The people of Kashmir, whose access to the Internet has been blocked by the Indian government for the past four months, are gradually losing their WhatsApp accounts one by one over its parent company Facebook’s policy on “inactive” users.
Kashmiris on Wednesday began disappearing en masse from WhatsApp groups to which they belonged, a lot of people have noticed and tweeted.
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No one was quite sure why until a Facebook spokesperson told BuzzFeed News the disappearances were the result of WhatsApp's policy on inactive accounts.
"To maintain security and limit data retention, WhatsApp accounts generally expire after 120 days of inactivity," the spokesperson wrote.
"When that happens, those accounts automatically exit their WhatsApp groups. People will need to be re-added to groups upon regaining access to the Internet and joining WhatsApp again."
Facebook has not yet responded to questions about how many Kashmiris were affected.
4 months of inactivity, WhatsApp accounts from Kashmir are getting deleted. Weird to see individuals you haven't spoken for all these months 'leave' WA groups whereas in reality an important part of their digital imprint - images, videos, texts & memories attached - vanishing.
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It has been four months since the Indian government shut down Kashmir’s access to the Internet, cutting off the region from the rest of the world.
Therefore, the Kashmiris who are losing their WhatsApp accounts and being removed from their groups do not do so on their own and may not even know that anything has changed.
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Kashmir has been split between India and Pakistan since their partition from Britain in 1947. Both countries claim all of Kashmir and have fought three wars over the territory, where anti-New Delhi sentiments are high.
Official figures show that India has suspended internet connections 180 times over the past five years in Kashmir. But 2019 has been the worst year on record, with the government shutting all sorts of internet services, cellular networks and satellite internet providers. The move has made the life all the more difficult for Kashmiris.
Communication outage has not just affected the social life; businesses are the biggest victim of the Indian government’s move.While the landline phones have been restored in Kashmir, New Delhi says it has no plans for restoring internet services citing cross border tensions.
Experts say internet shutdowns are a violation of the constitutional right to freedom of speech. Kashmir’s communications blackout has inflicted serious damage on the region’s economy, businesses and individuals.
Hello, my name is Godwin Brain. I'm an ICT Analyst, blogger, web-designer and a writer. 
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