The post Free And Fearless Journalism In A Fight For Survival appeared first on SabrangIndia.

We see when you are awake,

We know if you’re with or against us,

So be quiet for goodness sake.”

— a parody modelled on the popular song Jingle Bells sent by a former IAS officer to the author

 “Surveillance and Freedom of Press”.

In mid-December 2023, the US Federal Trade Commission concluded that the employees of Rite Aid, a pharmacy chain, acted on false alerts from its facial recognition systems, followed customers around stores, searched them and ordered some to leave. If the customers refused, the store called the police to confront or remove them, at times in front of friends and family. Rite Aid used facial recognition technology to falsely identify people of colour and women as likely shoplifters. Rite Aid’s actions disproportionately affected people of colour, especially Black people, Asians and Latinos, all in the name of keeping “persons of interest” out of hundreds of Rite Aid stores in cities, including New York, Philadelphia and Sacramento, the commission said.

This is just one example of how surveillance technologies are intruding into our everyday life, including in fields as essential and indispensable as medicine purchases.

In journalism, surveillance kicked in long before technology achieved the cutting edge status that it has today.

One example is the practice of government offices maintaining registers and making it mandatory for journalists to make an entry identifying the officials they are meeting on a particular day. This was not the case earlier: journalists with accreditation, which is granted after careful and strict scrutiny by government-appointed bodies, could enter government offices and speak to officials, usually in the afternoon when the workload sometimes eases. The register system is primitive but very effective.

If an article that is unpalatable to the government is published on a particular day, all that the government needs to do to identify the source is to check the register and see which officials met the journalist concerned. This strikes at the very root of source confidentiality. Source confidentiality has no legal backing in India, but is considered vital for the functioning of the Press. If sources can be identified by vindictive administrations eager to invoke the Official Secrets Act at the drop of a hat, journalism and accountability – and democracy, by extension – will be the ultimate sufferers.

I mentioned this to point out that sophisticated technologies are not needed if a government decides to undermine the pillars on which a democracy is built. But as the case of the Rite pharmacy showed, more advanced the technology, more vulnerable it is to misuse.

Often, civil society – journalists and lawyers included – fail to spot the symptoms of a surveillance raj or regime.

I request you to recall how we looked the other way after some initial murmurs when almost our entire urban stretches were brought under closed circuit TV and other surveillance cameras. Along with law enforcement agencies, private entities, including households, jumped into the surveillance cauldron and installed camera after camera in every nook and corner.

Along with this came, the craze for pointing smartphones at anything and everyone and snapping pictures without showing the basic courtesy of asking permission. In the process and without realizing it, we became the most surveilled society in history, bigger than what even the Orwellian Big Brother could do.

Fighting crime and monitoring traffic violations were cited as excuses for condoning the invasion of the surveillance cameras. So much so that, modern law-enforcement agencies have almost forgotten the pre-CCTV skills of deduction, detection and collection of evidence.

When we hear of a crime now, the first question we involuntarily ask is: “what about CCTV footage” or “where is the CCTV footage?” As if, before CCTVs became fashionable, no crime could be solved. The question – “where is the CCTV footage?” – is also an admission that we have practically given up our precious right to privacy and that we now consider it unusual if we are NOT under surveillance.

It is often said that some police stations in some parts of the country have corners beyond the reach of CCTV cameras, where bribes are exchanged and third-degree methods are deployed -– away from the prying eyes of the cameras that can incriminate public servants.

I am tempted to recount a story I had heard when I was a trainee journalist in the early 1990s when cell phones had not made their presence felt in India. I am not sure if the story is true but my objective is to merely illustrate how intrusive technology has become in a matter of decades.

A very important person in New Delhi used to “disappear”, every once in a while, to conduct an extramarital affair. Some of his rivals within his own party decided to settle scores with him. One day when the VIP was spending time with his lover in a guesthouse, someone called a police station and reported that the minister is missing. With no cell phones to track him and his staff tight-lipped, the police launched a man-missing search. Eventually, a very exasperated — and angry — VIP was found in the guesthouse.

Now, in the age of cell phones, the VIP would have been spared the embarrassment and the police could have saved the resources used for the manhunt. Three decades later, earlier this week on Christmas Eve, a retired IAS officer sent me a parody modelled on the popular song Jingle Bells.

One stanza went like this: “We see when you are sleeping, we see when you are awake, we know if you’re with or against us, so be quiet for goodness sake.”

From the crude register, we have now come to the age of Pegasus, a spyware that can only be bought by government agencies.

Now it is possible not just to snoop on what reports a journalist is working on, it is also possible to plant evidence against the journalist to implicate the journalist in trumped-up cases. I hope the enormity of the crisis is clear for you.

