In the age of global connectivity, technology is often celebrated as a vehicle for progress, democratisation, and empowerment. But in Jammu and Kashmir, it has of late become a sophisticated weapon of control.
The digital governance in the region—cloaked in the language of security and modernisation—is, in practice, a systematic erosion of fundamental freedoms. Through mass surveillance, algorithmic censorship, Artificial Intelligence (AI) policing, and targeted digital restrictions, it is like living in a digital siege.
The transformation of technology into a tool of repression is not accidental—it is structural, strategic, and deeply political. While the world debates data privacy, ethical AI, and digital rights, Kashmiris face the hard edge of these conversations. Here, technology does not liberate; it incarcerates.
The right to privacy, enshrined in Article 17 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), lies in tatters. Warrantless surveillance, phone tapping, social media monitoring, and the deployment of AI-powered facial recognition systems are daily realities.
This surveillance architecture, built without transparency or accountability, is not merely about collecting data—it is about enforcing silence.
Digital Evidence Weaponised
The state’s obligations under the UN General Assembly’s resolution on the Right to Privacy in the Digital Age are openly violated. Every click, post, and call becomes a potential act of defiance, and the punishment for dissent often arrives in the form of digital evidence weaponised under draconian laws like the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA) and the Public Safety Act (PSA).
Journalists, activists, and political workers are arrested not for violence, but for tweets, Facebook updates, and WhatsApp forwards. The state’s digital dragnet captures the most fragile expressions of political life and criminalises them with ruthless efficiency.
Perhaps the most sinister symbol of this digital repression is the GPS tracker anklet—a device more commonly associated with hardened criminals—now placed on political detainees. This degrading surveillance measure violates not only the right to privacy (Article 17) but also freedom of movement (Article 12 of the ICCPR).
The case of Hafiz Sikander, a political candidate made to wear a GPS anklet during his campaign, is a chilling testament to how such technologies are used not for security, but for delegitimisation. While Indian politicians campaign freely across the country, Kashmiri political figures are electronically shackled.
Predictive policing and biometric profiling, sold to the public as crime-fighting tools, are disproportionately deployed in Kashmir against young men. These technologies, devoid of judicial oversight, deepen structural discrimination and enable arbitrary detentions—violating the ICCPR’s guarantees against unlawful imprisonment.
Digital Noose: Shutdowns, Censorship and Disinformation
Kashmir holds the dubious distinction of enduring the longest internet shutdown in the history of any democracy—213 days following the abrogation of Article 370 in August 2019.
This blackout severed access to education, healthcare, commerce, and communication for over eight million people. During the COVID-19 pandemic, slow internet speeds turned online schooling into a cruel joke, denying Kashmiri students their right to education (Article 26, UDHR).
The UN Human Rights Council and its Special Rapporteurs have repeatedly condemned such shutdowns as unlawful and disproportionate. Yet, telecom companies in Kashmir complied with state orders without resistance—highlighting the complicity of corporations in human rights violations.
The UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights call on these firms to resist government overreach. Their silence is a stain on global corporate ethics.
Social media, once a tool of liberation, has also been conscripted into the state’s machinery of control.
The authorities deploy cyber armies to flag, distort, and suppress pro-freedom content while pressuring platforms like Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram to suspend the accounts of journalists and activists. These take downs are not isolated—they are systemic, and they violate Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), which protects the right to receive and share information.
Digital Repression is Economic Punishment
In Kashmir, censorship is algorithmic. AI is not only tracking users but predicting, policing, and preemptively silencing them.
The digital crackdown has consequences beyond political life—it is choking the economy. The IT and e-commerce sectors, once seen as beacons of possibility, have been decimated by internet blackouts and throttled bandwidth. Many Kashmiri professionals, unable to work remotely or sustain businesses, have migrated in search of opportunity.
Digital repression is not just surveillance—it is economic punishment.
India is a signatory to the ICCPR, UDHR, and numerous UN resolutions on digital rights, but the gulf between commitment and conduct is staggering. Despite detailed reports from the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) in 2018 and 2019 outlining violations in Kashmir, there has been little international accountability.
The UN Special Rapporteur on the rights to freedom of assembly and association has condemned India's digital governance, but condemnations alone are no longer enough.
Telecom and social media giants must be held accountable under the Global Network Initiative (GNI) and the OECD Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises. So far, corporate complicity has thrived under the guise of ‘compliance’. But when compliance enables repression, it becomes collusion.
Digital Siege of Kashmir
The digital siege of Kashmir is not an anomaly—it is a warning. If left unchecked, it will become the template for digital authoritarianism in other parts of the world. Surveillance, predictive policing, algorithmic censorship, and economic throttling are not technologies—they are ideologies made visible.
The international community must act. There is a need for independent investigations, and holding officials and corporations complicit in digital repression accountable.
Civil society and human rights defenders must be given the resources and protections they need to monitor, report, and resist these violations.
Tech companies must be legally bound to uphold human rights—especially in conflict zones. Transparency in censorship requests, human rights impact assessments, and robust mechanisms for redress must become standard.
Kashmiris should not be the price paid for technological advancement. If the future is digital, then defending digital freedoms must be our most urgent political project.
Because when innovation becomes a tool for domination, silence is not neutrality—it is complicity.
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