Youtube clears Akaal Channel in India, Facebook still blocking it

By Asia Samachar Team | UNITED STATES |

Sikhs are waging a battle against giant social media platform Facebook that had silently blocked the #Sikh hashtag for weeks and then a Sikh television channel in India.

Both the incidents came to light in the run-up to the anniversary of the Indian army assault on the most popular Sikh religious centre in Amritsar in 1984.

After admitting the ‘mistake’ on 3 June, Facebook and its sister social media platform Instagram have unblocked the hashtag, though they have yet to explain how and why it happened.

In India, the independent media platform Akaal Channel is still blocked on Facebook, while Youtube had unblocked the UK-based television channel.

It looks like Facebook has some answering to do to the Sikh community. For at least three months, the platform with some 2.5 billion users internationally had silently blocked the #Sikh hashtag.

Members of the Sikh community only began to realise something amiss when they were observing the 36th anniversary of the attack on the Harmandir Sahib, popularly known as the Golden Temple, and more than three dozen other gurdwaras in Punjab. Referred to as the #1984 Sikh genocide, the incident also involved the killing and disappearance of thousands of Sikhs.

When confronted, on June 3, Facebook acknowledged it. Instagram was the first to unblock the hashtag, followed by Facebook.

US-based Sikh American Legal Defense and Education Fund (Saldef) has asked Facebook the following four questions:

• Clarify what post triggered the blocking of #Sikh and timeline leading up to yesterday’s complete block.
• Why did they block #Sikh in its entirety and not just the post that was brought to their attention?
• What steps are you taking to ensure the Sikh community or any other community that this does not happen again?
• How do you ensure that Facebook’s policies are applied fairly?

“They have apologised but yet to provide the answers we are seeking,” Saldef board member Juspreet Kaur told a Punjabi talk show on Jus Punjabi.

Saldef has initiated a petition to demand Facebook to explain why the #Sikh hashtag was blocked, something that can happen to any other minority community as well. See here.

In a statement, Saldef said there was no reason that #Sikh should have been blocked, adding that it was ‘unsettling that so quickly a single platform can silence a population of over 27 million people internationally’.

In December 2018, it said former Saldef media fellow Vishavjit Singh had political cartoons removed from Instagram that highlighted the sentencing of Indian former lawmaker Sajjan Kumar, for his role in the 1984 anti-Sikh pogroms in India. To date, Saldef said Instagram has refused to unblock the posts and would not respond or give any explanation as to their actions.

RELATED STORY:

India disrupts Akaal Channel (Asia Samachar, 6 June 2020)