Twitter blocks Amul's official account over 'Exit the dragon' post, restores later

Ahmedabad, June 06: The Twitter account of top dairy giant Amul was blocked briefly after it posted a cartoon apparently calling for a boycott of Chinese products. The account was restored later.

Twitter had blocked Amul allegedly for publishing a doodle against China. Amul in the creative had written 'Exit the dragon' in a reference to the Chinese military entering Indian territory and in an obvious pun on Bruce Lee starrer movie 'Enter the Dragon'.

In the bottom right corner, the advertisement had the words "Amul Made in India".

The cartoon appeared to support the new policy of Atmanirbhar Bharat' enunciated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi as well as a call for a boycott of Chinese products on Indian social media against the backdrop of a stand-off between the two countries in eastern Ladakh.

Amul's Twitter handle could be accessed when checked on Saturday afternoon and the post containing the cartoon was also visible.

"We do not know why the account was blocked as we have not received any official statement from Twitter....Amul has not run any campaign against anybody," Sodhi said.

"Amul girl campaign is on since last 55 years, and our mascot generally talks about topical subjects, reflecting the mood of the nation in a funny way," Sodhi said.

"When our advertising agency shared this ad on the night of June 4, they learnt through a forward that our Twitter account was blocked. When we requested Twitter for re-activation, the account was restored," he said.

"When we learnt about this, we asked for clarification. We do not know why this disruption occurred. We have not yet received any official message from Twitter on this," he said.

Meanwhile twitter today claimed, "This account is temporarily restricted. You're seeing this warning because there has been some unusual activity from this account. Do you still want to view it?" was displayed.

"Safety and security of the accounts is a key priority for us and to ensure an account has not been compromised sometimes we require the account owner to complete a simple reCAPTCHA process. These challenges are simple for authentic account owners to solve, but difficult (or costly) for spammy or maliciousaccount owners to complete," a Twitter spokesperson said in an emailed statement.

Meanwhile, #Amul began to trend on Twitter with thousands of users coming out in the company's support and accusing the microblogging platform of a bias against India. "Fantastic by @Amul_Coop.

The dragon and their slaves got scared that they restricted the account. Imagine when our Army will be knocking Chinese doors," said Twitter user Raj.

"Shocking @Twitter briefly restricted Amul account because of the post calling to boycott Chinese products. We Indians standwith our company's across India," tweeted Parth Shah.

(with PTI inputs)