Report finds 29 countries intentionally shut down or slowed internet traffic in 2020, with India most frequent at 109 times, primarily in the Kashmir region
Hanna Duggal / Al Jazeera : Tweets: @hrdefsen and @ajenglish Tweets: Human Rights Defenders / @hrdefsen : In 2020, 29 countries intentionally shut down or slowed their #internet communications. Authoritarian regimes often shut the internet down to silence protests, sway elections and hide #humanrights violations. Full Report👇 https://www.accessnow.org/... https://www.aljazeera.com/... https://twitter.com/... Al Jazeera English / @ajenglish : In 2020, India topped list of 29 countries that blocked access to the internet despite increased demand during COVID-19 https://www.aljazeera.com/... https://twitter.com/...
Context & Ripple Effects
Access Now's tally puts 2020 at 29 countries deliberately cutting or throttling connectivity, with India the most frequent offender at 109 disruptions concentrated in Kashmir — all during a pandemic year when demand for online access was rising. That extends a documented climb: a watchdog counted 196+ shutdowns across 25 countries in 2018, up from 75 in 2016.
Subsequent reporting shows the pattern hardening rather than reversing: an analysis tallied nearly 850 intentional blocks over the past decade including 155 in 2020 alone, Access Now logged 35 countries shutting down access at least 187 times in 2022, and by 2024 the count reached 54 countries and 296 shutdowns — with Myanmar displacing India from the top spot for the first time since 2018.
First-order effects
- Kashmir residents bear the direct cost of India's 109 disruptions — education, commerce, and COVID-era health information all depend on the connections being cut.
- Access Now's country rankings give advocates and foreign ministries a concrete ledger to press Delhi and the other 28 named governments on, right as pandemic-era dependence on connectivity peaks.
Second-order effects
- Governments cited for silencing protests and swaying elections face reputational pressure each annual ranking cycle, pushing some toward slower throttling rather than visible full blackouts to stay off headline counts.
- India's repeated topping of the list sits awkwardly beside its parallel push to court foreign manufacturers and chipmakers, giving investors a governance signal to weigh against incentive packages.
Third-order effects
- If the trajectory holds — from 75 shutdowns in 2016 to 296 across 54 countries in 2024 — connectivity cuts normalize from emergency measures into a routine instrument of domestic control, with the leader rotating (Myanmar after years of India) as the tactic diffuses.
- Sustained shutdown practices push platforms, telcos, and app developers toward offline-first and circumvention tools, turning access denial into a cat-and-mouse layer of internet governance.
The trend: State-imposed internet shutdowns are escalating from sporadic crisis measures into a standardized tool of political control, tracked annually and spreading beyond a single habitual offender.