New Delhi: Following a “legal removal demand” from Indian authorities, Twitter has deleted a poster featuring some of the female student activists arrested by Delhi Police, including Safoora Zargar, Natasha Narwal and Devangana Kalita.
The poster – circulated by several organisations – had made a nationwide call for people to gather “against [the] repression of anti-CAA protesters” at college and university campuses on June 3, while “maintaining norms of social distancing”.
The poster was shared by many Twitter users with the hashtag #SabYaadRakhaJayega. The call was to protest against the successive arrests of student activists and slapping them with charges under the draconian Unlawful (Activities) Prevention Act.
A Twitter user, confirming the removal of the poster to The Wire, said she got an email on June 11 from Twitter’s legal wing informing her about them receiving the demand from the Indian authorities to remove certain ‘content’, claiming that it “violates law(s) in India”.
“Indian law obligates Twitter to withhold access to this content in India; however, the content remains available elsewhere,” the mail said.
The Twitter user, Sabina Yasmin Rahman of Tata Institute of Social Sciences (Nagaland campus), said she had uploaded the poster on June 1 and tagged “couple of people including student leader Umar Khalid”. Khalid has been named in the chargesheet filed by Delhi Police in the Delhi riots case.
Also read: Now, Delhi Police Slap UAPA Charges on Pinjra Tod’s Devangana Kalita Too
“The tweet got a lot of likes and retweets,” she added.
Sabina said she shared it, “Also because like me, Devangana comes from Assam, and she has been amplifying Assam’s stand on NRC (National Register of Citizens) and the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) here. She was one of the founder members of the feminist movement Pinjra Tod but people of Assam are yet to learn about their feminist activist and that she has been arrested under UAPA for being a part of the anti-CAA protests in Delhi.”
On getting the email, which carried no mention of what particular ‘content’ the authorities wanted removed, Rahman said, “I initially thought it was because I have been tweeting about Assam’s peasant leader Akhil Gogoi”. Gogoi has been incarcerated, also under the UAPA, since last December for leading anti-CAA protests in Assam.
Following the recent controversy around illegal mining of the Dehing Patkai rainforest in Assam and the ongoing fire at Baghjan in the state’s Tinsukia district due to the blowout of a gas pipeline being drilled by a Gujarat-based company, Sabina has been tweeting about Gogoi.
Also read: Fire at Assam Oil Well After Gas Leak Threatens Life, Livelihood and Biodiversity
“Akhil Gogoi’s absence is being felt in the state now as we see the Dehing Patkai case and the Baghjan blowout. These are issues Akhil has been raising and fighting for since 2006. Somehow, our own civil society has failed to see that he has always been ahead of his times. And the larger section of Assamese need to at least now show more solidarity with his politics as it has become the only politics that can save the region,” Sabina said.
Rahman found that she could not access her Twitter account in the immediate aftermath of receiving the email. She could do so after the tweet with the poster was removed from her timeline.