This ability of State-sponsored actors to embed themselves in the deeply private corners of watchdogs has grave implications for not just journalism but also the judiciary, the Opposition and the other checks and balances the republic has put in place after much thought and deliberation.

As if all these are not enough, we now have to cope with Artificial Intelligence also. Technology usually has three phases: enormous advantages, frightening potential for misuse and reassuring antidotes.

I hope we reach the third stage fast enough.

However, I must digress here and speak about at least one instance of how technology has helped. The media is no saint or angel. It has its share of devils.

Recently, in Kerala, a minister’s aide was accused of taking a bribe from a job aspirant. A channel went to town with the news. The young aide would probably have been hanged in a media trial. But, fortunately for him, a video surfaced, showing him at a wedding venue in another district at the time when the accuser claimed that money was handed over outside the secretariat. Even without the video, in the good old days, accounts by eyewitnesses at the wedding would have been sufficient to establish his innocence. But of late, our media trials and television channels make me wonder if we have forgotten a principle that forms the cornerstone of jurisprudence: presumed innocent until found guilty.

I blame the media as well as a section of lawyers who are willing to appear on TV and comment on cases that are sub judice. Both the media and the legal fraternity need to exercise restraint on this front. I did not elaborate on the Pegasus scandal because all of us know enough – or too little – about the scandal.

The sheer sweep of the Pegasus scandal that broke in July 2021 was astounding: the spyware was allegedly used on Opposition leaders, judges, journalists, investigators and statutory officials.

Fewer than 30 months later, on October 30, this year, Apple sent alerts to Opposition politicians and journalists that State actors may have tried to break into their iPhones. Among the politicians were some of the senior-most public figures and well-known journalists in the country, including Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge and The Wire news portal co-founder Siddharth Varadarajan.

Let us pause for a moment and dial back to the latter half of the 20th century. The offices of the Democratic Party were sought to be bugged in an election year in the US during the Nixon presidency.

The Washington Post newspaper focused on the Watergate scandal for 788 days – until President Nixon was forced to resign. The Pegasus scandal in India was far bigger than the Watergate scandal in its sweep and reach. If one party was targeted in the US, a wide cross-section of society, including several pillars of our republic, were suspected to have been targeted. Yet, the political and ethical outrage in India was limited in its intensity.

I quote from a column I wrote for The Telegraph newspaper this month. An American judge played a decisive role in the Watergate case. Judge John J. Sirica “kept badgering defendants and witnesses on matters not covered in the indictment —namely, the financial and institutional involvement of the White House”. The judge took the “contentious step of passing exceptionally long provisional sentences on the defendants” (which allowed the accused to ponder the punishment for a few months). Sirica indicated that if the defendants spoke frankly at the hearings, the sentences would be reduced. Sirica ordered Nixon to surrender his recordings of the White House conversations to federal prosecutors. “Almost single-handedly, with great courage and risk to his reputation, Sirica had broken the case wide open.”

In India, the Pegasus controversy reached the Supreme Court. A court-appointed committee concluded last year that malware was found in five out of 29 phones submitted to it, but the use of Pegasus could not be confirmed. The committee said the Centre “has not cooperated” with the investigations. Parts of the reports were made public but the full files remain in sealed covers. In May this year, the apex court said an early date would be set for examining the status of various recommendations made by the committee.

Just days ago – that is December 28, 2023 – months after the Supreme Court looked into the allegations, Amnesty International issued the following statement. This is what convinced me that I must speak here today. Please keep in mind the names may sound familiar but these are NEW, I repeat, NEW revelations.

I quote from the Amnesty statement. “Amnesty International, in partnership with The Washington Post, has unearthed shocking new details about the continued use of the highly invasive spyware Pegasus to target prominent journalists in India, including one who had previously been a victim of an attack using the same spyware.

Forensic investigations by Amnesty International’s Security Lab confirmed that Siddharth Varadarajan, Founding Editor of The Wire, and Anand Mangnale, the South Asia Editor at The Organised Crime and Corruption Report Project (OCCRP), were among the journalists recently targeted with Pegasus spyware on their iPhones, with the latest identified case occurring in October 2023.”

“Our latest findings show that increasingly, journalists in India face the threat of unlawful surveillance simply for doing their jobs, alongside other tools of repression including imprisonment under draconian laws, smear campaigns, harassment, and intimidation,” the head of Amnesty International’s Security Lab said. “Despite repeated revelations, there has been a shameful lack of accountability about the use of Pegasus spyware in India which only intensifies the sense of impunity over these human rights violations.”

The Security Lab recovered evidence from Anand’s device of a zero-click exploit which was sent to his phone over iMessage on 23 August 2023, and designed to covertly install the Pegasus spyware. A zero-click exploit refers to malicious software that enables spyware to be installed on a device without requiring any user action from the target, such as clicking on a link. The attempted targeting of Anand’s phone happened at a time when he was working on a story about an alleged stock manipulation by a large multinational conglomerate in India, the Amnesty statement added.

