In a rather highly unfortunate incident, a sitting MLA from Arunachal Pradesh has faced racial discrimination. An alleged racial slur made by a Punjab-based YouTuber against former Arunachal Pradesh MP Ninong Ering has caused a huge outrage in Arunachal Pradesh.
Social media influencer Paras Singh, who goes by the name ‘Paras Official’ on YouTube, has in one of his videos allegedly termed “Ering as a non-Indian and Arunachal Pradesh, a part of China”.
Paras made the comments while reacting to a letter addressed to Prime Minister Narendra Modi by MLA Ninong Ering recently wherein he had asked the PM to ban the re-launch of PUBG Mobile India’s new avatar Battlegrounds Mobile India.
Ering reasoned that if the game is allowed to relaunch, there is a very high potential of a breach of privacy and cybersecurity of the citizens and should be banned in the country. The former MP had also said that “re-launching the game was a mere illusion and a trick to collect user data of the citizens, including children and transfer it to foreign companies and the Chinese government.”
Youtuber Paras Singh, while commenting in his video was heard saying that he doesn’t think Ering is an Indian, while pointing out at the MLA’s profile picture in twitter. He then asks his viewers to check if Ering looks like an Indian and later goes on to comment if the people from Arunachal Pradesh look like that.
The content creator is then seen searching for Arunachal Pradesh on a map, after which he says that Arunachal is on China’s side and that it belongs to the People of China.
In the latest Update Chief minister Pema Khandu tweeted that Arunachal Pradesh Police has been registered against Singh for “inciting ill will and racial hatred” towards Arunachal and the Cyber Crime branch in Itanagar is investigating the matter.
Meanwhile, Paras Singh has written an apology saying he did not mean to hurt by his remarks. Paras has also deleted the particular section of the video where he had made the aforementioned comments.
It is to be mentioned that this is not the first time someone has posted a ‘racist’ video on the people from Northeast. In a similar incident in July 2020, Hema Chaudhary, who claims to be an animal activist, had posted a video on her Youtube channel with ‘objectionable’ comments that offended people of Nagaland.
Later, the woman was arrested by the Police officials after a case was filed against the woman. She was brought to the state by the Nagaland police who warned social media users of “unwarranted comments” in order to ensure that “due of law” is maintained.