Indian Officials Cut Internet For 27 Million People Amid Search For Fugitive (washingtonpost.com) 84
Indian authorities severed mobile internet access and text messaging for a second day Sunday across Punjab, a state of about 27 million people, as officials sought to capture a Sikh separatist and braced for potential unrest. The Washington Post reports: The statewide ban -- which crippled most smartphone services except for voice calls and some SMS text messages -- marked one of the broadest shutdowns in recent years in India, a country that has increasingly deployed the law enforcement tactic, which digital rights activists call draconian and ineffective. The Punjab government, led by the opposition Aam Admi Party, initially announced a 24-hour ban starting midday Saturday as its security forces launched a sprawling operation to arrest the fugitive Amritpal Singh, then extended the ban Sunday for another 24 hours.
Singh, a 30-year-old preacher, has been a popular figure within a separatist movement that seeks to establish a sovereign state in Punjab called Khalistan for followers of the Sikh religion. He rocketed to nationwide notoriety in February after his supporters stormed a police station to free one of his jailed supporters. The Khalistan movement is outlawed in India and considered a top national security threat by officials, but the movement has sympathizers across Punjab state, which is majority Sikh, and among members of the large Sikh diaspora who have settled in countries such as Canada and Britain. In a bid to forestall unrest and curtail what it called "fake news," Punjab authorities blocked mobile internet service beginning at noon Saturday, shortly after they failed to apprehend Singh as he drove through central Punjab with a cavalcade of supporters. Officials were probably also motivated by a desire to deprive Singh's supporters of social media, which they briefly used Saturday to seek help and organize their ranks.
Singh was still on the run as of late Sunday, and the 4G blackout remained in effect. Three Punjab residents who spoke to The Washington Post said life had been disrupted since midday Saturday. Only essential text messages, such as confirmation codes for bank transfers, were trickling through. Wired internet services were not affected. "My entire business is dependent on internet," said Mohammad Ibrahim, who accepts QR code-based payments at his two clothing shops in a village outside of Ludhiana and also sells garments online. "Since yesterday, I've felt crippled."
Singh, a 30-year-old preacher, has been a popular figure within a separatist movement that seeks to establish a sovereign state in Punjab called Khalistan for followers of the Sikh religion. He rocketed to nationwide notoriety in February after his supporters stormed a police station to free one of his jailed supporters. The Khalistan movement is outlawed in India and considered a top national security threat by officials, but the movement has sympathizers across Punjab state, which is majority Sikh, and among members of the large Sikh diaspora who have settled in countries such as Canada and Britain. In a bid to forestall unrest and curtail what it called "fake news," Punjab authorities blocked mobile internet service beginning at noon Saturday, shortly after they failed to apprehend Singh as he drove through central Punjab with a cavalcade of supporters. Officials were probably also motivated by a desire to deprive Singh's supporters of social media, which they briefly used Saturday to seek help and organize their ranks.
Singh was still on the run as of late Sunday, and the 4G blackout remained in effect. Three Punjab residents who spoke to The Washington Post said life had been disrupted since midday Saturday. Only essential text messages, such as confirmation codes for bank transfers, were trickling through. Wired internet services were not affected. "My entire business is dependent on internet," said Mohammad Ibrahim, who accepts QR code-based payments at his two clothing shops in a village outside of Ludhiana and also sells garments online. "Since yesterday, I've felt crippled."
Perhaps (Score:2)
They should have narrowed it down first by looking for one-armed men.
Re:Perhaps (Score:5, Funny)
IMO, somebody thought GITS [wikipedia.org] was a documentary and they are out to get The Laughing Man
On a side note, a co-worker who grew up in India was really disappointed that there were no food replicators in America, as he grew up watching Star Trek and thought they were real.
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I had a teacher from India who thought all TV was fake and many Americans didn't really live in big houses with yards, own 2 cars, etc. Basically he thought it was all propaganda until he came to the US and saw millions of American families were indeed homeowners, owned multiple vehicles, and lived the life depicted by TV/movies.
Something missing? (Score:4, Interesting)
Something missing from the post: Is this a violent action or a peaceful one?
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on the surface it looks a bit like retrumplicans in the usa. only india has apparently banned the party, and it's big enough that they feel they have turn off the internet to keep them from organizing. It wouldn't make sense to shut off large parts of the internet with high impact for a small fry.
Doesn't seem like much of a democracy to me if you have made a political group illegal, at least without cause. Maybe they have a good reason for it, but it certainly seems overly authoritarian.
I'd love to hear
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Re:Something missing? (Score:4, Informative)
What is justifiable as a cause is completely up to the judgment of The sovereign government.
