Pakistan(National Times)- WASHINGTON: Meta has banned a prominent Muslim news page on Instagram in India at the government\u2019s request, the account\u2019s founder said Wednesday, denouncing the move as \u201ccensorship\u201d as hostilities escalate between India and Pakistan. Instagram users in India trying to access posts from the handle @Muslim \u2013 a page with 6.7 million followers \u2013 were met with a message stating: \u201cAccount not available in India. This is because we complied with a legal request to restrict this content.\u201d There was no immediate reaction from the Indian government on the ban, which comes after access was blocked to the social media accounts of Pakistani actors and cricketers. \u201cI received hundreds of messages, emails and comments from our followers in India, that they cannot access our account,\u201d Ameer Al-Khatahtbeh, the news account\u2019s founder and editor-in-chief, said in a statement. \u201cMeta has blocked the @Muslim account by legal request of the Indian government. This is censorship.\u201d Meta declined to comment. A spokesman for the tech giant directed AFP to a company webpage outlining its policy for restricting content when governments believe material on its platforms goes \u201cagainst local law.\u201d The development, first reported by the US tech journalist Taylor Lorenz\u2019s outlet User Magazine, comes in the wake of the worst violence between nuclear-armed India and Pakistan in two decades. Both countries have exchanged heavy artillery fire along their contested frontier, after New Delhi launched deadly missile strikes on its arch-rival. At least 43 deaths were reported in the fighting, which came two weeks after New Delhi blamed Islamabad for backing a deadly attack on tourists in the Indian-run side of the disputed Muslim-majority region of Kashmir. Pakistan rejects the charge and has warned it will \u201cavenge\u201d those killed by Indian air strikes. The @Muslim account is among the most followed Muslim news sources on Instagram. Khatahtbeh apologised to followers in India, adding: \u201cWhen platforms and countries try to silence media, it tells us that we are doing our job in holding those in power accountable.\u201d \u201cWe will continue to document the truth and stand out firmly for justice,\u201d he added, while calling on Meta to reinstate the account in India. India has also banned more than a dozen Pakistani YouTube channels for allegedly spreading \u201cprovocative\u201d content, including Pakistani news outlets. In recent days, access to the Instagram account of Pakistan\u2019s former prime minister and cricket captain Imran Khan has also been blocked in India. Pakistani Bollywood movie regulars Fawad Khan and Atif Aslam were also off limits in India, as well as a wide range of cricketers \u2013 including star batters Babar Azam and Mohammad Rizwan and retired players Shahid Afridi and Wasim Akram. Rising hostilities between the South Asian neighbours have also unleashed an avalanche of online misinformation, with social media users circulating everything from deepfake videos to outdated images from unrelated conflicts, falsely linking them to the Indian strikes. On Wednesday, US President Donald Trump called for India and Pakistan to immediately halt their fighting, and offered to help end the violence.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Pakistan(National Times)- WASHINGTON: Meta has banned a prominent Muslim news page on Instagram in India at the government\u2019s request, the account\u2019s founder said Wednesday, denouncing the move as \u201ccensorship\u201d as hostilities escalate between India and Pakistan. Instagram users in India trying to access posts from the handle @Muslim \u2013 a page with 6.7 million followers […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":103958,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-103957","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-international","entry"],"yoast_head":"\n