It has been over a hundred days since the government of Manipur decided to ban internet access across the state. It is now more important than ever to understand that the internet shutdown, ostensibly ordered to prevent the spread of violence in the state, has done little to prevent violence or maintain law and order.
Rather than making people safer, the shutdown violates their rights and has had a significant impact on their lives. It has resulted in communities being unable to receive and impart informed and verified information about their families’ well-being and safety, it has denied citizens their right to peacefully dissent against the government, and has resulted in journalists facing challenges while reporting on the situation in the state. In other, more serious instances, the shutdown prevented people from hearing about cases of brutal murder and sexual assault.
It is important to note that subsequent orders that partially lifted the shutdown’s restrictions had little impact because the lift only targeted broadband internet connections. This argument is especially compelling when one considers that the vast majority of users in the country, 96% to be specific, rely on mobile data connections to access the internet. This figure is based on the government’s own data, and was highlighted in a recent report titled “No Internet Means No Work, No Pay, No Food,” which was co-published by Human Rights Watch and the Internet Freedom Foundation.
Despite the negative impact the shutdown has had on people’s lives, one has to wonder why it is still being enforced. Why would the government employ a method that research has shown to be ineffective at reducing violence, even after a hundred days? Unfortunately, one answer is that shutdowns, such as the one in Manipur, serve only the interests of autocratic governments which seek to impose an information blackout. For months, this blackout has shielded gross human rights violations and served to save the face of a government that has been inept in dealing with what is possibly the region’s worst human rights crisis.
At the time of publication, 56,000 people had been displaced from their homes by the violence in Manipur and were seeking refuge in relief camps. According to the government of neighbouring Mizoram, 13,000 internally displaced people (IDPs) have sought refuge in their state. Relief camps established to house displaced communities continue to require immediate attention, including medical and sanitation facilities.
In situations like this, it is natural to assume that the shutdown will have an impact on displaced communities’ ability to access the internet. The shutdown prevents us from fully understanding the magnitude of the state’s human rights crisis, and it is therefore critical that the government end it. The government can no longer use excuses to continue enforcing the state shutdown. Instead, it must make a concerted effort to work together with civil society in order to implement other approaches that effectively address the state’s challenges without resorting to one that restricts human rights. If it is unable to fulfil this basic duty, the government will continue to be held accountable for turning a blind eye while the rights of millions of its citizens are violated in Manipur.
Jade Lyngdoh is a lawyer and writer based in Shillong, Meghalaya. He was a Meta India Tech Scholar (2021-22) at the National Law University in Jodhpur, where he studied constitutional law.