Absolutely not. Basic human rights are a thing, and we can all discuss whether what any given government has done is something that is reasonable and should invite pushback. What is true is the much more limited statement that barring very extreme violations such as outright genocide, pushback should be limited, and countries should not use it as a reason for invasion because that causes more harm than good generally.
This seems akin to the United States primary reasons for not allowing secession of States from the Union. I'm not just talking about the civil war I'm also referring to California and Texas
Not allowing secession is very different than not allowing a political party which pushes for secession. The US has multiple small secessionist parties. In this context, India's decision may be justified if there are substantial concerns about violence here. But the immediate comparison does not hold.
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Re: Something listing ? (Score:2)
> the strong of-course do as they will, and the weak do as they must.
Just to get maximum clarity, do you think that's good, or bad?
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It is a quote from the Melian Dialogue [wikipedia.org], which occurred during the Peloponnesian War.
Athens won the battle but lost the war.
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Social contracts exist; humans negotiate ... everything. Relatively, the strong of-course do as they will, and the weak do as they must. Human rights do not exist, as any (brief) review of human history will demonstrate.
Thank you Captain Obvious
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What is justifiable as a cause is completely up to the judgment of The sovereign government.
Absolutely not. Basic human rights are a thing, and we can all discuss whether what any given government has done is something that is reasonable and should invite pushback. What is true is the much more limited statement that barring very extreme violations such as outright genocide, pushback should be limited, and countries should not use it as a reason for invasion because that causes more harm than good generally.
Each sovereign government is allowed to decide what is legal in that country, but legality is not morality or justice. Furthermore, each country's legal pronouncements stop at their borders. Other countries have the right to directly criticize or to alter their economic and other interactions with that country.
This seems akin to the United States primary reasons for not allowing secession of States from the Union. I'm not just talking about the civil war I'm also referring to California and Texas
Not allowing secession is very different than not allowing a political party which pushes for secession. The US has multiple small secessionist parties. In this context, India's decision may be justified if there are substantial concerns about violence here. But the immediate comparison does not hold.
Before the actual fighting of the US Civil War, the people and the press were allowed to freely, openly, and bitterly argue for session. Currently, the United States also has labeled certain groups
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Not leaving from the union (Score:2)
What is justifiable as a cause is completely up to the judgment of The sovereign government.
This seems akin to the United States primary reasons for not allowing secession of States from the Union. I'm not just talking about the civil war I'm also referring to California and Texas.
I don't think any country allows activities that threaten to split the nation and take the land with them.
To be fair, New California doesn't want to secede from the US, it only wants to break off from California and form its own state.
This has precedent in West Virginia, which broke off from Virginia and formed its own state when they disagreed with Virginia's policy on slavery.
(California is rather big for a state and tends to throw its weight around in politics. From an efficiency standpoint it might work out better if it became two or three smaller states with size/population more commensurate with other sta
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What is justifiable as a cause is completely up to the judgment of The sovereign government. This seems akin to the United States primary reasons for not allowing secession of States from the Union. I'm not just talking about the civil war I'm also referring to California and Texas. Or Spain's similar refusal to allow secession from Spain. I don't think any country allows activities that threaten to split the nation and take the land with them.
A few states are willing to accept succession, Scotland had a referendum on independence from the UK in 2014 (they voted nae) however they've asked for another one since Brexit and the increasingly right wing UK government has denied it. The island of Bougainville voted for independence from Papua New Ginea in 2021, Montenegro voted to dissolve their federation with Serbia in 2006, Kosovo declared independence from Serbia in 2008 (this is one of those "we're not together any more but I'm not changing my FB
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Different historical reasons. Here, the reason is religious. They want a separate Sikh country to be carved out of India. We've been down that road before, with Muslims carving out Pakistan and Bangladesh. Imagine if the Italians or the Irish in New York wanted to separate from the US into a new country.
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It's more complicated then simply religion. India is more like Europe then America, A bunch of nations with different histories, languages, traditions and religions forced (through colonialism) to be one country. Think of if Europe was one country and Turkey wanted out.
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Look up Bloc Quebecois in Canada, their primary platform has always been separation from Canada and they certainly aren't illegal. If they get the votes, it will happen. Outlawing otherwise peaceful groups for political reasons is fascism, plain and simple.
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Have you actually looked at the photos of these 'peaceful' people?
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Though Canada did pass the clarity act, basically takes a super majority to separate. Last referendum, it was like 51% stay and 49% leave, close enough that the weather could have affected the outcome. Also consider brexit, basically a tie and the majority now wishes it didn't happen.
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I don't think any country allows activities that threaten to split the nation and take the land with them.
