As the hastage #ChurchUnsafe4Women trended a couple of days back, micro-blogging site Twitter has reportedly suspended 37 handles that had criticized the Church.
It all started when netizens in Twitter raised the plight of women in Church as multiple reports of nuns being sexually exploited by pastors and the Church’s stoic silence has been making news for quite sometime.
Bishop of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Jalandhar Franco Mulakkal, was arrested for being accused in a rape case. In another instance, a nun was found dead inside a convent in Kerala.
Several priests of Loyola College, Chennai have been accused of sexual harassment. Mary Rajasekharan, who was administrator in the college was sexually harassed by Father Xavier Alphonse, the then Director of Loyola Alumni Association. Another professor belonging to the Tamil Department, Josephine Jeyasanthi, was harassed by the head of the department Dr. S. Anthony Rajarajan. The management instead of taking action on the accused only victimized the victims by terminating from their jobs and slapping false cases against them.
Despite such serious accusations, in films and television shows and web series, it is always the Hindu sages who are shown as the sexual predators portraying them in a bad light.
In light of this, the trend, #ChurchUnsafe4Women saw around 95,000 tweets coming from 2500 Twitter handles. Twitter unilaterally blocked some of those accounts that had trended the hashtag.
The Church has suffered reversals since the current government introduced new laws to regulate funds given by foreign entities. There are also cases of embezzlement and using foreign funds for their conversion activities.
Twitter users whose account has been suspended showed a list of the pending rape cases against the higher authorities of Church and by suspending the accounts, Twitter’s claim as a neutral social media platform is now being questioned.
Banned twitter handles are: @prashasksamiti, @hinduPS, @Jaysundvasia, @sangthit_hindu, @sashakt_hindu, @shudra_hindu, @IN_CharlieHebdo, @Saaho_Sher, @balvir26singh, @PanditPawandev, @raman_jaiswal1, @ramankumar108, @riyazz30, @_Priya_Jaiswal, @deepakmth77, @SanatanBest, @The_real_pravin, @Indresht10, @Mithlesh56274424, @aayog_purush, @Being_Rao14, @kuwar456441, @RupeshS01070866, @Raomangalsingh1, @tejsingh123456, @LalanRoy91, @LalanVB, @districtofgod, @indrapalbjp, @Injugalmeena, @perfect_kesari, @pk_waghmare, @Bhaveekpatel, @akshayspeaks1, @HumoursArts, @prashantpareek7, @Hindu_Ashok1, @Pushkar80092174, @auUVZ0ewafJOg15, @manishhindu_19