The Union home minister is fond of speaking about “chronology”. The latest Pegasus chronology is telling: On August 23, OCCRP seeks the company’s comment. Within 24 hours, the Pegasus spyware was sought to be planted in Anand’s phone. How is it that a spyware only a State agency can buy gets activated when a private company is asked a question? I am scared to name the company here because I do not know whether in the one hour I took to travel from Calcutta to Howrah, if the company has obtained a legal order barring a public debate on the issue.

The NSO Group, which owns the Pegasus software, told The Washington Post that it sells its products only to government intelligence and law enforcement agencies, and that its technologies are licensed for the sole purpose of fighting terror and major crime. Indian authorities have until today provided no clarity or transparency on whether they have procured or used the Pegasus spyware in India, Amnesty said.

Please note the point that someone in our country is repeatedly and with impunity targeting the working tools of journalists again and again. The operative phrase here is “again and again”.

The Amnesty revelations suggest spyware abuse is continuing in India unabated EVEN AFTER the highest court of the land looked into the issue. If this does not terrify you, what will? I am compelled to ask this question: have our institutions, have our pillars, have our civil society, and have our collective voice lost the will and ability to stop shadowy players who declare with defiance “We don’t give a damn”?

How long will we allow these thugs with technology to violate our freedoms and our very lives? Can we name any other democracy whether such things are exposed but no one -– absolutely no one -– is held accountable?

Against that backdrop, I am constrained to ask: has large sections of Indians entered a post-morality, post-probity phase, much like the era of post-truth? I hope I am wrong and your answer is a resounding “no”. But if you also think that we have been sucked into a post-morality phase, democracy as we know it is in deep peril.

Our democracy will check all the boxes: the world’s largest elections, quick results, a clear majority and a government that swears by the Constitution. But beneath the surface – if journalists are unable to fulfil their responsibilities because of fear of surveillance, if judges are constrained to speak out after retirement and large sections of the minorities and the marginalized live in fear – it would mean that our democracy has been hollowed out in front of our eyes which are blinded by the dazzle of its outer shell.

As I conclude, I come to the most important point of this conversation. Have we realized how surveillance of journalists and others has turned on its head one of the fundamental principles of democracy?

The GOVERNED are supposed to keep a watch over the GOVERNORS.

Unfortunately, in our time, it is the governors who are keeping the governed under surveillance.

With great sadness, I recall the immortal words of US Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black in 1971 in the Pentagon Papers case: “The founding fathers gave the free press the protection it must have to fulfill its essential role in a democracy. The press was to serve the governed, not the governors.” I spoke of my grief because of the current deplorable cosiness between large sections of the media and the governors. The press was protected so that it could bare the secrets of the government and inform the people. Only a free and unrestrained press can effectively expose deception in government.

So, what must civil society, which includes lawyers, do? I have no answers but I humbly place the following questions before you.

• It was the legal fraternity that took the lead in the freedom struggle. Will history forgive you if you remain silent now when divisive forces are threatening to rip apart our country that was built painstakingly with invaluable contributions from your predecessors, too?
• Unlike laypersons, you know the law. Have you exhausted all legal means possible to protect journalists from the curse of surveillance and infiltration?
• Like Judge Sirica of the US, are you badgering all stakeholders again and again to intervene?
• Have you filed petition after petition to the government to launch an independent inquiry into all cases of surveillance that do not include national security?
• Have you asked the government to disclose whether it had any contracts with foreign surveillance companies?
• As citizens, do you not want to know about the entire report of the Supreme Court’s technical committee in the Pegasus case? Have you discussed what you can do to ensure that the report is made public?
• Have you held enough street-corner meetings, press conferences and other discussions so that retired judges get more opportunity to speak out?

Please do not remain silent. Speak up and continue to speak. You know how to do that without breaking the law. Somewhere, someone will hear you.

Quietly and behind the scenes, Pope Francis this month took a significant — not adequate but significant nevertheless – step towards recognizing LGBTQ rights. The new rule allows Catholic priests to bless same-sex couples as long as the blessing is not connected to the ceremony of a same-sex union. This was considered impossible in March 2021. But the Pope worked behind the scenes to reach a consensus. In his traditional Christmas greetings to members of the Curia, the bureaucracy that runs the Vatican, Pope Francis said: “Let us remain vigilant against rigid ideological positions that often, under the guise of good intentions, separate us from reality and prevent us from moving forward.”

Perhaps we have an answer there. Perhaps we can negotiate and work around the rigid positions on all sides so that the governed can always hold the governors accountable. No one can scale up such a conversation and lead these negotiations better than lawyers. You owe it to this country.

