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Plea to Manmohan Singh to lift blog ban

Special Correspondent

Chennai, July 21: In a gesture of solidarity with bloggers in India, the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has appealed to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to lift the “ban” on websites and blogs ordered a week ago.

Expressing concern at the directive to block certain websites “with no official explanation and without judicial or independent review,” the CPJ said the proscription had disrupted the flow of news, information and commentary in a medium of growing importance to the country.

By an order of July 13, the Department of Telecom ordered Internet Service Providers to block 17 websites and report compliance. It cited no Act or rules that it had relied upon to issue the directive. Most ISPs acted in the following days to block access to not merely the identified sites and blogs, but the domains of the hosting sites, such as blogspot, typepad and geocities. The Government’s action made international headlines and created a furore among the growing online community in the country.

The CPJ letter to the Prime Minister signed by Joel Simon, executive director, said, “as a non-governmental organization dedicated to defending press freedom around the world, CPJ joins our colleagues in India who have demanded greater transparency in State efforts to intervene in Internet content and access. Especially in a country like India, with a strong history of press freedom, any effort to limit or control the Internet should be subject to judicial or independent review and narrowly tailored to address urgent national security concerns.”

Further, the Indian government should “clarify publicly all efforts to block web sites and filter Internet content,” the letter said.

Code for bloggers?

The wholesale blocking of blogs turned the attention of web users to the question of a code to be adopted by bloggers.

Forrester Research (India) circulated a code format by which bloggers would affirm that they would “tell the truth, write deliberately and accurately, never delete a post, and disagree with other opinions respectfully,” reports PTI.

Individual bloggers were also coming up with their own suggested code for their peers.

PTI quoted Forrester Research India country head Sudin Apte as saying, “While we fully appreciate concerns for security and the fact that the current IT Act allows banning of sites that can be called a threat to security, in this case, we believe the authorities went overboard.”

Meanwhile, some of the blocked sites (which can be accessed round the world) carried posts today expressing happiness at being noticed by Indian authorities. A few used the official directive to buttress their ultra-rightist political arguments.

These sites experienced a surge in traffic after they were mentioned in several news reports in international newspapers such as the Wall Street Journal. “It thrills me to death that my little online journal has been noticed by the wonderfully tolerant Government of India,” said one blog carrying political propaganda.