India Tops Worldwide Internet Shutdowns: Silencing Dissent, Suppressing Rights
Internet shutdowns are on the rise worldwide. Access Now recorded 1801 cases, with India alone accounting for half. This article shows how governments exploit shutdowns as a tool of political control.
ইন্টারনেট বন্ধ করে বিরোধী মত দমনের একটা বৈশ্বিক প্রবণতা বেড়েই চলেছে । বাংলাদেশের জুলাই বিপ্লবকালীন কর্তৃত্ববাদী হাসিনা সরকারের মত ইন্টারনেট বন্ধ করে গণহত্যা, গ্রেফতার ও নির্যাতন চালানোর অভিযোগ বিভিন্ন দেশের বিরুদ্ধে। ইন্টারনেট বন্ধ করে মানবাধিকার লঙ্ঘনকারী দেশের তালিকায় এখন শীর্ষে রয়েছে ভারত। ২০১৬ সাল থেকে বিশ্বে ১৮০১টি ইন্টারনেট বন্ধের ঘটনার ৮৬৩টিই ঘটেছে ভারতে।
Internet shutdowns have become a growing trend around the world to silence dissent. This practice undermines the fundamental rights of citizens under international law. Governments often justify these actions as necessary for “security” or to “control unrest.” In reality, shutdowns are frequently used to block protests, hide state violence, and shape public opinion. Bangladesh and India are two of the most prominent examples of this global problem.
During the July 2024 uprising in Bangladesh, the government blocked internet access for days. Protesters, journalists, and ordinary citizens were cut off from communication. This blackout allowed the regime to carry out mass arrests and violence with little outside scrutiny. India, meanwhile, has the world’s highest number of internet shutdowns—over 860 between 2016 and 2025. Most targeted regions like Jammu and Kashmir, often during times of political tension.
This article examines how governments use internet shutdowns as a political tool. Drawing on data from rights organizations, global case studies, and community experiences, it shows how these blackouts violate digital rights, silence citizens, and weaken democracy.
Internet Shutdowns - A Growing Global Concern
In the age of cyber citizenship, internet use is not a luxury, it is a right. It is the heart of democratic expression and civic life. However, in many countries, mainly in Asia and Africa, this right often gets suspended for political benefits. Governments shut down the internet just as a political tool to stop mass protests and civil disobedience, commonly at times of elections, uprisings, or other crises.
The Access Now, an Internet research organization, recorded 1801 cases of internet shutdowns worldwide since 2016 and said no less than 296 internet shutdowns occurred in 54 countries during 2024, which was 35% higher than the previous year. The most hit nations, India, Myanmar, Russia, and Pakistan, are not necessarily all autocracies or democracies. They all have one thing in common: mounting reliance on network disruptions to control political affairs. As the Internet Society (2023) warns, "shutdowns are extremely disruptive to economic activity. Moreover, they silence dissent at the moment it matters most."
The same report shows Bangladesh and India are among the top countries of internet shutdowns. With more than 863 shutdowns between 2016 and early 2025, India topped the list, while Jammu and Kashmir was the most targeted zone. During the July 2024 student-mass revolution in Bangladesh, the Hasina regime enforced a total communication blackout and carried out mass killing and indiscriminate arrests of protesters, journalists, and ordinary citizens.
Shutdowns as Political Choreography
Bangladesh witnessed state-enforced internet shutdown during the July Revolution by cutting internet access and limiting cellular connection. The state actors played a cat-mouse game regarding who was responsible and why the Internet was shut down. At one point, the then-sitting Minister of State for Information and Communication Technology Zunaid Ahmed Palak claimed that the internet was shut down due to a fire incident on data centers in Dhaka and the damage of the telecommunication infrastructure carried out by some miscreants.
The Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission (BTRC) denied any official shutdown. However, users nationwide were experiencing throttled speeds that effectively turned off live streams, photo uploads, and protest coordination attempts. There is a much-circulated joke about Bangladesh's Internet shutdown: "The government did not switch off the Internet—they strangled it quietly." However, Palak later confessed to the inquiry commission that he actually obeyed Sheikh Hasina’s order to shut down the Internet.
