Amsterdam, January 19, 2023 (PPI-OT):Access to the internet, a basic human right according to the United Nations, doesn’t come easy to residents of Indian illegally occupied Jammu and Kashmir as the territory recorded 24 incidents of disruption of internet, the highest for a single region anywhere in the world, in 2022, a study says. This was reported by Surfshark, a virtual private network provider based in Netherlands, in its research.

Surfshark’s internet censorship yearly recap shows that 4.2 billion people were affected by internet censorship in 2022, while India and J and K [IIOJK] were among the hardest hit, Surfshark said based on its research. The company has tracked instances of partial and complete internet and social media shutdown in 196 countries and territories across the world. It said India witnessed up to 10 cases of internet shutdown and that were reported during the India-wide protests against the government’s new military recruitment scheme.

Surfshark said that residents of Kashmir have been facing unprecedented internet restrictions since 2019 after the revocation of Article 370, which gave special status to IIOJK. Earlier, internet freedom group, Access Now reported that IIOJK also witnessed the world’s longest internet shutdown from August 2019 to January 2020 when 2G internet was restored. It took 18 more months for the authorities to reinstate 4G services.

Globally, there were 112 cases across 36 countries. “More than half of the world’s population was affected by internet censorship last year…These can be devastating and extremely dangerous, especially during wartime, protests, or violent government repressions,” said the Surfshark report.

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