National News

Twitter under fire for showing Jammu and Kashmir as part of China

October 19, 2020
Balaji Subramanian

In a clear violation of Indian laws, social media giant Twitter on Sunday (October 18) displayed the union territories of Jammu and Kashmir’ and Leh as a part of ‘The People’s Republic of China’.

National Security Analyst Nitin Gokhale was doing a reportage from the airport in Leh Ladakh with his colleague Rohit Pandita about a new road that has been built from Himachal Pradesh to Leh. In the Twitter live shared by the personalities, the location showed “Jammu and Kashmir, People’s Republic of China”.

However, after the live Twitter broadcast, Gokhale’s location was displaying as ‘Jammu and Kashmir, People’s Republic of China’.

To Gokhale’s horror, he found his location of the War Memorial, Hall of Fame – a famous landmark in Leh came as Jammu and Kashmir, the People’s Republic of China.

This mistake which is not the first made by Twitter was called by Gokhale as, “This shockingly unpardonable development comes after the 7th level of military commander talks between India and China at the Line of Actual Control (LAC) over ‘de-escalation and disengagement’, along with the return to status quo at the border.”

This grave oversight by Twitter was noticed by observed by eminent journalist  Research Foundation (ORF) chairman Kanchan Gupta and said this is not an ‘isolated incident’ where such mistakes have been made by Twitter.

Gupta sent out a tweet in which said, “So @Twitter has decided to reconfigure geography and declare Jammu & Kashmir as part of People’s Republic of China. If this is not a violation of India laws, what is? Citizens of India have been punished for far less. But US Big Tech is above the law?

This comes at a time when India is standing its ground in the Ladakh heights with a strong possibility of facing a two-front war with China and Pakistan and Twitter tries to openly undermine Indian and laws and territorial integrity.