Actions on NewsClick surpass some of the most brazen and high-handed methods adopted in Kashmir. The charges in the FIR are not only vague, but also aimed at casting a wider net with an intent to rope in many other journalists, activists, academics, and lawyers – anybody seen as a dissenter by a paranoid state.
https://thewire.in/media/newsclick-lessons-from-the-kashmir-template
Last week’s attacks are not in isolation. They are a part of coordinated targeting of journalists across India that has been happening for a while. But the egregious scale of the operation, which continues and whose exact magnitude we are still not aware of, shows that the government is trying to put into top gear its systemic mechanism of muzzling the press, human rights defenders and other dissenters.
Press freedom in India has been under severe strain under the Narendra Modi regime with journalists being criminalised and surveilled, and news outlets being crushed into silence or being taken over by government friendly powerful business houses, besides the co-option of news outlets to turn them into vehicles of government propaganda, fake news, disinformation, hate speech and vilification campaign of dissenters. This year, India slipped to the 161st rank among 180 countries in the World Press Freedom Index. According to Free Speech Collective, 16 Indian journalists have been charged under UAPA, and seven are currently behind the bars. Reporters San Frontier, last year, declared India as one of the most dangerous countries for journalists.
08/10/2023