India, which led the list for a fifth consecutive year, enforced by far the greatest number of internet shutdowns in the world in 2022, according to internet advocacy monitor Access Now.
According to a study released on Tuesday by the New York-based digital rights advocacy group Access Now, out of 187 internet shutdowns worldwide tracked by the organisation, 84 occurred in India, including 49 in Jammu and Kashmir.
"Authorities disrupted internet access at least 49 times in Kashmir due to political instability and violence, including a string of 16 back-to-back orders for three-day-long curfew-style shutdowns in January and February 2022," the watchdog report added.
Restricted communications in Jammu and Kashmir
The Jammu and Kashmir region was divided into two federally managed territories in August 2019 by the Bharatiya Janata Party administration of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
Since then, the government has frequently restricted communications in the area for security reasons, which rights organisations have denounced.
Even though India continued to lead the globe in internet outages, the watchdog reported that in 2022 there were less than 100 outages nationwide for the first time since 2017.
Ukraine in middle of war second on the list
After invading Ukraine on February 24 of last year, the Russian military knocked off internet connectivity there at least 22 times, placing Ukraine second on the list.
"During Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the Russian military cut internet access at least 22 times, engaging in cyberattacks and deliberately destroying telecommunications infrastructure," the watchdog said in its report.
Iran was the next country on the list after Ukraine, where officials shut down the internet 18 times in 2022 in reaction to anti-government protests.
Following the death of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old Kurdish-Iranian woman, on September 16 of last year, while in police detention, there were widespread anti-government demonstrations in Iran last fall. The morality police in Tehran detained Amini for disobeying the hijab regulations, which call for women to completely cover their body and hair. In detention, she passed away.
