Two weeks back, OpIndia had published a series of three videos by Comedian Rivaldo on the Kashmir issue. In the series, Rivaldo had explained how the discourse around the Kashmir issue is flawed mostly due to the excuses provided by the ‘liberals’.
The videos seem to have offended lots of people, as they are being attacked relentlessly by complaining about the same to YouTube. A few days ago, the video 1 of the series was made age-restricted by YouTube, saying it was done based on Community guidelines. The video can be watched only after confirming that the user is adult by signing into the site. Then, yesterday YouTube decided to take down the third video in the series where Rivaldo exposed the media and how they whitewash Islamic terrorists.
OpIndia had got in touch with YouTube and submitted a request for review of the third video that had been removed by YouTube in a shocking incident of censorship. YouTube has now restored the OpIndia video, however, it has been put behind an age restriction. Interestingly, YouTube has not provided any reason for deleting the video earlier or offered an apology for deleting the video.
Initially, when the OpIndia video was deleted, an email sent from YouTube says that the video was flagged by someone for review. After review, YouTube determined that it violates the guidelines of the site, and they removed it from YouTube.
The video focuses on how Media personalities like Barkha Dutt and other members of the intelligentsia whitewash Islamic terrorists regularly thereby giving them intellectual cover for the heinous acts of terror committed by them. The video contained commentary by Rivaldo, with only a few clips from publicly available videos of news media used. Such clips are routinely shown on TV News channels, many of whom also live stream their programs on YouTube. Therefore, it can be assumed with a reasonable amount of certainty that the videos were particularly targeted for the commentary in them, and the violent graphic content is just an excuse to censor them from the Internet.
The video that has now been restored by YouTube can be watched here:
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fTDGymh0Rjs]
