For India, celebrations not in order on Singh’s birthday
This week, Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh marked his 80th birthday. He spent the day, Wednesday, in the company of family and at public events, according to news reports. “There are no celebrations. He prefers to be with his family in the morning–then work as usual,” Singh’s spokesman told the media.
With new focus on sedition law, India poised at juncture
Although it is the world’s largest democracy, India has retained its colonial-era sedition law. But with a national debate ensuing after the arrest of 25-year-old political cartoonist Aseem Trivedi on the antiquated sedition charge and others, members of the Indian government have been forced to do some soul-searching.
Shooting investigation stalls in India
CPJ has been monitoring the investigation into the shooting attack on Arunachal Times journalist Tongam Rina outside her office in Itanagar, capital of Arunachal Pradesh state, which left her hospitalized in critical condition this July. Her recovery is progressing, slowly but surely. The police inquiry, however, is not.
News media expand, but freedom lags in Kashmir
Early this month, newspaper offices in Indian-controlled Kashmir received a note warning journalists to be more supportive of the Kashmir independence movement, according to the leading national daily, The Times of India, citing a news agency in the state’s summer capital, Srinagar. No militants took responsibility this time, but in mid-March insurgent groups issued a joint…
India’s clumsy Internet crackdown
Indian Internet advocates and journalists are in an uproar this week over the news that the government has blocked access to around 300 websites, pages, and social media accounts in an effort to quell communal violence in the turbulent northeast. The rationale is that inflammatory online content has fanned tensions between Muslims and non-Muslims in…
Dangerous disease–the unexpected threat
Last week, Tarun Sehrawat, a 22-year-old Indian photographer for Tehelka magazine, died from cerebral malaria and its complications, according to several of his colleagues and media accounts. He had returned, ill, from a shooting assignment with Tehelka’s reporter Tusha Mittal in May. The team had been covering the ongoing Maoist revolt in Chhattisgarh in central India and…
Brazil restates commitment to press freedom, UN plan
CPJ has received an encouraging letter from Ambassador Maria Luiza Ribeiro Viotti, Brazil’s permanent representative to the United Nations, affirming the country’s support for the UNESCO-led U.N. Plan of Action for Security of Journalists and the Issue of Impunity.
In India, imprisoned journalist’s plea for help
The New Delhi-based Tehelka magazine published an open letter by imprisoned freelance journalist Lingaram Kodopi on Monday. Kodopi, one of the two journalists CPJ documented in prison in India on December 1, 2011, has been held without charge since September 2011 as a suspected associate of insurgent Maoists in Chhattisgarh. His supporters believe he faces harassment…
Indian justice grinds slowly, but not so finely
First, a bit of history: In 2008, CPJ reported: The high court in the western state of Gujarat defended the media, rebuking a prosecutor for demanding state regulation of newspaper content. The prosecution sought restrictions after the Ahmedabad police commissioner filed sedition charges against a Times of India editor and reporter, and a Gujarat Samachar…
Brazil, Pakistan, India fail test on journalist murders
Brazil, Pakistan, and India–three nations with high numbers of unsolved journalist murders–failed an important test last month in fighting the scourge of impunity. Delegates from the three countries took the lead in raising objections to a U.N. plan that would strengthen international efforts to combat deadly anti-press violence.