The UK and Canada are obvious counter-examples. Both have fully legal separatist movements.
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FYI PM Mohdi _is_ the Indian Trump [washingtonpost.com] and they are in power, and trying to get rid of any legitimate democratic opposition, just like Trump would have liked to have done.
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The underlying problem is that India only became one country when the British conquered it (including modern Pakistan, Bangladesh and Burma) and there are plenty of Indians would rather live in Kashmir or Maharashtra or what have you.
The current Indian ruling party has used religion to further it's aims and often pits Hindu nationalists against people of other faiths.
I had not heard about Aam Admi but maybe that's part o
Re: Something missing? (Score:3)
No, the state government ( Aam aadmi party or AAP ) opposes secession. AAP opposes the central government (run by the BJP party). AAP recently took power in Punjab in an electoral upset The preacher on the run opposes both parties and governments.
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on the surface it looks a bit like retrumplicans in the usa. only india has apparently banned the party, and it's big enough that they feel they have turn off the internet to keep them from organizing. It wouldn't make sense to shut off large parts of the internet with high impact for a small fry.
Doesn't seem like much of a democracy to me if you have made a political group illegal, at least without cause. Maybe they have a good reason for it, but it certainly seems overly authoritarian.
Two points, we make political groups illegal all the time, especially when they become violent.
Secondly, India is really a democracy in name only. It's corrupt as hell and the current PM, Modi has been working since 2014 to ensure no other party gets elected. Jailing of political opponents is commonplace in India, weaponisation of law enforcement and the military (both of which are highly corrupt and nepotist), controversial laws pushed through. Modi has seen the quality of life in India backslide since
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If trump followers had assassinated Obama and terrorized for years by bombing innocents people, then of course.
I applaud that you put some effort to look at the surface but hopefully I was able to demonstrate how much propaganda your media feeds and how little actual information is allowed to trickle.
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Democracy is a spectrum, with perhaps Nordic countries at one end and countries like Russia at the other end. India is somewhere in between, closer to the Russian end than the other.
> Doesn't seem like much of a democracy to me if you have made a political group illegal, at least without cause.
The cause is that they are armed separatists. India is a collection of many diverse cultural groups where any group can make a case to break away. That's something India had always been authoritarian in clamping do
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Is this a violent action or a peaceful one?
Don't worry, I know the headline says they cut access, but I'm sure the Indian authorities' "severing" of the connection was only metaphorical, and no fiber lines were actually cut. Also, R-J45 connectors were correctly disconnected from routers, and servers gracefully shut down. Nothing ripped out or unplugged from the mains voltage while running.
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> Is this a violent action or a peaceful one?
Who knows? Who cares? It's irrelevant. Amritpal Singh could have burned down a schoolhouse full of nuns and orphans before mowing down an entire city's police department with a minigun and grenade launcher during his escape. None of that changes the fact that the other 26,999,999 people that the Modi's government thugs decided to lump in and punish along with him... didn't.
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Wired broadband continues to work. Only mobile internet was shut down.
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Should they have grounded all the planes in the US when a few hijacked planes hit the World Trade Centre and other targets?
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That's a false equivalency. You can't destroy a building by sending and email to a computer in it. Shutting down internet access, or any other kind of telecommunications, for tens of millions of people would absolutely have been entirely intolerable.
As for 9/11, an initial temporary grounding was probably warranted. But it lasted far longer than it should have. Leaving tens of thousands of people stranded in random airports... sometimes not even letting them deplane... and leaving them there, doing noth
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India has went from a promising democracy to an electoral autocracy in the blink of an eye. Selective facts is universal among cultures. Democracy is not the default state of society, entropy ensures that democracy requires constant input to maintain.
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Electoral Autocracy: A country with a govt whose ideology I don't agree with.
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The term has a quantitative definition and that's not it. Local politics in India has a serious problem with violent authoritarian rhetoric. Dissenting voices are now excluded from national politics in India, and these problems extend into the courts and to the TV networks. Things are bad there, worse than they have been in decades.
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Another Reason (Score:1)
The statewide ban -- which crippled most smartphone services except for voice calls and some SMS text messages
Got StarLink?
RF ban (Score:2)
Countries regulate radio frequency (RF) transmission over their soil. An Internet ban would probably ban SpaceX from transmitting using RF to subscribers in the region.
Comment removed (Score:4, Informative)
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If you read the article you'd see this was about smartphone services.
Thanks for the correction, indeed I did not read the article...
However for most people in rural India, isn't mobile internet pretty much the only internet?
For anyone that's true of though, I guess StarLink is out of reach anyway (at least financially)...
They did the un-needful thing (Score:5, Insightful)
NJ BridgeGate clone?