Thank you. 

(Delivered on December 29, 2023 at the 14th All India Conference of The All India Lawyers Union in Howrah, West Bengal by the author, Editor, The Telegraph)

The post Surveillance and Freedom of Press – A call to public action appeared first on SabrangIndia.

The National Alliance of Journalists (NAJ) and the Delhi Union of Journalists (DUJ), have issued a statement demanding that the “ominous” rules proposed to “monitor digital media” be scrapped. The unions, of which many working journalists are members, have stated that the rules come in the wake of “manifold attacks on articles critical of the government and increasing attacks on freedom of the press and  journalistic rights.”

The unions have highlighted that it was within days of the Union Government framing rules to monitor digital media, that Manipur police went to the home of a local journalist who had hosted a discussion on the rules on his Facebook page. It was on Monday, March 1, that Paojel Chaoba, was slapped with a notice from the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) ruled state government under the recently notified Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021.

According to multiple news reports, this was the first official action under the new rules that were announced on February 25. However, the notice was withdrawn a day later. The Ministry of Information & Broadcasting (MIB) had also clarified that the central government alone could enforce the Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021. 

However, the NAJ and DUJ, statement signed by office bearers N. Kondaiah, S.K.Pande and Sujata  Madhok, highlights that these rules are “clearly a move to control the digital news media” as well as OTT platforms, and social media companies. It states that the so-called “discomfort among a section of people” on the streaming platforms showing nudity or advocating political positions, is a “pretext for clamping down  on the entire digital spectrum. Earlier, governments at both the centre and the states have used criminal  laws, including sedition and defamation laws, to reign in journalists whose reportage and opinions they  disagree with. The Rules are one more step in this direction.”

The Internet Freedom Foundation (IFF) has delved deep into the recently released Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021 and has raised several red flags about privacy and censorship. The code that was announced recently covers social media platforms, digital media including news and even has rules for OTT platforms. The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MEITy) will oversee the implementation in Social Media, the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting (MIB) will oversee digital media. Ever since the announcement, especially its tone and tenor and usage of words like, “Social media platforms welcome to do business in India but they need to follow the Constitution and laws of India,” there have been widespread concerns primarily pertaining to misuse of the provisions to scuttle dissent and privacy. The IFF’s analysis of exactly how it impacts users and service providers, may be read here.

According to the unions, privacy is a “huge concern, as the Rules mandate that social media platforms must divulge to  government agencies the originator of any post, irrespective of encryption by companies like Signal or  WhatsApp.” Journalists may “no longer be able to protect their sources,” and this will directly affect the media’s access to information. The unions have added that the rules “have been arbitrarily drafted without adequate consultation with stakeholders and “infringe on our Constitutional freedoms, both as citizens and as media persons. We demand that they be immediately withdrawn.”

Related:

IFF analyses new social media Ethics Code and digital media rules
Is there Social Justice in the Digital Economy?

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A journalist, working for a Hindi daily, and his wife were brutally beaten to death in Barwadih village in Sonbhadra district, reported The Tribune. According to the police an  enmity with a former village head is the likely reason behind the crime. The victim has been identified as Uday Paswan and is reported to have died on the spot while his wife, Sheetla, succumbed to injuries at a hospital in Varanasi on Tuesday.

According to the news report Uday and his wife Sheetla, had been demanding security in view of the threat, and had gone to the Kone police station on Monday morning to pursue their demand. But late on Monday evening, when the couple was returning home on a motorcycle, they were attacked with sticks and rods. They cried out for help but no one came forward. Uday died on the spot and Sheetla was admitted with serious injuries and succumbed on Tuesday evening stated the news report.

As it came to light that the journalist had approached the Kone police for security in view of threat to him and his family but no action was taken, three police personnel have now been suspended for dereliction of duty. “Inspector Kone police station, a sub-inspector and a constable have been suspended in this connection. Five of six accused persons have also been arrested while the main accused, Keval Paswan, who is also a former village head, is absconding,” Superintendent of Police Sonbhadra, Ashish Srivastava, told the media on Wednesday.

According to Srivastava, based on a complaint filed by Uday’s son Vinay Paswan, an FIR against a former village head Keval Paswan, his wife Kaushalya, sons Jitendra, Gabbar, Sikandar and his representative Ekhlaq Alam has been lodged under sections 147, 148 and 302 of IPC. Except Keval, all other accused have been arrested while raids are continuing to nab the main accused, the police told the media. Uday’s son had told police that his father was also a farmer and worked as a correspondent with a Lucknow-based Hindi daily. He had reportedly had a land dispute with Keval, and cases had been lodged against both the groups in 2016, 2018 and this year too. “My father had also given a complaint in Chief Minister’s Janata Darbar in Lucknow. Despite directives issued from the Chief Minister’s Office, the Sonbhadra police did not pay any attention, ” Vinay added

While investigations are still on in that case, another journalist was attacked in Uttar Pradesh, allegedly because he was reporting on Irregularities in Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MNREGA) projects. According to a report in Newsclick the journalist Vinay Tiwari, a resident of Dhaurra village, has claimed that “no action will be taken against his attackers as they belong to the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party.”

