KARACHI: Military spokesman Maj Gen Asif Ghafoor through his personal Twitter account on Sunday said that Pakistani authorities had taken up with Twitter and Facebook the suspension of Pakistani social media accounts posting in support of Kashmir.

“Pakistan authorities have taken up the case with Twitter and Facebook against suspending Pakistani accounts for posting in support of Kashmir. Indian staff at their regional headquarters is the reason,” said Maj Gen Ghafoor, the Director General of Inter-Services Public Relations.

He invited social media users to share information about accounts that have been suspended.

The statement comes as #StopSuspendingPakistanis was trending on Twitter in Pakistan. Over the last one week, multiple Pakistanis have taken to Twitter to report that accounts were being suspended after they posted stuff about Kashmir.

Social media users invited to share information about suspended accounts

Earlier this week, an Express Tribune correspondent’s Twitter account was suspended after he responded to a tweet from Indian Defence Minister Rajnath Singh.

According to ET, Indian government officials have admitted, on social media, to putting pressure on Twitter to suspend accounts tweeting in favour of Kashmir and against the Indian occupation regime.

“Twitter is showing a massive bias and it needs to be protested,” Human Rights Minister Shireen Mazari commented on the account’s suspension. “@Twitter is shamefully behaving like a surrogate of the fascist Rogue Modi Govt esp as it allows Indian Ministers to tweet threats to Pak but closes accounts of Pakistanis responding,” she wrote.

“The biased behavior of @Twitter over Kashmir is ridiculous. The response by regional rep is not encouraging so in the lead of Chairman NITB @ShabahatAShah, issue will now b raised with Twitter US. Please mention accs handles tht r suspended in last 7 days for tweeting on Kashmir,” PM’s focal person on digital media Arslan Khalid tweeted.

Published in Dawn, August 19th, 2019