The prominent Indian investigative journalist Rana Ayyub has publicly pleaded with Twitter to take action against the harassment and abuse – described as online violence – she experiences every single day. Incredibly, while the company rarely steps in against the trolls who threaten to rape and murder her, this week it took the extraordinary step of blocking access to one of her posts in India, apparently at the request of the Indian government.
In the past few days, the Indian authorities have arrested two other journalists and human rights defenders – Teesta Setalvad and Mohammad Zubair – on national security grounds for allegedly stoking religious enmity through their reporting and activism on sectarian violence, and it appears they have been issuing orders to censor other journalists on social media, including Ayyub.
