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India is the next big frontier for Netflix and Amazon. Now, the government is tightening rules on content.

InternationalMar 15. 2021

By The Washington Post · Niha Masih

NEW DELHI – The nine-part drama from Amazon promised to be India’s “House of Cards,” a gritty portrait of contemporary politics.

Instead, it nearly landed its creators in jail.

Within days of the release of the series in January, the streaming platform had become a target of Hindu nationalists angered by a brief scene depicting a Hindu god and remarks referencing India’s hierarchical caste system. At least 10 police complaints were filed against the makers, actors and Amazon executives in more than half a dozen states across the country. The makers of the drama, called “Tandav,” apologized and deleted the contentious scenes. But India’s top court refused to dismiss the police cases.

U.S. video streaming platforms like Netflix and Amazon Prime Video are looking to the Indian market to power their global growth. But their shows are facing the wrath of Hindu nationalists, often linked to the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party or BJP, which wields increasing clout over what is acceptable entertainment. Now, the government has stepped in, raising fears about shrinking space for creative freedom.

In November, the government brought streaming platforms under the purview of the information and broadcasting ministry, which has licensing and content censorship powers in mediums like cinema and television.

This year, the government announced rules that subject online news outlets and video content providers to extensive regulation. Under the new rules, “publishers” are required to appoint a local representative to act on every complaint within 15 days. These companies are also required to join an industry association led by a retired judge to ensure compliance. The third level of regulation falls to a government committee that has the power to censure, demand an apologyor order the deletion of content.

Experts say the web platforms may find it hard to push back against government regulations given what’s at stake. India is the fastest-growing market for video streaming platforms, according to an estimate by PricewaterhouseCoopers. It forecast India’s growth in the category to be over 28 percent by 2024, double the projected global growth.

Netflix has invested $400 million in the past two years to produce or license content in India. In 2018, Netflix CEO Reed Hastings said the company’s next 100 million users would come from India.

For Amazon, too, India is a key market. During his visit to the country last year, founder and CEO Jeff Bezos said the company would “double down” on its investment in India, citing its growing popularity. (Bezos owns The Washington Post.)

The new rules also include stringent provisions for social media giants such as Facebook and WhatsApp, requiring them to take down content deemed inappropriate in a short period of time and comply with court or government orders to identify creators.

While experts called the rules “unconstitutional,” the government has said they are “progressive, liberal and contemporaneous.”

India is not the only country where streaming sites have to contend with local restrictions. Last year, Netflix canceled a show in Turkey after the government refused to give permission to film the series over the inclusion of a gay character. In Saudi Arabia, the company pulled an episode of “Patriot Act” by comedian Hasan Minhaj that criticized Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.

Under Prime Minister Narendra Modi, a wave of Hindu nationalism has exacerbated religious tensions,jeopardizing India’s democratic status. This week, a report on global democracy downgraded the world’s largest democracy to an “electoral autocracy,” primarily due to a sharp decline in freedom of expression, the media, and civil society.

In January, a Muslim stand-up comic had to spend a month in jail following a complaint by the son of a BJP leader for a joke he did not make. Lower courts repeatedly denied him bail for “outraging religious feelings” under the “garb of standup comedy.” Later, the Supreme Court granted him bail.

Netflix, Amazon Prime Video and similar platforms are often credited with pushing the envelope on delicate subjects such as female sexuality or social justice. “Delhi Crime,” a fictionalized retelling of a brutal gang rape on Netflix, won an Emmy for Best Drama Series in 2020 – the first for an Indian show.

But the pushback is growing. Besides “Tandav,” the makers of “Mirzapur,” a crime thriller set in the eponymous small town in Uttar Pradesh, also on Amazon Prime Video, are also battling police complaints for “hurting religious sentiments.” Earlier, the member of Parliament from Mirzapur, an ally of the BJP, urged Modi to take action against the show for depicting the town as a den of violence.

Police from Uttar Pradesh, run by a hard-line Hindu monk from the BJP, traveled to Mumbai to investigate the case against Tandav and have questioned Amazon’s head of India Originals, Aparna Purohit. Rejecting her pre-arrest bail plea, a judge from a lower court said “sentiments of the majority community have been hurt” by the show.

This month, Amazon Prime Video stepped in with a fresh apology for the controversial scenes in “Tandav.” The statement said they respect the “diverse beliefs” of its viewers and “apologize unconditionally” to those who felt hurt.

On Thursday, the national agency in overseeing children’s rights asked Netflix to stop streaming its just-released show “Bombay Begums” over what it described as an “inappropriate” portrayal of children.

Representatives from the two companies declined to respond to questions about the impact of the new guidelines on their content and the ongoing police cases.

