New York, March 6, 2012–A large crowd attacked a group of about 100 Indian journalists covering local election results in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh on Tuesday and damaged their equipment, according to news reports. The journalists were forced to lock themselves in a school for several hours to protect themselves from the violence,…
New York, March 2, 2012–Ten Indian journalists were reported injured today after being attacked by a group of lawyers outside a court in the city of Bangalore, according to news reports. The Committee to Protect Journalists condemns the attack and calls on authorities to conduct an immediate investigation.
Legislation for Internet security can quickly turn into a weapon against the free press. Cybercrime laws are intended to extend existing penal codes to the online world, but they can easily be broadened to criminalize standard journalistic practices. By Danny O’Brien
Although the motives remained unconfirmed in late year, the murders of Chhattisgarh’s Umesh Rajput and Mumbai crime reporter Jyotirmoy Dey reminded colleagues of the risk of violence. India remained on CPJ’s Impunity Index, a ranking of countries in which journalists are murdered regularly and authorities fail to solve the crimes. Violent clashes between insurgents and…
Just how free should the Internet be in India? And whose job is it to police the Web? Two recent court cases turn on these questions and, more specifically, whether Internet companies have a responsibility to filter content. In a country where Internet usage is growing exponentially, but where the scars of communal violence, terrorism,…
In 2005, we deliberately violated the immigration laws of India. We broke the law by producing a documentary film even though we had entered the country on a tourist visa. We broke the law because we wanted to show that Scandinavian companies were in violation of many other laws in India.
We have been posting a lot about the challenges facing the Internet in India recently–see Mannika Chopra’s “India struggles to cope with growing Internet penetration.” On Tuesday, Angela Saini, a guest blogger on The Guardian’s Comment Is Free site, posted “Internet censorship could damage India’s democracy,” with the subhead “Google and Facebook have been asked…