The Indian government has restricted access to blogs and websites which it claims are promoting religious hatred
Blogs 'pitting Muslim against non-Muslim', claims communications minister
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India steps up blogger blocker

ISPs told to restrict access to 'banned' blogging sites

Will Head, vnunet.com 20 Jul 2006
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The Indian government has restricted access to blogs and websites which it claims are promoting religious hatred.

The authorities contacted ISPs to block the sites after terrorist attacks on trains in Mumbai killed 180 people.

Gulshan Rai, director of the Ministry of Communication's Indian Computer Emergency Response Team, denied that the ban was a direct response to the attacks. "These blogs are pitting Muslim against non-Muslim," he told Reuters

A total of 17 sites are included in the ban, although some ISPs have simply blocked access to whole domains such as Google's blogspot.com which hosts thousands of sites. 

The list of banned domains includes sites such as hinduunity.org, exposingtheleft.blogspot.com and commonfolkcommonsense.blogspot.com, according to a scan of the letter sent to ISPs posted on photo sharing site Flickr.

The letter lists all 17 sites and tells the ISPs: "You are accordingly directed to block the above mentioned websites immediately and report compliance."

Instructions on how to circumvent the ban have been written up on the Censorship Wikia website. 

Search firms, such as Google and Yahoo, have been criticised for giving in to censorship in China.

See also:

A journalist in China has been sentenced to two years in jail for writing essays that the government claimed sought to overthrow the socialist systemOnline essays 'incited subversion', according to authorities  14 Jul 2006
New software could beat censorship  08 May 2006
Provider blocking all messages that refer to anti-AOL campaign  14 Apr 2006
BloggingHuman rights organisations slightly mollified  01 Feb 2006

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