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.
US should address press freedom during talks with India
Dear Secretary Clinton: We are writing in advance of the third India-U.S. Strategic Dialogue coming up on June 13, which you will co-chair in Washington, D.C., with Indian External Affairs Minister S.M. Krishna. India is host to a vital and thriving news media, but CPJ has documented several violations against Indian journalists that are undermining the country’s tradition of a free press.
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…
Charges against Indian video journalist must be dropped
New York, May 25, 2012–Local authorities in India must drop the criminal charges filed against video journalist Mukesh Rajak, an apparent attempt to prevent him from reporting on local government expenditures, the Committee to Protect Journalists said today.
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…
Video: Getting Away With Murder
CPJ’s María Salazar-Ferro names the 12 countries where journalists are murdered regularly and governments fail to solve the crimes. Where are leaders failing to uphold the law? Where are conditions getting better? And where is free expression in danger? (4:46) Read CPJ’s 2012 Impunity Index. And visit our Global Campaign Against Impunity and see how…
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.
Mumbai police, media have failed Jyotirmoy Dey
New Delhi-based Tehelka weekly news magazine has published a scathing indictment of the police investigation into the 2011 killing of Mumbai crime reporter Jyotirmoy Dey–and of the Indian media’s coverage of it. Beneath the allegations and the rumors, we still don’t know exactly why he was killed, while the self-confessed mastermind is a fugitive from…