Gilgit: Furore in Gilgit Balistan as Twitter blocked Pakistan’s official Twitter account in the region and has shown parts of Pakistan controlled Kashmir in Gilgit Balistan as Jammu and Kashmir which is controlled by India.
While using Twitter, local users in the Gilgit Balistan region said when they turned the location feature on the app, tweets sent from the region were marked from J-K.
Several Twitter users in Gilgit-Baltistan complained that they were unable to access the government’s official account from the region, Dawn reported.
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“When users tried to access the account, a message was displayed stating the “account has been withheld in India in response to a legal demand”.
As per Dawn’s report, the Pakistani officials have denied any such changes and termed the claim ‘baseless’ despite dozens of reports to the contrary.
“There are no restrictions on the freedom of the internet, media and expression in the entire Gilgit Baltistan,” officials said.
It is pertinent to mention that the Pakistan government’s official account including several other channels have been banned in India since March 2023. In 2022, the account was withheld twice over “legal complaints”.
Many GB users expressed disappointment over the twitter error saying that Pakistan should take serious cognisance of this matter as India “might have influenced Twitter to change GB’s geotagging”.
Some said it has “disrespected the status of Gilgit-Baltistan” and called it an attack on the region’s identity.
Meanwhile, PTA said that the matter was thoroughly investigated and no such problem has been found.
“After detailed on-ground testing, it appears that any sporadic issues encountered are limited to very few iOS devices, affecting a small number of users. These incidents are not significant and do not reflect a widespread problem,” it said.
Kashmir is divided by three nuclear neighbours; India, Pakistan and China. India controls approximately 55% of the land area of the region that includes Jammu, the Kashmir Valley, most of Ladakh, the Siachen Glacier and 70% of its population; Pakistan controls approximately 30% of the land area that includes Azad Kashmir and Gilgit-Baltistan; and China controls the remaining 15% of the land area that includes the Aksai Chin region, the mostly uninhabited Trans-Karakoram Tract, and part of the Demchok sector.
