A day after May 17 movement founder Thirumurugan Gandhi's Twitter account was suspended, allegedly without any explanation, the microblogging site restored his access on Wednesday. The human rights activist, who has faced restrictions and suspensions on his Facebook account in the past, had appealed to Twitter against the move.
His last tweet, he recollects to TNM, was on Monday condemning the Tamil Nadu government and police for booking three people from the Tamil Desiya Makkal Katchi under the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA) for raising "anti-government" slogans at the funeral of 'Maoist' Manivasakam in Salem district. Several Tamil political leaders and activists had tweeted against the state's action.
"I'm not sure whether it was for this particular post that my account was suspended. I had appealed to Twitter to end the suspension," says Thirumurugan Gandhi. "This is not the first time that my social media accounts have been used to stop me from sharing messages. Since the Sterlite shooting my Facebook account has been blocked thrice, the latest being November 26, 2020," he says.
And not just Thirumurugan, other activists too allege that Twitter and Facebook are denying them access to free speech, while claiming 'community standards' have been violated.
G Sundarrajan of Poovulagin Nanbargal alleges that Facebook has blocked his options to do lives for the next 30 days.
"I have been doing lives about the Neutrino project and the Adani Pulicat lake project but now suddenly they have said I am violating community standards," he tells TNM. "As far as Thirumurugan Gandhi is concerned, we took efforts to contact Twitter and got the suspension reversed," he adds.
TNM has reached out to Twitter for an explanation on why the activist's account was suspended and this report will be updated when they respond.
The suspension of his account has come at a time when Twitter has taken a hard stance against the Indian government's order to restrict accounts of journalists and activists it has flagged. The Union government had threatened to jail the company's executives if they failed to comply.
Twitter said that it has taken action against 500 accounts based on instruction from the Information Technology Ministry and reduced visibility of certain hashtags. The site however maintained that it will not block accounts of media entities, activists and journalists as it was in violation of the fundamental right to speech and expression.