SRINAGAR, India (AP) – India has ended an 18-month ban on high-speed internet services on mobile devices in disputed Kashmir, where opposition to New Delhi has increased after it revoked the region’s semi-autonomy.
The order late Friday lifted the ban on 4G mobile data services. However, the order of the region’s interior minister, Shaleen Kabra, asked the police “to keep a close eye on the impact of the lifting of the restrictions”.
A comprehensive internet ban, the longest in a democracy that rights activists called ‘digital apartheid’ and ‘collective punishment’, went into effect on August 2019 when India stripped Kashmir of its special status and sovereignty that gave its residents special rights to land tenure and jobs. The region was also divided into two federally administered areas.
The move was accompanied by a security crackdown and a total power outage, leaving hundreds of thousands unemployed, affecting the already weak health care system and halting the education of millions in schools and universities. Months later, India gradually relaxed some restrictions, including partial internet connection.
In January last year, authorities gave the more than 12 million people in the Indian-controlled area access to government-approved websites via slow connections..
Two months later, authorities lifted a social media ban and restored full internet connection but no fast internet. As of August, 4G services were allowed in two of the region’s 20 districts.
Officials have said the internet ban was intended to repel anti-Indian protests and attacks by rebels who have fought for decades for the region’s independence or unification with Pakistan, which controls another part of Kashmir. Both countries claim the landlocked area.
Officials have also argued that such security measures were necessary to better integrate the region with India, promote greater economic development and stop threats from “anti-national elements” and Pakistan.
However, many Kashmiris view the move as part of the beginning of settler colonialism aimed at bringing about demographic change in India’s only Muslim-majority region.
Digital rights activists have consistently denounced internet restrictions, saying they represented a new level of government control over information. They were also criticized by lawmakers in Europe and the US, who called for the government to end the curbs.
Omar Abdullah, the region’s former top elected official in prison for several months in 2019, welcomed the internet recovery. “Better late than never,” he tweeted.
Others criticized such voices, saying that the Internet is one of the basic rights.
“I actually see some doing their best to thank government officials for 4G recovery,” Anuradha Bhasin, editor of the Kashmir Times, said in a tweet. ‘They don’t offer us charity. We should ask for compensation for our hardship and losses. ”
India often understands mobile internet services in parts of the region as a tactic during counterinsurgency operations and anti-Indian protests.
According to London-based digital privacy and research group Top10VPN, India was at the top of internet outages in 2020.
The group said in its January report that the internet shutdown in 2020 caused a loss of $ 4.01 billion worldwide and that India was the most affected while it suffered a loss of $ 2.8 billion.
Most of the internet stops in India are enforced in Kashmir. But they have also been used elsewhere by Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government.
Authorities cut off the internet at protest sites outside of New Delhi, where tens of thousands of farmers camp for more than two months against new agricultural laws. The move drew worldwide attention after pop star Rihanna tweeted a link from a CNN news report on Tuesday that India is blocking internet services on the protest sites. It angered government ministers and Indian celebrities, who urged people to get together and denounce outsiders trying to break the country.