YouTube has blocked access to a 45-minute report that appeared in Canada’s Government-funded broadcaster CBC on Friday.
And focused on the killing of pro-Khalistan figure Hardeep Singh Nijjar in Surrey, British Columbia, on June 18 last year. The report was aired on the programme, The Fifth Estate, and also included a lengthy interview with the separatist group Sikhs for Justice or SFJ’s general counsel Gurpatwant Singh Pannun.
CBC reported on Wednesday that it had been informed by YouTube that it had received an order from India’s Ministry of Electronics and Information technology “to block access to the video of the story from its website” and the content was subsequently “blocked from view” in India. However, it remains accessible elsewhere in the world.
CBC also reported that the Indian Government had asked X, formerly Twitter, to also block access to the content on the social media platform. “Indian law obligates X to withhold access to this content in India; however, the content remains available elsewhere,” X informed CBC, adding,
“We disagree with this action and maintain that freedom of expression should extend to these posts. Following the Indian legal process, we are in current communication with the Indian authorities.”
In the programme, CBC had stated it had contacted India’s High Commission in Ottawa to participate but had not received a response. While India’s High Commissioner to Ottawa Sanjay Kumar Verma has appeared on multiple Canadian networks and been interviewed by several outlets, CBC was not among them.
A spokesperson for CBC said that “as is the case with all stories on The Fifth Estate, ‘Contract To Kill’ was thoroughly researched, vetted by senior editorial leaders and meets our journalistic standards.”
Some members of the Indo-Canadian community were also critical of the programme. Among them was Maninder Singh Gill, MD of the Surrey-based Radio India. In a letter to CBC president Catherine Tait on March 10, he described it as “biased” and “propaganda.”
“Terming the Khalistan movement as a legacy of the 1947 Partition of the subcontinent has exposed the CBC’s superficial understanding of the Indian subcontinent’s history,” he added in the letter.