On 14th June, 2019, CommandEleven received a “Receipt of Communication” from the twitter legal department in regards to seven (7) tweets that have been made from our twitter handle (@commandeleven). The communication stated that CommandEleven had violated Indian law with the content of those 7 tweets.

Before getting into answering the apparent content, reasons, that CommandEleven was sent a “Receipt of Communication,” we would like to clarify a few things.

CommandEleven is a national security think tank with special focus on terrorism, insurgencies and radicalization that affect Pakistan. As part of our official work, we share our measured, factually supported opinions on Pakistan, Afghanistan, India, Kashmir and other countries, friendly or not. We discuss sponsored insurgencies being operated from neighboring countries. We highlight armed insurgencies who are being given safe haven in neighboring countries. Being that we are a commercial entity, we have the right to present our opinions to the world community via our corporate website (https://www.commandeleven.com), our twitter handle, our Facebook page or any other method/platform that we believe will best amplify our point of view.

These are the opinions of a commercial organization, not an individual.

CommandEleven is a Private Limited company, registered under the Companies Act of Pakistan. Everything from our platform is controlled in terms of facts, statistics and images. We don’t tweet fake news or propaganda. If, in the past, we have mistakenly tweeted something incorrect, we have posted a retraction and deleted the tweet. More importantly, we counter the propaganda that may be coming from other handles, many of them based in India and Afghanistan, against Pakistan.

That point may be the reasons that we are being accused of violating Indian law, and not twitter’s Community Standards.

CommandEleven is not the first Pakistani twitter handle to be targeted for their opinions on Kashmir, India, Afghanistan and other neighboring countries or current affairs that affect Pakistan. Pakistan Defense, one of Pakistan’s largest and most successful twitter handles, was suspended because of a photoshopped photo, which could have been deleted. Instead, Pakistan Defense was deleted from twitter permanently. @Intelligentsia was another twitter handle that was removed from twitter for countering India propaganda effectively. @PakistanIntell also received a similar “Receipt of Communication” from Twitter legal yesterday for the same “violation of Indian laws.”

When we created the @commandeleven twitter handle, we did that on twitter.com, not twitter.in. That is important to note.

For Indian laws to apply to CommandEleven, we would need to have a physical presence in India, which we do not. We would need to be a company registered in India, under Indian laws, which we are not. The owners would need to be Indian citizens, which none are.

We are based in Islamabad, duly registered in Pakistan and wholly owned by Pakistanis.

How does Indian law apply to us? And under what Indian laws are you requesting that tweets be taken down?

We would appreciate if judges in India could be asked how Indian law can be applied to a Pakistani company that has nothing to do with India, being that any future cases would be filed there, it would be interesting to know their legal opinion on the validity of your claim.

Be sure to let them know it is because we countered fabricated statements with factual information.

As Pakistanis, we do understand that Indians are very thin skinned when countered with the facts on ground and resort to doling out vile and obscene abuses, rather than countering with facts, not one of the tweets listed above falls under a violation of twitter’s Terms of Service. Which can be seen in the thread referenced below.

.@rwac48, we are honored by your acceptance of @commandeleven’s ability to defeat India’s propagandists. pic.twitter.com/pN5fsd9glK

— CommandEleven® 🇵🇰 (@commandeleven) June 14, 2019

We will concede that IF we tweeted vile comments, used foul language, posted fake news or propaganda, insulted someone’s integrity, identity or deity, we would understand the “Receipt of Communication” from twitter.com.

We have not done any of the above.

The requirement from our side is that we uphold the standards defined in the Community Behavior of twitter’s Terms of Service (ToS).

• We have not used any offensive language.
• We have not threatened or incited violence against anyone.
• We have not insulted anyone deity of choice, no matter how many they may choose to worship at one time.
• We have not posted fake news, propaganda or factually questionable information.
• We have not posted any photoshopped image to demean or disgrace anyone.

As far as Indian law is concerned, please do forward our reply to those who raised these concerns with you. Do let them know that if they truly believe that we have violated Indian law, please do the honorable thing and hire an attorney to file a lawsuit against us.

The fact that they approached twitter to do their dirty work proves that it was not Indian law that was violated, rather the feelings of a nation that continues to violate all known rules of humanity and expects a pat of the back while doing so.

If they are unable to tolerate our opinions, twitter has given them the mute and block options.

We would, however, appreciate the opportunity to discuss the one-sided policy from twitter, highlighted by our being notified. Since we are not the first Pakistani twitter handle to be targeted by Twitter India, and we are sure that we aren’t the last, we would appreciate a public answer to why there is a biased content management policy for Pakistan for twitter.com.

Twitter allows for a great deal of negative, false (fake) information/propaganda to be tweeted against Pakistan and Pakistanis. These tweets come from accounts in Afghanistan and India, which have been highlighted by CommandEleven, and other Pakistani organizations, in the past. While we understand that twitter has claimed to act against hate speech and fake news on twitter, we still see the same accounts doing the same things, without any action from twitter.com against them.

Why doesn’t the twitter India team take hate speech and threats of violence from those accounts as seriously as it takes factual reports that expose India’s designs against Pakistan’s sovereignty?

We are also sure that there are hundreds of troll bots operated by our neighboring countries that are used to inflame and attack Pakistani opinion makers. There is no action from twitter.com to restrict these from operating on your platform.

We also question giving the power to control what is within community standards in Pakistan to India. If you are not aware, India and Pakistan have a long history of diplomatic, military and governmental conflict.

Giving India the power to determine what is and is not acceptable content is equivalent to the censorship of the McCarthy era in the United States. I think we are all familiar with the history of McCarthyism in the United States.

In closing, CommandEleven is proudly Pakistani. We fight for the best interests of Pakistan, not individuals or political parties. We provide professional analysis and opinion, based on field experience, research and on-ground facts. We do not spread fake news or propaganda.

We will not have our opinions limited or dictated based on the political leanings of a hostile country to Pakistan.