Ravi Singh suspended from Facebook as Indian censorship continues

Nobel Prize-nominated Sikh aid worker Ravi Singh was suspended from Facebook as the Indian government continues to apply pressure on social media platforms to censor Sikh activists.

The CEO for UK-based humanitarian charity Khalsa Aid announced his Facebook suspension on rival platform Twitter, causing many supporters to speak out in his defence. He has been assisting in India’s efforts to provide relief amidst the country’s emergency Covid crisis. India currently is responsible for nearly half (46 per cent) of the world’s new Covid cases.

Earlier this week, The Sikh Press Association connected Khalsa Aid with Good Morning Britain, where Singh appeared on national TV in the UK to millions of viewers to explain how the organisation is providing hundreds of hospital-grade oxygen concentrators to India.

Ravi Singh has been critical of the Indian government policies; he regularly speaks up over the lack of justice over the state-sponsored genocide of Sikhs in 1984 and more recently, over the treatment of farmers on protest in Delhi.

Singh’s Facebook suspension was eventually lifted, after the social media site received numerous complaints and much criticism from Sikhs around the world.

In November last year, Facebook mass-censored Sikh posts in remembrance of the 1984 #SikhGenocide. The censorship followed similar restrictions placed on Sikh activism on Facebook and Instagram in June 2020, when the platform blocked searches of the hashtag #Sikh at a time when the Sikh community was commemorating the Operation Blue Star attack, when the Indian government opened fire at the holiest shrine of the Sikhs, Sri Harmandir Sahib, murdering thousands of Sikh worshippers.

The censorship prompted 30 Sikh organisations to come together and pen an open letter to Facebook noting that the recent wave of censorship has come from the Indian state which has long opposed any form of revolutionary Sikh self-expression centred on Sikh sovereignty, adopting policies of genocide to violently annihilate any Sikh resistance

The Indian government has been heavily criticised for its role in the current pandemic. Now, rather than focusing its effort on resolving its disastrous Covid pandemic, the Modi regime has been using its resources to apply pressure to censor voices of Sikhs who are helping alleviate the situation but hold different political viewpoints to the nationalist right-wing Modi regime.

Journalist Amaan Bali has also been suspended from Twitter. The Kashmir-based Sikh activist has been reporting on the ongoing farmers’ protest on the scene in Delhi. However, in recent days as the pandemic escalated to record levels in India, Bali has been using his social media platforms to help emergency patients find hospital beds and oxygen supplies.

His efforts have resulted in his Twitter account being deactivated. Bali is another critic of the Indian government and recently spoke to Sikh PA in a live interview to explain his views and experiences reporting on the farmers’ protest.

Sikh PA will continue providing updates on the censorship of Sikh individuals and organisations on social media.