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
Now in a shocking case of censorship, the third video, which talked about how crimes of Islamic terrorists are whitewashed by the media, has been entirely removed from the video sharing site, saying that it violates YouTube’s policy on violent or graphic content.
Though removed by YouTube, the video is currently available on the Facebook page of Rivaldo.
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 third video had focused on how media and sundry activists try to whitewash the crimes of terrorists in Jammu and Kashmir. 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.
It is important to note that due to the use few clips of violence and terror activities, disclaimers were added at the beginning of the videos advising viewer discretion as they may contain disturbing images. The videos were uploaded almost two weeks ago, but they seemed to have been targeted in the last few days as one video was restricted and another was deleted in last 3 days. The videos had also gained lots of views in the last few days, which have gained over 1 lakh views in the last 2 days.
The attack on the videos coincides with the aggressive comments made by Jammu and Kashmir politicians Farooq Abdullah and Mehbooba Mufti, both of whom have threatened that India will burn and Kashmir will secede if Articles 370 and 35A of Indian Constitution are repealed, as mentioned in the election manifesto of the BJP.
YouTube, like other Social Media giants like Facebook and Twitter, are known to have pro-Islamist bias, and such incidents add to the growing list of incidents where voices critical of Islamist ideology are tried to be muzzled by global internet companies.
OpIndia team is trying to bring the video back using the mechanisms available for the same.
Meanwhile you can watch the video on Facebook page of Rivaldo by clicking here.
Update: YouTube has restored OpIndia video that exposed how media whitewashes terrorists, but now places age restriction on viewership. You can read the details here.
