Be it Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti’s office or former Chief Minister Omar Abdullah, the ruling party or the opposition parties, police officials or militants, students or protesters, everyone is defying the government’s ban on social media in Kashmir.
The ban, which came into effect last month, has been defined daily with the aid of the virtual private network (VPN) technology that allows users to access banned social media sites and instant messaging application by setting up proxy Internet connections.
The attempts to block the use of VPNs have failed even as the government had sought the assistance of high-level technical teams.
The state government had ordered the month long ban on 22 social media sites and instant messaging application on April 26. The ban had come at a time when the state government was grappling with recurring bouts of protests, which have continued despite the ban.
The use of easy-to-install VPN applications, however, rendered the ban ineffective as all sides, including the government machinery, protesting students and even the militants, had access to the social media sites even though telecom companies had blocked access to them.
CM Mehbooba Mufti’s official page on the banned social media site Facebook and those of the ministers in her Cabinet have remained active throughout the ban period.
The ban has also been defied by government ministers, who share the details of their tours on Facebook and Twitter — both of which are banned — and upload videos on YouTube, a facility which is also banned.
The police acknowledged that the ban had proven “ineffective”. “We will review it in the coming days,” a senior police officer said. The use of VPNs is now widespread across of the Kashmir valley.
In remote villages of south Kashmir, where security agencies are facing a tough challenge from a tech-savvy generation of militants and protesters, young men take pride in showcasing the number of VPNs which they have downloaded on their phones.
“We use VPNs to access the social media because it is important to know what is happening around,” a 19-year-old science student said in Trenz village of Shopian.
The ban has also been circumvented by militants, whose pictures and videos continue to emerge on social media sites.
A senior government official said that it was irrelevant whether the ban on the social media continued or got revoked. “On the ground, there is already no ban.”
Social media ban defied by all, even the government