The problems caused by cutting off that many people are probably far greater than that of the fugitive's actions. Important doctor appointments and medical info was probably lost or delayed in the process, for example. Some may have died due to delays. Plus, other life annoying disruptions. If this was done for political reasons, heads should roll. It doesn't look smart at all.
Re: They did the un-needful thing (Score:2)
You might be surprised at at how many lives have been lost to violence in that region over the last 50 years. An SMS and internet blackout might be strategically wise.
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If it's viewed as a political ploy, it will just make violence worse. Even if it were done for honest intentions, it probably won't be perceived that way by the opposition.
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"He has also been reported to have been raising his own army and 'human bomb squads' consisting of brainwashed youth as suicide bombers idolising Dilawar Singh."
Call $cammers (Score:5, Insightful)
And yet, they can't find the call center scammers, even when everyone knows exactly where they are sitting, right down to the office building and floor. With their names. And live audio+video of them (by hacking the scammers workstations and security cams) of the scamming as it is happening.
Nope, can't find those criminals for some reason.
But can shut off the entire Internet over there to try to find one guy.
Huh,
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The call centre scammers are not in Punjab.
So you're saying the Indian government has authority in Punjab, but not in West Bengal (Kolkata), and no authority in the country's capitol region (New Delhi)?
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I was wondering why I had so few scam calls today. Coincidence?
Kinda creeped out by India lately. (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Kinda creeped out by India lately. (Score:4, Informative)
Well, that is the intent if you read your own propaganda. Congratulations, it was successful.
I mean, the "separatist movement" literally assassinated the prime minister of India [wikipedia.org]. They are literal terrorists that collect their funds from UK/Canada and other western countries.
They literally announced that they will kill the prime-minister of India from UK using loudspeakers and UK government didn't lift finger until they executed their plan.
They literally attacked the Red Fort in India and pulled down Indian flag and replaced it with their own flag and western celebrities posted in its support.
I mean, they are literally terrorists [wikipedia.org] and the primary concern you have is that internet has been shut down. Last time I checked "Russian interference" was being blamed for Trump's election and Facebook banned it, Twittter banned it, Reddit banned it, Slashdot removed anonymous posting for non-US ips.
"Europe Has to Grow Out of Mindset That Its Problems Are World's Problems"
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Man, if Facebook was Indian company internet would not have been shut down. USA doesn't shut down internet because FBI literally tells them what to do and they do it, then tell everyone how many times they did it once a year.
They attacked the government [financialexpress.com]
This was very well funded literal terrorist from western countries. The guy literally challenged the government to try to arrest him, and he has not yet been arrested.
I mean this is India. There are hundreds of thousands of supporters for these terrorists in
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The moment you make someone else's ability to speak in public at all contingent on your comfort, you forfeit all claim to having a convincing argument to make. And this is not some abstruse philosophy, this is ethics 101. Denying it is simple nihilism.
You can talk about securit
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It is not a fear of what someone might say or does say. I say openly that I break the law all the time if police came after me they would find a lot against me.
The situation is that of organized violence. The situation is that of a terrorist leader avoiding arrest because of instance communication.
Yes, and the 2nd amendment will protect your rights. I don't want to get into the national fantacies. I am talking about life and death and I would prefer to shut down internet to say lives.
He
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By that logic, you could also have justified shutting down the power and water to 27 million people to get that one guy. After all, he was almost certainly using water and power in the course of evading justice. Right? In fact, he was also using food, so be sure to blockade the food supply to that region. Pretty soon you're just copying Stalin memos because some guy somewhere sucks.
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First of all, internet is in no way comparable to food and water. Power, probably. If Thor attacked then sure, I am all for cutting the power to catch him. Secondly, I am not saying it is not an inconvenience, but it is also not an absolute no-no.
That's not what I meant. I am saying that you have also surrendered any right you can from HOA to anti-homeless laws etc. It all depends on the goal if
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This implies that they would not win a fair argument, and their knowledge of that fact further implies a complete lack of respect for the autonomy and humanity of other people. And even further implies that they would rather be wro
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BTW, India is rated only "Partly Free" by the Freedom House index: 66 out of 100, beneath such paragons of democracy as Senegal and Albania. Having a democracy and being a democracy are qualitatively different things.
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They missed an important step (Score:2)
https://youtu.be/nn2FB1P_Mn8?t... [youtu.be]
RSS versus WPD (Score:2)
RSS want Hindu Rastra https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
WPD want Khalistan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
To every action there is an equal and opposite reaction... Newton
Emergency readiness (Score:1)
Should we (communities around the world) be doing no-internet drills? How do we act if it's out for some time in an emergency?