Issue No. 603
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12 - 18 September 2002 Issue No. 603 International |
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Muzzling the press
Following the release of a documentary exposing top officials in the act of accepting bribes, the Indian government has cracked down hard on journalists, reports Shaikh Azizur Rahman from New Delhi
United, and in a rare show of solidarity, journalists in India are accusing the government of waging a campaign to squelch news reports that are critical of the ruling coalition.
At a meeting in New Delhi this month, which was followed by street protests, top newspaper reporters and editors from across the country accused the ruling National Democratic Alliance (NDA) of trying to muzzle the press because of the criticism it has levelled against the government.
The journalists' move followed the jailing of a correspondent of a Kashmir daily, the detention of an investigative reporter of an Internet publication, and curbs on coverage of a recent visit by the new Indian president to Gujarat, where Hindu-Muslim riots broke out early this year.
Other assaults on the freedom of the press included the arrest and imprisonment of Iftikhar Ali Geelani. Geelani, the New Delhi bureau chief of the Indian daily The Kashmir Times and correspondent for the Pakistani newspaper The Nation, has allegedly violated India's Official Secrets Act. Additionally, Aniruddha Bahal, a reporter from the Indian Internet portal Tehelka was put in detention for a day for allegedly assaulting a government investigator.
After raiding Geelani's residence in New Delhi, police said, they found sufficient evidence to sue him for spying for Pakistan, a charge The Kashmir Times editor Prabodh Jamwal rejects as a "total fabrication".
Geelani was in possession of "lots of military secrets", police said, while arresting him.
Sources at the home ministry say that they found figures for Indian forces in Kashmir for the years 1992, 1993 and 1995, in the journalist's computer. Geelani told the police that he accessed the information from a 1997 US State Department Report.
Reporters Without Borders, in a letter to US Secretary of State Colin L Powell just before his visit to India last month, said Mr Geelani had been arrested "solely because of his coverage of the Kashmir conflict in which he criticised the Indian government".
In another recent incident, India's media was left stunned when Gujarat state authorities restricted media coverage of Indian President APJ Abdul Kalam's meeting with a group of Muslim survivors of the Hindu-Muslim riots that left more than 2,000 Muslims dead. The local government said the media was restricted due to "lack of space". But journalists called it "yet another assault on the media".
Many editors believe that recent instances of government intolerance are indications of a well - concerted campaign against the media. Even the foreign media has been targeted by the government.
The India correspondent for TV network, Al-Jazeera, was asked to leave the country last month, reportedly because the government objected to his coverage of the recent Gujarat riots.
In June, TIME magazine New Delhi correspondent, Alex Perry, a British national, was heckled by passport officials following an unflattering report on Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee's mental and physical health. The prime minister's office openly criticised the story. A few days later, Indian passport officials questioned Perry at length over some "irregularities" in his passport. Interestingly enough, the officials finally did not file any charges against Perry.
Venkat Narayan, president of the New Delhi based Foreign Correspondents' Club of South Asia, said: "Such moves by the government threaten to ruin India's reputation as a country where the press is truly free."
Although the Tehelka reporter Aniruddha Bahal was detained recently for only a day, his company has been complaining for months of a systematic campaign of harassment. Tehelka says its journalists are being hounded by several government agencies simply because they dared expose an arms bribery scandal involving top politicians, severely embarrassing the government.
Bahal, who secretly filmed a Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader, and top army officers taking a bribe, said during the demonstration that he found the BJP "dangerous and duplicitous".
"It is very concerned about managing perceptions, so it bends over backwards to give the impression of respecting press freedom, but in reality it is extremely intolerant of criticism."
Last month, the Indian government alleged that Tehelka's investigative reportage "Operation West End" was funded by sources in West Asia, and "unknown persons" were benefiting from the sting. In "Operation West End" Tehelka journalists had posed as Indian agents of an international arms dealer, successfully bribing politicians and top army officers with cash and prostitutes-while filming the whole operation.
"It was not a journalistic endeavour, but a commercial venture using sensationalism to catch the attention of the public," said the additional solicitor general, Kirit Raval.
George Fernandes, the Indian defence minister, described the expose as a "sham" and said that its results were only helping Pakistan and demoralising Indian troops.
Top media representatives, however, begged to disagree. Press Council of India chairman, Justice P B Sawant, said that Tehelka's undercover operation was conducted in the public interest and did not infringe on anyone's right to privacy. "If the means were used ultimately in the public interest, then they are justified."
Opposition parties also strongly criticise the NDA for its attitude to the media. "Culprits will not be investigated, but investigators will be investigated -- this is the policy of the BJP government. The government is slowly but surely baring its semi-fascist fangs, we can't be mute spectators to this slaughter of the media," said Congress Party spokesman Jaipal Reddy.
Last week, the Delhi Union of Journalists submitted a memorandum asking the government to help preserve the freedom of the media and stop overt and covert ways of stifling dissent.
Many now feel that news organisations will think twice before investigating government corruption. Tehelka journalists say that they are the ones being hounded, while none of the culprits were punished or even charged.
Bahal said "The government keeps invoking phantom conspiracies, tries to find some dubious aspect to our work or accuses us of 'destabilising' the country. It's crazy. We don't even know how to begin rebutting these Kafkaesque fantasies."
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