Renowned Kuwaiti lawyer and rights activist Mujbil Al Shureka’s Twitter account was “withheld” late on Sunday “in response to a legal demand” by the government of India.
On Mujbil Al Shureka’s account, a message reads, “@MJALSHRIKA’s account has been withheld in India in response to a legal demand.”
In turn, Mujbil Al Shureka (@MJALSHRIKA), from the Kuwait Institute of Law and Legal Studies, in a tweet wrote, “Dear @Twitter Is supporting the oppressed Muslims of India a crime? Is highlighting the human rights violation of a repressive Hindutva regime a sin? If not then why has my account been blocked for Indian viewers ? @TwitterIndia @hrw @amnesty @ndtv @nytimes @AlJazeera @RT_com.”
Al Shureka is from Kuwait. In his bio on Twitter, says that he is the “Director of the Centre for Human Rights and International Humanitarian Law, member of the training body at the Kuwait Institute for Lawyers and Legal Studies”.
The lawyer, who has 232,010 followers on Twitter, had been frequently coming out in support of the issues of India’s beleaguered Muslims.
He has been requesting Indian Muslims to appoint him as their lawyer so he could take the issue of Babri Masjid to the International Criminal Court (ICC) at Hague, Netherlands.
Earlier, the Kuwait-based Muslim activist had extended his support towards the jailed Muslim activists Sharjeel Imam, Umar Khalid and Siddique Kappan.
He had claimed, “The radicalisation of Hindus by the RSS/BJP regime has seeped into the veins India’s institutions. That’s why innocent Muslim activists like #UmarKhalid #SharjilImam & journalists like #SiddiqueKappan are languishing in jails criminally framed by Hindutva officials.”
Al Shureka had also batted on behalf of journalist Rana Ayub, who has frequetly been targetted for her rebellion against the oppression of minorities in India.
Earlier on Sunday, June 26, Journalist Rana Ayyub posted a notice from Twitter which informed her that the microblogging site will withheld her account in India under Information Technology Act, 2000.
However, later her account waas restored.
Ayyub took to her Twitter account to post the notice and said, “Hello Twitter, what exactly is this?”
The notice from Twitter that Ayyub shared read, “In order to comply with Twitter’s obligations under India’s local laws, we have withheld the following account in India under the country’s Information Technology Act, 2000: the content remains available elsewhere.”
“As Twitter strongly believes in defending and respecting the voice of the people who use our service, it is our policy to notify account holders if we receive a legal request from an authorized entity (such law enforcement or government agency) to remove content from their account. We provide notice whether or not the user lives in the country where the request originated,” it read.
In effect, the accounts have been geo-restricted, so while they can still be accessed from IP addresses outside the country, they will still be unavailable or blocked in India.