India’s internet boom is driven by the easy availability of cheap internet data plans and the proliferation of smartphones. There are more than 570 million internet users in India, with recent growth happening among rural populations.

“Every large platform is looking at India to give them the next phase of growth,” said Rajib Basu, the head of media and entertainment sector for PricewaterhouseCoopers in India. “It’s an English-speaking market and the biggest after China, which is not free. Nobody can ignore it.”

The new rules have created “panic,” said Karan Anshuman, one of the writers and directors of “Mirzapur,” the show targeted in police complaints.

Days after the rules were announced, Mint newspaper reported that Amazon Prime Video had shelved the second season of “Paatal Lok,” a sobering drama that had received praise for its unembellished depiction of discrimination and corruption.

Anshuman said that the signs were not encouraging for the creative industry.

“It’s too early to say how things are going to play out,” he said. But “we’re already doubting our own selves over whether something is too political.”

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A battle resumes over Japan’s bizarre school rules

InternationalMar 15. 2021

By The Washington Post · Simon Denyer, Julia Mio Inuma

TOKYO – There is a saying in Japan: “When rules exist, they have to be obeyed.”

But there are surely few rules as pointless, divisive and cruel as the widely enforced regulation that Japanese schoolchildren must have straight jet-black hair, sociologists and activists say.

It is supposed to prevent rebellious students – girls and boys alike – from dyeing or perming their hair and encourage them to concentrate on their studies. But as with other rules here, including a ban on dating and a requirement that students wear white underwear, the result oftenfuels discrimination, crushes individuality and enforces a rigid conformity that holds Japan back, according to critics.

The battle to change the rules has been reignited by a court ruling in the western city of Osaka last month that awarded a former student $3,000 for “emotional distress” incurred after she was hounded out of high school because her hair wasn’t black enough. But the court controversially backed the school’s legal right to impose the rule.

The young woman’s lawyer, Yoshiyuki Hayashi, said his client, now 21, intends to appeal, saying her childhood was destroyed when she entered the Prefectural Kaifukan High School. By her second semester, she was ordered to dye her hair black every four days but was banned from classes and even excluded from a school trip because teachers decided it still “wasn’t black enough,” Hayashi says.

When she refused to keep dyeing her hair, she was told not to bother coming to school. Later, her parents tried to negotiate a way for her to return, only to find her desk had been removed from the classroom and another pupil assigned her school ID number.

“She was hit very hard psychologically,” Hayashi said. “At one point, it was so bad that just seeing herself in the mirror or seeing her hair caused her to hyperventilate.”

The woman, who declined to comment herself, had always wanted to attend university, he said, “but she became extremely mistrustful of people” to the extent she does not interact with many people outside her family. “She has now started a part-time job, but she is still struggling,” he said.

In a news conference after the ruling, principal Masahiko Takahashi said the school would not change its black hair policy but would “take more care.” Osaka’s prefectural government noted the court upheld the school’s rules but said the girl’s name shouldn’t have been removed from the school’s directory.

Nearly half of Tokyo’s public high schools require students whose hair is not black and straight to submit certification to prove it’s natural and not dyed or permed, according to a report by NHK, while the Mainichi newspaper found the proportion even higher in Osaka.

Miyuki Nozu, a 32-year-old woman now working with refugees, went to a private school that demanded students with brown or curly hair carry certification with them at all times. Eyebrows were regularly checked to make sure students had not plucked them, while socks had to be white and folded three times.

She says the rules make it much harder for immigrant and mixed-race children to feel they belong.

“Schools just assume without any thought that all Japanese people have black straight hair and girls should act a certain way,” she said. “But Japan is not a single-ethnicity nation anymore. Schools don’t realize society has changed and that they are forcing an outdated ideal on students. This proves they have no intention or ability to teach about diversity.”

Nozu said one of her classmates was labeled a “troublemaker” because she struggled to follow the rules, but went on to graduate top of her class at the prestigious Tokyo University of the Arts. Still, she said, “there are plenty of people who are repressed and lose their creativity.”

Kayoko Oshima, a law professor at Doshisha University who focuses on the issue, says some students are “emotionally damaged and lose their self-esteem” and can also be isolated and bullied by classmates who absorb the underlying ethos – that those who don’t conform don’t belong in Japanese society.

“In Japan, people have an impression that when someone stands out, they will be targeted or bullied,” she said. “So people learn not to stand out, and young people see this as a survival method. Teachers talk about individuality, and yet people’s uniqueness is crushed.”

In corporate Japan, that in turn creates an atmosphere in which people are often scared to speak out, particularly in meetings, and especially if they are women, Oshima and Nozu said.

