It is more common for regimes to shut down the internet

- This is a new wave of internet censorship that we see very clearly. And things have been going fast, in three years the number of Internet shutdowns in the world has more than doubled, says Elnaz Baghlanian, editor-in-chief of Swedish PEN's international online magazine PEN / Opp.

The list of countries shutting down the Internet is growing. Some examples are Iran, Venezuela, Sudan, Ethiopia, Indonesia, Myanmar and Iraq.

- An anonymous Iranian author writes in PEN / Opp that the Iranian regime now knows what to do if they want to get away with killing political prisoners, as they did in the 1980s. They shut down the internet, says Elnaz Baghlanian.

But at the top of the list of countries where the internet is most often shut down is India right now. There, the ruling Hindu nationalist BJP has shut down the internet for long periods, not least in the region of Kashmir whose self-government has been abolished by the ruling party. Videos that local journalists with great difficulty managed to get out, testify to military violence against civilians and journalists.

- If you look at the list there is a pattern in that demonstrations and protests often take place where the internet is shut down, says Baghlanian.

Often, the regimes themselves state that the purpose of the Internet shutdowns is to calm the population. Which is a bad excuse, says Swedish PEN.

"It's about preventing information dissemination and silencing people's dissatisfaction," says Elnaz Baghlanian.