Netizen Report: India Had 31 Internet Shutdowns in 2016. How Many Did Your Country Have? · Global Voices
Netizen Report Team

Microsoft Bing data center. Photo by Robert Scoble via Flickr (CC BY 2.0)
Since January 1, 2017, there have been seven regional-level Internet shutdowns in India. In 2016, there were 31 such shutdowns. Alongside a growing number of countries around the world, it appears that Internet blackouts are becoming an increasingly common tactic for local and regional authorities when faced with public consternation around politics and elections, ethnic and religious tensions, and incidents of violence.
The Software Freedom Law Centre of New Delhi last month released an online interactive map that shows the location and details of each Internet shutdown in India, along with a short description of public events coinciding with the shutdown.
In a recent blog post, Centre director Mishi Chaudhary argued that the Modi government needs to reconcile its reliance on Internet shutdowns as a means of controlling public speech and activity with its increasing dependency on networked communication technologies for government services, public health, finance and more, all part of the administration’s “Digital India” campaign. “If we are to have the promise of digital empowerment through Digital India,” she wrote, “shutdowns cannot become the new ‘normal’.”
The state of Jammu and Kashmir has been by far the most affected by the tactic, experiencing ten shutdowns in 2016 alone, and five each year since 2014. Jammu and Kashmir is not alone in this—regional-level network shutdowns in outlying, often marginalized states and provinces where political and ethnic tensions run high are so habitual in some parts of the world that Internet shutdowns no longer count as news.
In Tibet and Xinjiang, two predominantly ethnic minority regions of Western China, shutdowns are a routine response to public unrest and even holidays such as Tibetan New Year, and can last for weeks or even months at a time. In Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula, shutdowns of several hours have been a regular feature of military clashes with violent insurgent groups in the north, which abuts Israel and Palestine’s Gaza strip, since 2013.
In 2016, the Brookings Institution estimated that Internet shutdowns incurred a worldwide collective cost of $2.4 billion, based on a measurement of GDP totals against the scope and duration of Internet shutdowns. In tandem, the collateral damage that shutdowns bring upon citizens, leaving them unable to communicate, access information and public services, and make financial transactions (among many other things) is incalculable.
A young Iranian man is facing a death sentence for public messages he posted on the messaging platform LINE that were deemed to be against Islam and the Quran. Sina Deghan was arrested in 2015 at the age of 19 for the posts, and had his sentence confirmed by Iran’s Supreme Court in late January of this year.
Nigerian journalist and blogger Kemi Olunloyo was arrested on March 13 for publishing on Instagram a letter regarding an extramarital affair involving a church pastor and a member of his congregation. Her publisher, Samuel Walson was also arrested, and both have been charged with defamation and “publishing false news.”
After a Paraguayan journalist was threatened with rape online, in what her attacker described as an effort to “correct her sexual orientation”, Paraguayan digital rights organization TEDIC published an article recounting her harassment and the problem of sexual violence online. The article has since become a subject of controversy due to tensions over the need to counter harassment and to protect privacy after an individual named in the piece initiated a legal action demanding the post be taken down. According to TEDIC, the request “seeks to silence a legitimate claim, to limit public debate through censorship and to prevent more women from encouraging further denunciations.”
In the weeks following CNN’s unceremonious ousting from Venezuelan network television, multiple independent news and civil society websites have suffered technical attacks that have left them offline for hours and, in some cases, days at a time. Among those affected were media sites Provea and Caraota Digital.
Japanese legislators will soon review an anti-conspiracy bill that includes controversial provisions that resemble predictive policing methods. The bill covers a wide range of possible crimes (277 in total) and would punish “preparations” for future crimes when undertaken by two or more people, with at least one of them obtaining funds or supplies for the crime, or surveying its potential location. Tokyo Bar Association president Motoji Kobayashi said in a public statement in January: “The conspiracy bill goes against the basic principles of our country’s criminal code and the legal system. It threatens the function of protecting human rights.”
Information smugglers in China work to translate and repackage content from banned overseas websites for Chinese readers across the Great Firewall. The investigative news platform the Initium interviewed several information smugglers, asking them about how they use circumvention tools to access news stories on blocked sites like Buzzfeed and Reddit and rewrite them in Chinese. The sites yield steep profits, the Initium found, but tend to prioritize click rates over public interest journalism.
UK Home Secretary Amber Rudd said that the British government would seek to establish backdoors to encryption. This followed the release of evidence that the Westminster attacker had communicated over WhatsApp prior to his attack. Several British politicians and civil liberties groups expressed concern that the demands were neither proportionate nor effective as a response to the attacks.
Mahsa Alimardani, Ellery Roberts Biddle, Nevin Thompson, Laura Vidal and Sarah Myers West contributed to this report.