Social media ban in Kashmir lifted

JAMMU: A month-long ban on 22 social media sites and applications in Kashmir was lifted by the Jammu and Kashmir Home department today.
Access to the banned social media sites was restored around 8.30 pm, an official said.
Jammu and Kashmir Home Department had on April 26 banned 22 social media sites and applications, including facebook, whatsapp and twitter, in an attempt to curb the street protests in the Valley. However, the ban had little meaning as users accessed the banned sites through virtual private networks.
Earlier, the Jammu and Kashmir government imposed a ban on 22 social media networks on 26 April in the wake of heightened protests by students in the valley and live streaming of videos.
“Any message or class of messages to or from any persons or class of persons relating to any subject or any pictorial content through the following social networking sites shall not be transmitted in the Kashmir valley, with immediate effect, for a period of one month or till further orders, whichever is earlier,” the earlier order stated.
The banned social media platforms include Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, WhatsApp, Vine, Buzznet, Xanga, and FlickrQQ, WeChat, Ozone, Tumblr, Google , Baidu, Skype, Viber, Line, Snapchat, Pinterest, Telegram, Reddit and Snapfish.
Terming the ban on social media networks in Jammu and Kashmir as "collective punishment", two United Nations human rights experts on May 11 demanded that it be immediately lifted.
In a press release on the official website of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, David Kaye and Michel Forst asserted that "the scope of these restrictions has a significantly disproportionate impact on the fundamental rights of everyone in Kashmir, undermining the government's stated aim of preventing dissemination of information that could lead to violence."
However, netizens continue to defy the ban by using Virtual Private Networks (VPN) technology that allows users to access banned social media sites and instant messaging application by setting up proxy Internet connections.