On June 26, a tweet by Washington Post columnist Rana Ayyub was withheld by Twitter in response to legal demand by the Government of India. In the tweet posted last year, Ayyub had cast aspersions on the judiciary in connection to the disputed structures called mosques. After she published a tweet about the action taken by Twitter, several ‘journalists’, ‘activists’ and ‘prominent personalities’ came out in her support. Out of those, people linked to Soros and Open Society stood out from the crowd.
Former President of Open Society Patrick Gaspard wrote, “We need a response immediately from Twitter as they appear to be censoring journalist Rana Ayyub on behalf of the Govt of India. Outrageous.”
George Soros is the founder and Chairperson of Open Society Foundations. Billionaire Soros is known for his anti-India propaganda and has launched a war of misinformation against Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
Replying to Gaspard, International Center for Journalists (ICFJ) Global Director of Research Dr Julie Posetti said, “This is outrageous Twitter. Nick Pickles – please act!” Nick leads Twitter policy Strategy, Development and Partnerships team. ICFJ has worked extensively with Open Society Foundations and collaborated with other organisations to work on OSF projects. For example, they teamed up with Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) and worked on Investigative Dashboard (ID) project that was sponsored by the Open Society Foundation.
In another post, Posetti said, “Outrageous censorship of investigative journalist Rana Ayyub in India. She struggles to get @TwitterSafety to act against perpetrators of the serious online violence she experiences, but Twitter India appears to have silenced her account at the behest of the Indian authorities.”
Secretary-General, Amnesty International Agnes Callamard said, “Seriously @Twitter? Rana Ayyub has spoken truth to power, denouncing hatred, discrimination, and religious violence – and for these, you are silencing her? Shame.” Amnesty International is heavily funded by George Soros. In 2018, it was reported that hundreds of thousands of dollars were donated to Amnesty by George Soros’s foundation. Additionally, in 2017, Amnesty was ordered to return donations received from Soros.
President of the Committee to Protect Journalists, Jodie Ginsberg, said, “So Twitter is censoring journalist Rana Ayyub’s account in India at the behest of the authorities whom her work seeks to hold to account…Meanwhile, the relentless #onlineviolence she faces largely goes unpunished.”
CPJ is funded by OSF. The website of OSF reads, “Our Program on Independent Journalism supports both global freedom of expression organisations, such as the Committee to Protect Journalists, Reporters Without Borders, and IFEX, as well as several regional and national press freedom organisations.”
Who is George Soros?
George Soros is a Hungarian-American businessman and a self-proclaimed philanthropist who had vowed to ‘fight nationalists’ and conservative governments worldwide, which he often refers to as ‘authoritarian governments’. During the course of his life, if there is one thing George Soros has hated the most, it is India and its nationalist government led by Prime Minister Modi.
In his much-publicized WEF speech delivered at WEF, Soros made his views known to the world when he singled out rising nationalism as the greatest enemy of the open society. He had deliberately singled out India and blamed PM Modi’s Government for trying to create a Hindu state.
Terming India as the “biggest and most frightening setback occurred”, Soros had made plans known to everyone in no uncertain terms. Soros has been instrumental in propagating the anti-Indian government narrative in the international press by using his influence and trying to create anarchy on the streets of India.
In the name of freedom of expression and the western style of liberalism, a coalition of forces represented by billionaire investors like Soros, Omadiyar and Berggruen are leveraging India’s democracy and its institutions to leverage its fault lines for fueling the discontent against the popular Government. Through his Open Society Foundation, which started its operations in India first in 1999 by offering scholarships and fellowships to pursue studies and research at Indian institutions and his ecosystem, Soros has been largely successful in creating misinformation warfare on a massive scale by putting out negative and false narratives against the democratically-elected government with the help of left-liberal media outlets.
It is therefore interesting that those who work for George Soros or are funded by him have come out in support of Rana Ayyub for merely a tweet, that could cause communal unrest, being withheld.