The senior journalist working with a local daily in Uttar Pradesh’s Lalitpur region was beaten up publicly and threatened allegedly by a local BJP leader and his sons while returning from work stated the news report. Police have lodged a complaint against five people including the BJP leader. Vinay Tiwari, told the media that on Saturday he had gone to investigate and fact check allegations of irregularities in implementation of MNREGA when he was waylaid by over half a dozen armed men along with the family members of the village head. 

The village head’s husband is also associated with BJP, said Tiwari, adding that he was following a tip off from his sources that  even “simple work, like ‘trench work’ is also being done with the help of JCB machine for construction of a link road at Dhaurra village instead of hiring manual labour under MGNREGA in my own panchayat by the Gram Pradhan (village head). I rushed to the spot as soon as I got the information.”

“When the village head got information about my investigation of the coverage, she sent some miscreants along with her sons who stopped me midway and attacked me with sticks and batons and left me half dead. They even snatched my phone, camera and deleted photos and videos. They took Rs 9,500 from my pocket,” Tiwari told Newsclick. He was sent to the Jhansi Medical College from Lalitpur District Hospital for treatment.

Tiwari, who is associated with a local news website called Bundelkhand Times, reports on incidents in rural areas, stated Newsclick. Tiwari told the reporter that the MGNREGA was being misused at a massive scale in most of the area, and was aware that some were angered with his reportage, but added that he did not expect them to attack, “because they are my neighbours. Now it is very clear that I was attacked because my story exposed their (BJP workers) plan of rigging,” Tiwari was quoted in the report, adding that “no action will be taken against them since the attackers belong to the ruling party.” Police have registered a case under Section 307 (attempt to murder), 323 (assault), 504 (abusive death) and 506 (threatening to kill) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) against village head Babita Mishra, her son Vivek Mishra, Aryan alias Abhishek Mishra, Bharat Mishra and Babita’s  husband Rameshwar Mishra also happens to be a BJP leader.

Attacks on journalists in Uttar Pradesh under the Adityanath-led government are a regular feature now. According to the news report the Uttar Pradesh State Accreditation Correspondent Committee has demanded that the government bring to book all the culprits in the attack on Tiwari as well as in other assaults on scribes in the state. Hemant Tiwari, president of Uttar Pradesh State Accreditation Correspondent Committee told the media that “attacks on journalists in Uttar Pradesh has increased in the last three years, be it by goons, fringe elements or the government machinery. It seems that the government is letting it happen to hide its failure. Otherwise, they intervened long back when a journalist in Mirzapur was booked for exposing scam in mid-day meal.

Tiwari added that  even though UP Chief Minister Adityanath condemned the arrest of Republic TV Editor Arnab Goswami in Maharashtra he is yet to comment on the attacks on the media in his own state, “Adityanath said that the arrest of Arnab Goswami is an assault on freedom of expression by the Congress party and its allies, but he never utters a single word on attacks on journalists in UP.” 

Meanwhile another journalist languishing behind bars in Uttar Pradesh got a small breather after 49 days in jail. Malayalam journalist Siddique Kappan,who was arrested on October 5 when he was enroute to Hathras, to report on the alleged gang rape and death of a Dalit woman had to move heaven an earth to be allowed to speak to a lawyer.

According to a report in the Print, after 49 days in custody, and after  a petition in the Supreme Court, an application before the magistrate in Mathura, another application in the SC, Kappan was allowed a brief phone call with a lawyer. Advocate Wills Mathews, who is the lawyer for the Kerala Union of Working Journalists (KUWJ)  confirmed to The Print that he finally got a phone call from him Tuesday, “around 4-5 pm, Siddique Kappan contacted me from the jail. We talked for almost 5 minutes. I found him to be healthy and okay. I enquired about his welfare. He said he is getting medicines, food and that everything is alright. He sounded fine.” On October 4, Kappan had  informed the news portal Azhimukham, where he is  a regular contributor, that he would go to Hathras the next morning to report. However, he was arrested at a toll plaza in Mathura along with three others.

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Will Uttar Pradesh police leave Prashant Kanojia alone now?

The post Freedom of Press in UP: Journalists killed, attacked, arrested, not allowed to talk to lawyer appeared first on SabrangIndia.

The post Press Freedom Under Severe Attack in Bastar appeared first on SabrangIndia.