It became clear later that the country’s internet shutdowns were premeditated and coercive and applied as tools to restrict freedom of assembly, speech, and online freedom. In early July 2024, Bangladeshi students mobilized in large numbers, demanding quota system reforms in government recruitment like earlier protests for the same issue in 2018.
India holds the dubious record of being the world's leading enforcer of government-imposed internet shutdowns. Between 2016 and early 2025, the country witnessed over 863 internet shutdowns, more than any other democracy worldwide. The most widely witnessed instance is the Jammu and Kashmir shutdown following the abrogation of Article 370 by the Indian government on August 5, 2019. In what would be the most extended internet shutdown in a democracy, mobile and broadband services were shut down for 213 consecutive days, affecting more than 12 million inhabitants. The shutdown was preceded by curfews, military presence, and communication blockades, effectively severing Kashmir from the rest of the world.
In Myanmar, the junta implemented nationwide blackouts in 2021 to silence opposition after a coup. Early on the morning of February 1, 2021, while the rest of the world woke up to learn of the military coup in Myanmar, activists and reporters in Yangon were already in the dark—literally and digitally. According to Access Now (2023), these shutdowns were employed simultaneously with mass arrest, extrajudicial killings, and military intrusion, actually maintaining both local coordination and international visibility in line. A protester in Mandalay told journalists that when the internet went down, the soldiers came up.
In Pakistan, internet shutdowns have become a regular feature of the State's response to political dissent and public protest. One of the most high-profile recent shutdowns occurred in 2023, with the arrest of former Prime Minister Imran Khan. The arrest triggered nationwide protests, which were met not only by abusive police action but also by a direct mobile internet and social media shutdown for over four days. Access to Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and TikTok was also blocked, and mobile internet services were suspended in main cities like Islamabad, Lahore, and Karachi. This was not a one-time occurrence. Pakistan has a long history of digital censorship, often in periods of political tension, religious processions, or opposition mobilization. The digital blackout in Pakistan happened during the recent conflict with India as well.
Many African and South American countries also frequently shut down the Internet. For instance, Cuba shut down messaging services during the 2021 July protests, disrupting communication between protestors and the outside world. They are not technology breakdowns but "deliberate, targeted acts of political suppression".
Statistics and Internet Shutdown Scenario
The growing trend of Internet shutdowns shows that the number of countries and incidences of shutdowns have significantly risen. In 2016, there were 78 occurrences in 27 countries, reaching 296 in 2024, spread through 54 countries. This is an almost 264% rise in the incidence rate. The number of incidents was 111 in 2017, 202 in 2018, 221 in 2019, 168 in 2020, 194 in 2021, 201 in 2022, and 283 in 2023 respectively. Until April 2025, around 47 shutdowns continued from the previous year, with 35 of which had already been ongoing for over a year.
Global Media Narratives on Digital Silencing
In India, shutdowns are employed regularly in states like Kashmir and Manipur for vaguely defined reasons such as "public safety." The presence of colonial laws, such as the Telegraph Act of 1885, gives shutdowns a veil of legitimacy while allowing for blanket usage. A Politics and Rights Review article, 226 of India's shutdowns between 2012 and 2022 were linked to protests. The 2021 farmers' protest against new legislation saw their Internet shut down as they encircled Delhi, effectively cutting them off from organizing or fighting disinformation. Cuban protesters in the 2021 protests called the blackout a "digital curfew," one set to begin the very instant anti-government cries echoed onto the streets. According to one protester, they could feel the silence descending, as if their voices had been stolen from them.
