New Delhi: A report curated by the Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism (GIFCT) has called the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the world’s largest political party, a fringe group dealing with non-violent terrorism.
The GIFCT is an NGO designed to prevent terrorists and violent extremists from exploiting digital platforms. Founded by Facebook, Microsoft, Twitter, and YouTube in 2017, the Forum was established to foster technical collaboration among member companies, advance relevant research and share knowledge with smaller platforms.
The report is dated July, 2021.
A copy of the report, which is with this reporter, also included Australia First Party and National Socialist Movement of the United States in the same fringe, non-violent terrorist organisations.
As part of this year-long initiative, GIFCT put human rights — including, but not limited to, freedom of speech and privacy — at the forefront of the process. At the advice of key civil society stakeholders involved in a range of GIFCT work and initiates, GIFCT engaged the firm Business for Social Responsibility (BSR) to undertake a forward-looking human rights impact assessment of the organization at this foundational moment. The recommendations in that report, released in full last week, helped shape and inform every element of this effort.
Chief among the report’s findings was a widespread view among our stakeholder community that the narrow scope of the database reflects broader discrimination and bias in the counterterrorism field, specifically a disproportionate focus on Islamist extremist content rather than white supremacist content.
“In 2017, the founding members of GIFCT spearheaded a shared, safe, and secure industry database to house perceptual hashes of known terrorist-produced images and videos,” the report said.
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The report further said the GIFCT prides itself on incorporating a multi-stakeholder approach in expanding and evolving efforts to counter terrorism and violent extremism online. “The reports in this document highlight a range of important perspectives from international experts, practitioners, and civil society organizations.”
No immediate comments were available from the Bharatiya Janata Party, which finds a mention in the report.
