legal autonomy on Monday.
Kaye, a rapporteur on freedom of expression, said Kashmir sets a
“worrying precedent,” and wondered if it might not signal a new way for
democracies to clamp down on information access in contentious areas.
India shut off all Internet, cellphone, and landline telephone services
on Monday, and have left them shut off, while security forces have
banned public gatherings and severely restricted travel. Local reporters
say that the blackout is so severe that some in Kashmir have not even heard yet that India rewrote their constitution to strip Kashmir of its autonomy.
India imposes communications blackouts in Kashmir often, on the pretext
of preventing protest organization. They did it 134 last year. So for
people in more remote parts of Kashmir, as far as they know this is just
one of those blackouts, and not the start of a new clampdown on
autonomy in the area.
UN Warns India’s ‘Draconian’ Blackout in Kashmir a ‘Worrying Precedent’
Some people in Kashmir haven't even heard of constitution change
Jason Ditz is Senior Editor for Antiwar.com. He has 20 years of experience in foreign policy research and his work has appeared in The American Conservative, Responsible Statecraft, Forbes, Toronto Star, Minneapolis Star-Tribune, Providence Journal, Washington Times, and the Detroit Free Press.
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