Press Freedom Under Severe Attack in Bastar 

The Chhattisgarh police recently detained three journalists- Siddharthya Roy, a journalist working with The Diplomat, veteran journalist Kamal Shukla and video journalist Bhushan Choudhari. All three had travelled to Narayanpur to cover the run-up to the state Assembly elections scheduled for November 12. They were detained for eight hours. And only let off after significant pressure from human rights activists across the country.

Narayanpur is part of Bastar in Chhattisgarh and has been a hot-bed of Naxalite activity.

What do the people of Bastar want?
In an exclusive chat with Sabrang, Kamal Shukla talks to us about his experience, and clarifies misconceptions around the electoral process in Bastar. He also talks about the challenges villagers face and myths around the notion of ‘development’ in the area.

पुलिसिया वातावरण में पत्रकारिता : कमल शुक्ल

It must be noted that earlier this year, Kamal Shukla was booked on charges of sedition, adding him to the long list of journalists against whom the Chhattisgarh government has slapped spurious sedition charges.

Kamal Shukla starts by asking a basic question that is central to enforcing democratic institutions in the region, he says it is important to ask what do the people of Bastar want, “Do they want to get connected to the democratic systems/ institutions? Do they consider themselves citizens of India?”

In this connection he recollects the experience of his journey to the remote villages of Chhattisgarh, usually disconnected from the imagination of ‘development’ in the name of ‘Naxalite activity.’

“A couple of years ago, the people were hesitant to talk to journalists. But this time they surrounded us to talk to us,” noted Shukla while vividly describing every small detail.

He says, when he reached the villages, the people asked if he and the others had come as a representative of the government of India.

“If you have come as a representative then please send across our message that we want to participate in the elections, we want to vote,” they said. But they lamented, “The polling booths should be close to where we stay. Why do they ask us to travel 40-50 kilometres [in order to vote]?”

Shukla strongly feels that booth shifting is a mechanism to completely destroy the democratic institutions of the region and strongly claims in that Adivasis are indeed interested in casting their votes.
“It’s completely false to say that the areas in which Maoists are active, voting doesn’t happen or that people aren’t interested to vote.”

Shukla says that as people start talking, they complain that there are so many issues; the roads are in dilapidated condition, no school teacher comes to teach in the schools. However, these find no mention in the contesting parties’ manifestos. All manifestos talk about construction of roads, that too not for the villagers but for the armed forces to be conveniently able to travel inside.

“It’s the government that’s preventing people from becoming a part of the democracy —- and the mainstream,” he alleges.

“Interestingly the people who said this (demanded to vote) were the same young boys and girls who had even been captured on accusations of naxalism. If they were with the Maoists then why would they put forth such a demand?” asks Shukla.

He highlights the issue of false cases, in which police issues a press release about a certain Adivasi saying how they are Maoists. However, in 98% of such cases people are acquitted.

Shukla’s trysts with Police at Narayanpur
He relates the experience to how they were treated when they went to Narayanpur, “When we were stopped in Narayanpur, our cameras were snatched away in an unconstitutional manner.”Despite showing their identity documents to the police, they weren’t allowed to go and were informed that the police officials were waiting for some ‘senior officer’. The guest reporter, Siddharthya Roy, asked them to take them to these ‘higher officials.’ They were then taken to the Superintendent of Police’s (SP) office only by 9 pm after significant amount of pressure. The data from their memory cards was copied and a recovery software was run to find deleted files. They were repeatedly told that if they had sought permission then they would not have to face such problems.  Needless to say that nowhere in the world are journalists expected to take permission from any authorities to report from the ground.

In this context, Shukla recalls an interesting conversation with the SP from this visit.

SP Jiten Shukla: “You know, the journalists of Narayanpur are very good..they work as per our wishes”

Kamal Shukla: “Sir can you elaborate, how?”

SP Jiten Shukla: “Whatever we say they comply by it, agree to it”

A media Black hole
“I would say the condition of media in Bastar is that there is no media! There is the local media which reports from the ground. No established media houses want to give the journalists of Bastar a decent salary. Hence they have to work like contractors, they need to find other sources of livelihood,” said Shukla while talking about the plight of the local journalists.

“They have a lot of compulsions and work under a lot of pressures, they can’t defy the police,” he adds.

Shukla feels that the journalists in Bastar don’t have an alternative. Interestingly, he says, the news is always about the two development blocks in Narayanpur. If one pays attention to the stories from this area, only these two blocks are mentioned, there’s no mention of Abujhmad villages, another area in which the Naxalites are active.

“Since there is no media in these villages, the political parties don’t even go in these areas to campaign,” he adds.

This has led to a complete isolation of the people from these villages from the democractic procedures and mechanisms. “You have kept an entire population away from the ‘festival of democracy’ then how can you say that the people are not interested to vote?

