Govt gets blasphemous film blocked on Internet

As Geelani, Mufti Azam ask Kashmiris to protest, educational institutions closed for Friday

Ahmed Ali Fayyaz

Srinagar, Sep 20: With the separatist hardliner Syed Ali Shah Geelani and Mufti Azam, Mohammad Bashiruddin, calling upon the Kashmiri Muslims to stage street protests against an American blasphemous film following the afternoon prayers tomorrow, authorities have closed all educational institutions in the Valley on Friday. Meanwhile, after a weeklong stalemate, Government of Jammu and Kashmir has finally succeeded in blocking the controversial movie on Internet.

Authoritative sources disclosed to Early Times that on sustained persuasion of the Omar Abdullah government, the Central telecommunication authorities got almost all the access links of the controversial movie on Google, Yahoo, YouTube and Facebook blocked today. The movie, its video clips or trailers were no more available accessible on the cyberspace in India from this evening.

“This content is not available in your country due to a government removal request”, read a caption invariably on all domains and search engines when the official claim of blocking the video were put to a test this evening. Sources said that the process was complete and in case the Internet Service Providers committed any breach, their operations would be fully blocked. This could obviously affect all email communications from and into India.

‘Threat to internal security’ was stated to be the reason quoted for blocking the links, first time in India since Internet services were introduced in this country in mid-1990s. Sources said that there was a countrywide concern, running parallel to a worldwide concern, over availability of the inflammable movie on Internet. However, the central telecommunication authorities, Ministry of Telecommunication and Ministry of Home Affairs received only one formal request to block the access and that came from the state government in Srinagar.

Official sources said that a team of officials from the state Home Department, J&K Police CID Wing and Department of Information Technology, in coordination with National Informatics Centre (NIC), were monitoring the Internet traffic. “In case of default, YouTube and Facebook could be fully blocked”, said a highly placed official.

In the evening, J&K Government’s Home Departments issued an order that read: “In exercise of the powers conferred U/S 5(2) of the Indian Telegraph Act 1885, the Government of Jammu and Kashmir, in the interest of public safety and for maintaining public order, hereby directs that:- (i) All licensed Telecom Service Providers/ Internet Service Providers shall make arrangements to ensure that their subscribers/ customers/ clients in the State of Jammu and Kashmir should not be able to download or upload the contents with regard to film/message/comments/excerpts of the blasphemous video titled “Innocence of Muslims” or by any other name. If necessary, due to technical reasons, the Fully Qualified Domain Names shall be blocked viz www.youtube.com, www.facebook.com etc., (ii)They shall also ensure that the BULK mails that are being generated from their subscribers/clients do not contain this file/ versions of this file and the content and in case of suspicion/ detection, the same shall be blocked and filtered”.

In view of the separatist hardliner Syed Ali Shah Geelani’s fresh call, also separately issued by Mufti Azam, Mufti Bashiruddin, asking Kashmiri Muslims to stage street protests against the blasphemous movie at the end of afternoon prayers tomorrow, state government has declared holiday in all schools, colleges and other educational institutions on Friday. Sources said that Director of School Education and Secretary of Higher Education/ Director Colleges today issued orders of holiday in all educational institutions.

Authorities were said to be apprehensive of turbulence by students in view of the total shutdown witnessed on Geelani’s call in Valley on September 18^th. Some incidents of stone pelting and clashes with Police had taken place on that day. A mob had also attacked the official residence of Deputy Chief Minister Tara Chand and set on fire a government vehicle parked outside the house on Maulana Azad Road.

Even as Geelani has asked the demonstrators to remain “peaceful” and avoid damaging public properties, Police and civil officials have their own apprehensions in view of the history of such “peaceful demonstrations”. It was during such a demonstration that participants had torched a number of government offices, including headquarters of Crime Branch and IGP Crime’s office at Exhibition Grounds in front of J&K High Court complex in September 2010.

Sources said that senior Police officials took a meeting with DIGs, SSPs and other field officers here this evening and reviewed the security arrangements and other measures to maintain law and order.

END