Staff Reporter Islamabad
The Parliamentary Committee on Kashmir on Tuesday questioned Twitter’s regional head George Salama, over its policies related to tweets on Kashmir by Pakistani and Kashmiri activists with committee chairman Shehryar Afridi calling out the social media platform for its “double standards.”
According to a statement released by the NA Secretariat, the panel “grilled” Salama over “silencing voices of thousands of Kashmiri and Pakistani activists projecting the plight of people of Indian Illegally Occupied Jammu and Kashmir (IIOJK)” on Twitter.
In a special hearing at the Parliament House in Islamabad, Afridi asked Salama about Twitter’s policy on human rights and freedom of speech and whether they also conformed to the United Nation’s charter on the freedom of speech and freedom of expression.
The regional head, who attended the meeting virtually, informed the parliamentary panel that Twitter “discourages hate speech and upholds freedom of expression”, assuring it that “voices of minorities would never be silenced.”
When questioned about the violation of Twitter rules by Indian users mentioned in the recently released report by the EU DisinfoLab, Salama replied that “Twitter management always ensures freedom of speech on social media”.
“Kashmiri activists are free to raise their voice with legitimate accounts,” he added. Afridi, however, said that the social media platform had “double standards” because it did not take action against “Indian agents posting tweets aimed at inciting hate and violence in Pakistan”.
He said that people in occupied Kashmir were “being silenced under influence of Indian employees of Twitter”.