In schools, it doesn’t stop at hair color. In the city of Nagasaki, nearly 60 percent of 238 public schools demand that pupils wear white underwear, NHK reported, with one student telling the broadcaster teachers regularly check their underwear when they change for gym class.

In Fukuoka, 57 out of 69 schools surveyed by the lawyers’ association had rules about underwear color, the Asahi newspaper reported. Some schools even reportedly asked pupils to remove their underwear if they broke the rules.

Yet pressure is growing for change.

A young Japanese woman has taken her Tokyo high school to court for abusing its power by asking her to “voluntarily withdraw” after she broke the rules by dating a boy in her class Even though she was just a few months from graduation, she felt obliged to drop out, Japan Today reported.

In 2018, when the Osaka case first came to court, Yuji Sunaga was so outraged that he helped start a campaign to “Stop Extreme School Rules” and collected 60,000 signatures for a petition demanding the government take action.

He says the rules not only entail discrimination but can also lead to sexual harassment. Strict uniform policies impose financial burdens on poor parents; rules requiring children to take all their textbooks home can cause back problems; and rules banning winter clothing or scarves can also damage children’s health. Some children may be driven to suicide, he says.

“Because of the rules, the children themselves exert peer pressure that everyone needs to conform, and this continues into adulthood like an obsession,” he said.

“Children’s self-esteem is plummeting, in some cases so low they are losing their will to live,” he said.

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Myanmar junta imposes martial law in part of Yangon

InternationalMar 15. 2021

By Syndication Washington Post, Bloomberg

Myanmar’s junta declared “full martial law” late Sunday in parts of the commercial capital Yangon after clashes led to more deaths and Chinese-owned businesses were set on fire.

Coup leaders imposed the measure after the Chinese Embassy asked authorities to guarantee the safety of its investments and citizens. Military-run broadcaster Myawady announced that more than 2,000 protesters blocked roads over the weekend to prevent firefighters from putting out fires at several factories in industrial zones, which included Chinese businesses.

The martial law order applies to two densely populated townships in Yangon: Hlaing Thar Yar and Shwe Pyi Thar. It gave the head of the military’s Yangon command power “to endure safety, the rule of law and peace more effectively.”

“We urge Myanmar authorities to impose effective measures to end all acts of violence and to investigate and punish the perpetrators in accordance with the law,” the Chinese Embassy said in a statement late Sunday. The Global Times, a tabloid run by the Communist Party, said in an editorial on Monday that “those who maliciously defame China and instigate attacks against Chinese factories” must be “severely punished.”

The death toll continued to rise over the weekend as Myanmar authorities continue using force to quell persistent nationwide protests against the military coup of Feb. 1. At least seven people were confirmed dead Saturday, according to the United Nations Human Rights Office, bringing the total to 88 since the coup. Local media outlets reported that more than 50 protesters were killed in Yangon during crackdowns Sunday, mostly in the townships, though the figures could not be immediately corroborated.

The Special Advisory Council for Myanmar, a group of international experts consisting of former UN officials, said it has “grave concerns that a major military crackdown may be imminent, with fatal consequences.” The group called for “immediate international political intervention.”

“So far, the international response to the attempted coup has been weak,” the council said. “It is sending a dangerous message that the generals will continue to suffer no meaningful repercussions for their violent attacks on the Myanmar people.”

While the U.N. Security Council has condemned the violence, countries including China and Russia have opposed stronger language and sanctions against the Myanmar military leaders. China has said it maintains good relations with all parties in Myanmar and called for dialogue to prevent the situation from deteriorating.

The junta’s lead spokesman, Zaw Min Tun, reiterated on Thursday that minimal force was used to disperse protesters, even as witnesses say live bullets continued to be fired. He said security forces will continue to enter some properties to search for protest instigators in some townships, which he added was “to ensure safety and the rule of law.”

In Mandalay on Saturday, demonstrators took to the streets after deadly violence earlier in the day. Tens of thousands of engineers and engineering students chanted for an end to military dictatorship and the release of detained leaders including Aung San Suu Kyi, the deposed elected leader.

“Security forces are trying to scare us from joining street protests in the coming days,” said Aung Myo Nyunt, a 20-year-old student protester in Mandalay. “Their efforts will be in vain.”

Myanmar’s police detained 36 protesters in Mandalay on Saturday, according to state broadcaster MRTV. The television station accused Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy of instigating protests and spurring unrest. On March 3, 21 protesters were killed, while 12 died in crackdowns Thursday.

Soldiers and riot police have forced striking public servants and employees in certain sectors to return to work as the civil disobedience movement threatens a collapse in services including banking, health care, education and transportation. The junta asked all banks to reopen on Monday, and it said actions would be taken if lenders do not obey.