Twitter withholds Rana Ayyub's account, her supporters term it censorship

With Twitter withholding Rana Ayyub's account several took to the social media to state it is a result of censorship

New Delhi, Jun 27: A notice from Twitter was posted by journalist Rana Ayyub in which she was informed that her microblogging site was withheld in India under the Information Technology Act 2000.

On Sunday she took to her Twitter to post the notice and wrote, ' hello @Twitter, what exactly is this.'

The notice from Twitter read, 'in order to comply with Twitter's obligations under the Indian local laws, we have withheld the following account in India under the country's Information Technology Act 2000: the content remains available elsewhere.

Moments after the tweet was posted there were the usual suspects claiming that this amounts to censorship. The issue was being projected and hyped as though there was some large scale censorship that was taking place. Several handles from across the globe said that they stand in support with her and claimed that there has been outrageous censorship of an investigative journalist.

It may be recalled that in February this year, the Enforcement Directorate had attached Rs 1.77 crore belonging to the the Washington Post columnist Ayyub in connection with a money laundering case. It was alleged that the money collected as donation for three campaigns were used for personal expenses. The money was not used to the right purpose. Instead a part of the donation was used for personal expenses, it was alleged.

Twitter also wrote, "as Twitter strongly believes in defending and respecting the voice of the people who use our service, it is our policy to notify account holders if we receive a legal request from an authorised entity (such law enforcement or government agency) to remove content from their account. We provide notice whether or not the user lives in the country where the request originated."

Tennis legend Martina Navratilova also came out in support of Ayyub and wrote, 'so who is next? Just awful.'

Shashi Shekkar Vempati, former CEO of Prasar Bharti said that the notice by Twitter could either be a bug or a delayed reaction to past incidents. "Noticed many hyperventilating tweets regarding so called online censorship by Govt of India via @TwitterIndia . It either seems to be a bug or a delayed reaction to past incidents for I too have received such an email from @Twitter overnight for the incident last year," Vempati tweeted.

He also shared an email that he had he had received with a similar message. Including an account withheld in India message from @Twitter @TwitterIndia. Perhaps the celebrity Islamaphobia activist can pipe down and stop claiming victimhood, he also said.

It may be recalled that Vempati's account had been withheld last year following a request by the Ministry of Home Affairs and the las enforcement agencies to prevent further escalation of the law and order situation during the farmers' protests.

Twitter's policy is very clear about withholding of accounts. It does so in case of a valid and properly scoped request from an authorised entity.

Such withholdings will be limited to the specific jurisdiction that has issued the valid legal demand or where the content has been found to violate local law(s)," Twitter's policy says.

Further Twitter says that it is compelled to withhold the entire specified account in response to a valid legal demand such as a court order.