A day after late singer Sidhu Moosewala’s song ‘SYL’ was banned from YouTube after a legal complaint from the government, Twitter withheld two accounts that had been active on behalf of farmers during the anti-agricultural laws protests last year.
The account @Kisanektamorcha, the official handle of the Sanyukt Kisan Morcha (SKM), was withheld on the morning of Monday, June 27. The other account, @tractor2twitr, was withheld on Sunday night.
And now another account has been reportedly withheld from Twitter. It is none other than Khalsa Aid’s founder, Ravi Singh Khalsa. Yes, you read that right. After the accounts of Samyukt Kisan Morcha and Kisan Ekta Morcha, now the account of Ravi Singh has come to the fore. The information has been shared by Ravi himself, he took to his other Twitter and wrote, 'My Twitter account has been banned in India!
This is the real face of democracy under the BJP!! Banning Sikh social media accounts won’t stop us raising our voices! We will only get louder !’
Take a look:
On the same development, the farmer leader Harmeet Singh Kadian had written: “Freedom of speech is a human right and the foundation upon which democracy is built. Any restriction of freedom of speech is a restriction upon democracy. To withheld ‘Kisan Ekta Morcha’ and ‘Tractor 2 Twitter’ is direct attack on freedom to speech of farmers.”
People have been fuming over the government's withholding of the accounts of Sikh supporters. They took out their anger through Twitter posts. See the reaction:
Before it was removed from the Indian version of the video-sharing website YouTube following a complaint from the Centre, Moosewala's SYL had received 28 million views and 3.3 million likes on his YouTube page in only two days. The Sutlej-Yamuna Link Canal building dispute, which has been politically contentious for four decades, is the subject of the first song to be released following the death of Moose Wala (SYL).
The lyrics depict years of militancy in the state that caused social unrest and widespread anxiety, warning that Punjab will not share its river waters if injustices meted out to it are not stopped. At 6 p.m. on Thursday, the song that had been leaked on social media the day before was finally uploaded.