The National Commission for Scheduled Tribes, a government organization set up in 2003 to protect India's Scheduled Tribes, has summoned YouTube for not removing videos on the Jarawa tribe, a small tribe of less than 500 in the Andaman and Nicobar islands, ET reports. In July, the commission ordered YouTube to remove all videos that featured the tribe. Curiously, the order doesn't seem to come from any tangible harm that the videos pose to the Jarawa tribe; rather, the nudity in the documentaries seems to be causing discomfort. Raghav Chandra, an NCST secretary, told ET in July, "These videos are posted under tags like ‘Jarawa Development’ but show them naked or awkward and clumsy. They do not show them in good light. Posting these videos is akin to outraging their modesty without their knowledge," after a meeting where YouTube was 'directed' to take the videos down. Most results for the keyword "Jarawa" (warning: nudity in thumbnails) on the first page of results are documentaries by France 24, Vice News, and Rajya Sabha TV, among others, of the tribe. YouTube dismissed the commission's directive without referring to it directly as a 'legal request', and told ET that it would only comply with valid legal requests for content that violates Indian laws or its own community guidelines. Chandra said that some videos had indeed been removed, but since YouTube didn't supply an 'action-taken report', he doesn't know which ones are still up. It's not clear why NCST couldn't just check each URL they told YouTube to…