Shutdowns are often in legal limbo. Courts sometimes intervene, such as the Indian Supreme Court ruling in Anuradha Bhasin v. Union of India (2020), declaring indefinite shutdowns unconstitutional. However, implementation is fleeting. The state cycles off disconnections or alters legal reasons. As Feldstein (2022) argues, "Governments invoke emergency logic without fulfilling the procedural or substantive burdens such a logic demands." According to Ryng et al. (2022), authoritarian actors increasingly transform legal codes to retroactively legitimate repression, giving shutdowns the illusion of legality. This aligns with Buzan et al.'s (1998) point that the "securitization" of information allows states to avoid democratic control by moving governance into the realm of exception. Despite such challenges, resistance is transforming. Civil society forces use mesh networks, VPNs, satellite internet, and various backup apps to resist shutdowns.
Internet Shutdown: Digital Rights and Just Securitization
The central points of digital rights are freedoms of expression, association, and information access. As life turns digital, being offline begins to equal being disenfranchised. On this conception, internet shutdowns are censorship—and more: denials of dignity and democratic expression. Second, Just Securitization Theory (JST), created by Thumfart (2024), analyzes the justice of state action framed as security needs. For a shutdown to be "just," it must be proportionate, necessary, specific, and directed against an immediate threat. Shutdowns are typically broad, long, and forward-looking, failing JST's moral test. Thumfart also indicates that shutdowns applied for preemptive censorship or to impede political protest are not warranted. That is precisely how shutdowns are applied, though, in cases like Iran's 2019 "Bloody November”, where a week-long shutdown masked mass killings, or the 61-hour blackout in Belarus during election protests in 2020. Bangladesh is a more recent bloody example of how the Sheikh Hasina regime carried out a mass killing during the July uprising in 2024, which killed around 1400 protesters.
Legal and Human Rights Perspectives of Internet Shutdown
Internet shutdowns are increasingly viewed as policy decisions and a significant breach of international human rights norms. Globally, the freedom of expression and right to seek, receive, and impart information are guaranteed under Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and Article 19 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR). However, these rights are continually violated when states impose internet shutdowns, particularly in the face of civil unrest and protest.
The United Nations Human Rights Council (2021) reiterated once more that the same rights that people have offline must also be protected online. Nevertheless, as highlighted by Thumfart (2024), from the perspective of Just Securitization Theory, governments increasingly use internet outages as exceptional measures, sidestepping the obligatory requirements of proportionality, specificity, and necessity. In effect, such an action creates a legal gray area, "state of exception," whereby fundamental rights are suspended in the guise of national security.
Banihashemi (2023) argues that when shutdowns are used to silence political opponents or hide regime brutality, then they constitute collective punishment and may even be viewed as crimes against humanity. This is particularly the case in countries like India, Bangladesh, Iran, and Myanmar, which have experienced shutdowns followed by massacres and mass arrests.
Legally, issues are both norm diffusion and enforcement. While some national-level courts—India's Supreme Court in Anuradha Bhasin v. Union of India, for example—have declared that indefinite shutdowns are unconstitutional, enforcement does not exist. The gap between soft law (UN resolutions, rights charters) and complex law (binding treaties and enforceable judgments) allows governments to escape accountability. Shutdowns will remain tools of repression with a veneer of legality as long as binding frameworks do not exist. The international community must move beyond rhetoric and into actual enforcement, including international litigation, economic sanctions, and the codification of digital rights into enforceable legal frameworks.
A Call to Rewire Power
Shutoffs are not temporary disconnections—they are sponsors of state power and performances of digital authoritarianism masquerading as neutral governance. The response to this shutdown has to be multimodal, incorporating litigation, infrastructure resilience, media coverage, and tech activism. The fight against internet shutdowns is more than just preserving access—it is about upholding the terms of democratic life itself.
About the Author:
Shah Jahan Shuvo is former Bangladesh based journalist. Currently, he serves as a Social Media Editor at The Insighta. He can be reached at jahanshuvo15@gmail.com.
Disclaimer: The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect The Insighta's editorial stance. However, any errors in the stated facts or figures may be corrected if supported by verifiable evidence. | A guest post by
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