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Freedom251 › Blog › Access Now

Manipur had the world’s longest internet shutdown of 2023, reports found

By Freedom251 Team · · 4 min read

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Broadly, yes—but the duration depends on how a “shutdown” is counted. Top10VPN’s Global Cost of Internet Shutdowns 2023, published on January 2, 2024, identified Manipur as the site of the year’s longest government-imposed internet shutdown: more than 5,000 hours of restrictions during the ethnic conflict. Access Now later described a statewide shutdown lasting 212 days between May and December 2023. Those figures are close, not necessarily contradictory: they use different definitions of outage time, coverage and restoration.

What the original report said

Top10VPN measured Manipur’s restrictions as lasting more than 5,000 hours, or approximately 208.3 days. It described the restrictions as continuing almost continuously from May through December, making Manipur the longest government-imposed shutdown location it recorded worldwide for calendar year 2023.

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The report tracked major deliberate outages using sources including NetBlocks, IODA, the SFLC.IN Internet Shutdown Tracker and OONI. Its economic figures are modelled estimates, not government accounts.

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Why another report says 212 days

Access Now later characterized Manipur as experiencing a statewide shutdown for 212 days between May and December 2023, affecting an estimated 3.2 million people. Access Now’s counting system records shutdown orders and affected periods rather than reproducing Top10VPN’s precise hour-based model.

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Freedom House summarized the Top10VPN-derived figure as more than 208 days. The difference from 212 days can result from whether partial restorations, district-level restrictions, mobile-only outages and repeated suspension orders are included. Neither figure proves that every resident, network and device was disconnected continuously for exactly the same number of days.

What happened in Manipur

Ethnic violence involving the Meitei and Kuki communities escalated in May 2023. Authorities imposed communications restrictions as the conflict intensified, saying that online rumours, misinformation and mobilization could contribute to further violence. Freedom House reported that the restrictions impaired communication and the documentation of abuses.

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The policy was implemented through successive government orders rather than one technically identical switch. Many orders focused on mobile data and referred to internet or data services accessed through VPNs. Fixed-line connections were conditionally restored in July, broader access returned in September, and some districts continued to face intermittent restrictions. A government opening order dated December 3, 2023, modified or lifted restrictions while retaining warnings about communications that could worsen the situation.

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Why the authorities said they imposed the restrictions

Manipur orders cited the prevailing law-and-order situation and the risk that messages on WhatsApp, Facebook, Instagram, X and other platforms could spread rumours, mobilize crowds, and lead to deaths, arson, vandalism or damage to public and private property. These are the government’s stated reasons; they are not independent proof that a shutdown prevented those outcomes.

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The orders relied on India’s Temporary Suspension of Telecom Services (Public Emergency or Public Safety) Rules, 2017. The policy raised a basic constitutional tension: public-safety powers on one side, and rights involving speech, information, association, movement and access to essential services on the other.

What the shutdown disrupted

Reporting and verification

Residents, journalists, civil-society organisations and outside observers had less ability to contact sources, verify competing claims, document abuses or report events. Freedom House said the restrictions hindered documentation of and responses to violence, including sexual violence.

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Daily services

Where connectivity was unavailable, people could struggle with digital payments, banking, education, examinations, remote work, healthcare coordination, logistics, government services and family contact. Encrypted applications such as Signal cannot work without an underlying internet connection.

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Economic activity

Top10VPN estimated that all of India’s 2023 internet restrictions caused $585.4 million in economic damage. The estimate was produced with the NetBlocks Cost of Shutdown Tool, World Bank and government internet-user data and other inputs; it is not a separately audited loss figure for Manipur.

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India’s wider 2023 shutdown record

The two major datasets also differ in their national totals because they count different types of events.

Measure Figure How to read it
Top10VPN major shutdowns 30 Major deliberate outages recorded in India
Top10VPN blackout hours 5,655 Internet-blackout hours
Top10VPN social-media restrictions 144 hours Separate social-media restriction hours
Top10VPN combined total 5,799 hours Blackout plus social-media restriction hours
Top10VPN affected users 59.1 million Estimated users affected nationally
Access Now shutdown orders 116 India’s national total; highest worldwide for the sixth consecutive year

Some contemporaneous coverage cited 7,812 hours for India. That number should not be merged with Top10VPN’s 5,799-hour country-table total without explaining the different categories, geographic coverage or revisions behind each dataset. Access Now also linked 65 of India’s 116 shutdowns to communal violence.

Does “longest in the world” need a qualification?

Yes. The defensible claim is that Manipur had the longest government-imposed internet shutdown reported for calendar year 2023, according to Top10VPN and Access Now. It is not a claim about the longest shutdown in India’s entire history. Freedom House notes that Jammu and Kashmir experienced a much longer disruption beginning in August 2019, with the exact duration varying by how interruptions are counted.

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Could a VPN bypass the Manipur restrictions?

Usually not if the underlying mobile or broadband connection is disabled. A VPN can sometimes help when a particular website or platform is blocked, but it cannot recreate a severed network path. Manipur’s orders explicitly referred to VPN-based internet services, indicating that authorities sought to cover circumvention routes as well.

  • Do not treat a VPN as a guaranteed solution to a full blackout.
  • Avoid unknown free VPN applications, especially during unrest; their security, ownership and data practices may be unclear.
  • Tor and encrypted messaging likewise require a functioning connection and may be blocked or unreliable.

What the figures establish—and what they do not

  • Established: Manipur was identified by two major digital-rights reports as having the longest government-imposed shutdown reported in 2023.
  • Established: The restrictions ran from May into December amid ethnic conflict and were repeatedly renewed.
  • Not established: That every person in every district lost every form of connectivity continuously for precisely 208 or 212 days.
  • Not established: That the national $585.4 million estimate represents Manipur’s standalone economic loss.

The headline is therefore substantially accurate when attributed to the reports: Manipur endured an exceptionally prolonged, near-continuous period of official internet restrictions in 2023. The exact duration depends on whether the measurement counts blackout hours, statewide shutdown days, partial restorations or individual suspension orders.

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Access Nowdigital rightsIndiainternet shutdownsManipurTop10VPN

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