Highlighting the existing conditions, he says that the Abujhmad area has not been surveyed, number of people, voters etc. isn’t known to the government.

Contrary to ‘popular’ perception, that Naxalites seem to be coercing villagers into not voting, Shukla says, “It is totally wrong to say that because of Naxalites’ boycott of the elections, people of Bastar don’t cast their votes.”

“Government shouldn’t approach the people only when they need votes, they should go otherwise too,” he adds.

He feels the best way to deal with this is to “implement constitution”. He adds that government has not shown any interest in implementing the PESA, 5^th Schedule or 6^th Schedule in these villages.
Shukla comes to a conclusion that the situation is not fit in Bastar to have a democratic and fair election.

“Governance had been removed from villages and shifted towards cities while the villages have been militarised and more and more armed forces have been left even in the interiors and remote corners.”
 

Related:
https://sabrangindia.in/article/election-watch-chhattisgarh-nobody-knows-modi-raman-singh-or-development-remote-areas
https://sabrangindia.in/article/election-watch-chhattisgarh-no-media-no-news-only-evms-and-governments
 

The post With press freedom under attack, are elections in Bastar truly democratic? appeared first on SabrangIndia.

Image: Atlantic

Pipeline guards unleashed pepper spray and dogs on the land and water defenders. Democracy Now! video showed one of the attack dogs with blood dripping from its nose and mouth. The video went viral, attracting more than 14 million views on Facebook alone. Five days later, North Dakota issued the arrest warrant.

When responding to an arrest warrant, one must surrender to the jail by about 8 a.m. if one hopes to see a judge that day and avoid a night in jail. So we planned to broadcast live from 7-8 a.m., then head to the jail promptly at 8 a.m. to get processed through the jail and fight the trespass charge in court.

To our surprise, as we landed in Bismarck on Friday, we learned that the prosecutor, Ladd Erickson, had dropped the trespass charge, but filed a new one: “riot.” We were stunned. In an email to both the prosecutor and our defense attorney, Tom Dickson, Judge John Grinsteiner wrote, “The new complaints, affidavits, and summons are quite lengthy and I will review those for probable cause on Monday when I get back into the office.” We were told by several lawyers familiar with North Dakota criminal law that judges almost never reject a prosecutor’s complaint. The arraignment was set for 1:30 p.m. local time, Monday.

We spent the weekend reporting on the controversial Dakota Access Pipeline, with the threat of the riot charge never far from our minds. The 1,100-mile-long, $3.8 billion pipeline is designed to carry almost 500,000 barrels of crude oil from the fracking oil fields of North Dakota to Illinois, then onward to the Gulf of Mexico. That is why thousands of people have been at the resistance camps where the Dakota Access Pipeline is slated to cross under the Missouri River. If the pipeline leaks there, the fresh-water supply for millions of people downstream will be polluted.

Morton County Sheriff Kyle Kirchmeier runs the jail in Mandan and is responsible for how people are processed there. As the protests have mounted during the past six months, Kirchmeier and the local prosecutors have been leveling more and more serious charges against the land and water protectors, with an increasing number of felony charges. More than 140 people have been arrested so far. Those we spoke to told us a shocking detail: When getting booked at the jail, they were all strip searched, forced to “squat and cough” to demonstrate they had nothing hidden in their rectums, then were put in orange jumpsuits. The treatment was the same for Chairman of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe Dave Archambault, to a pediatrician from the reservation, Dr. Sara Jumping Eagle, to actress Shailene Woodley, star of the films “Divergent” and “Snowden,” among others.

I asked Chairman Archambault if strip searching was common for low-level misdemeanors. “I wouldn’t know, because that was the first time I ever got arrested,” he replied. Dr. Jumping Eagle remarked, “It made me think about my ancestors, and what they had gone through.” Shailene Woodley told us, “Never did it cross my mind that while trying to protect clean water, trying to ensure a future where our children have access to an element essential for human survival, would I be strip searched. I was just shocked.”

As we prepared to enter the courthouse for the 1:30 p.m. arraignment on Monday, 200 people rallied in support of a free press, demanding the charges be dropped. A row of close to 60 riot police were lined up in a needless display of force in front of a peaceful gathering, threatening to arrest anyone who stepped off the curb. Then word came from our lawyer: The judge had refused to sign off on the riot charge. The case was dismissed, and we marked an important victory for a free press.

The free press should now focus a fierce spotlight on the standoff at Standing Rock—a critical front in the global struggle to combat global warming and fight for climate justice. Indigenous people and their non-native allies are confronting corporate power, backed up by the state with an increasingly militarized police force. Attempts to criminalize nonviolent land and water defenders, humiliate them and arrest journalists should not pave the way for this pipeline.

(This article was first published on Democracy Now. To see the full coverage of  this topic, click here.)

Also read: Judge rejects "Riot" Charges against Amy Goodman in North Dakota

The post On Strip Searches and Press Freedom in North Dakota appeared first on SabrangIndia.

The editor of The Milli Gazette, Dr Zafarul-Islam Khan has alleged that the Modi government is hounding his publication and has launched a multi-pronged attack in an attempt to shut it down. While the community-oriented publication has tottered on the brink since inception for lack of adequate response and support from Muslims, the government moves, Dr Khan fears, are aimed at pushing it over the precipice.

On March 12 this year, The Milli Gazette published a news report filed by a freelance journalist, Pushp Sharma. Basing himself on one of the documents he had received from the Union Ayush Ministry in response to an RTI query, Sharma claimed that in its recruitment, the ministry had discriminated against Muslims.  

The ministry issued a press statement the same day claiming that the document Sharma relied on for his report was “fabricated” and that the report was “clearly aimed at causing chasm between different sections of society and promoting disharmony and mistrust with ulterior motives”.

In an email received by SabrangIndia, Dr Khan maintains that though the publication stood by the report it was “all-along ready to publish a rejoinder, statement or clarification should the ministry send it to us.” The ministry, however, chose to file a police complaint.

“As a result, the journalist (Pushp Sharma), who wrote that story, was mercilessly interrogated for days and later arrested and jailed for around two weeks. Now he is out on bail while the case takes its normal slow course in courts”.

While the case against Sharma follows its own course, Dr Khan alleges that the Press Council and the Delhi police are out to get the publication itself. The show cause notice issued to The Milli Gazette by the Delhi police is a step towards the declaration of the publication as illegal.

Set up by the Indian Parliament in 1966, the Press Council of India is a regulatory body with the power to censure a publication at worst. The Council’s suo motu action against The Milli Gazette, Dr Khan alleges is “unprecedented” as “an authority supposedly created to protect the freedom of press, was in fact throttling that same cherished freedom”.   

Here is the full text of the email sent out by Dr Khan:

During the 17 years of our existence, The Milli Gazette has faced many threats and challenges. I myself have received numerous death threats. MG’s continued losses, dwindling subscriptions due to our own website and a disinterest by the community too have been our problems which forced us twice to think of closing down MG though on second and third thoughts we refrained from taking such a drastic step knowing very well that, however feeble, our community needs this voice in English more than at any time in the past and this voice mattered not only in India but across the world.

Now, since March 12 this year, we are facing an existential threat from the Modi government following our publication of a report on discrimination against Muslims in the Ayush ministry recruitments based on an RTI reply which the said ministry denied.

It could have sent a rejoinder or, at worst, could have complained to the concerned regulatory authority, the Press Council of India in case we refused to publish its rejoinder. We were all-along ready to publish a rejoinder, statement or clarification should the ministry send it to us. Instead, it chose to file a police complaint.

As a result, the journalist (Pushp Sharma), who wrote that story, was mercilessly interrogated for days and later arrested and jailed for around two weeks. Now he is out on bail while the case takes its normal slow course in courts.

Soon, on April 21, the Press Council of India took suo motu cognisance and opened a case against The Milli Gazette. This action was unprecedented as an authority supposedly created to protect the freedom of press, was in fact throttling that same cherished freedom. We have replied to PCI’s letter and the case continues. Our next hearing at the PCI is on July 12.

A third bolt came from the Delhi police (directly controlled by the Union home ministry) when DCP Licensing wrote to us on May 30 as to why our newspaper declaration should not be cancelled. Cancellation of the declaration means the newspaper will become illegal. We replied without fail to this show-cause notice and are still waiting for further clarifications from the DCP Licensing despite the passage of over three weeks on our hand-delivered reply.

All these drastic steps were taken to deal with an ordinary report which could have been tackled through a press statement like the one CBI issued on 15 June this year describing a Times of India report about CBI’s soft-pedalling over the Vyapam scandal. The CBI issued a press statement the same day saying the report is “speculative & presumptuous and hence, is strongly denied.” Strong words indeed, but we are not aware if CBI, PCI or DCP Licensing have sprung into action against the Times of India. Do we have two standards: one for small publications and another for big giants?

This three-pronged attack on MG simply shows the desperation of the Modi government to silence this little nagging bird. We are fighting and will continue to fight against this injustice through all legal venues open to us. But should the Modi government succeed in silencing this feeble voice, we will call it a day and will leave it to history to remember this as yet another colossal injustice to the freedom of Press the like of which was inflicted by the colonial rulers on Maulana Azad’s Al-Balagh and Muhammad Ali’s Hamdard and Comrade.  

The post ‘Modi Government is after the Milli Gazette’: Dr Zafarul-Islam Khan, Editor appeared first on SabrangIndia.