Indian cartoonist jailed for images criticizing government
New York, September 10, 2012–Indian authorities should immediately drop all of the charges against cartoonist Aseem Trivedi and release him from detention, the Committee to Protect Journalists said today.Police in Maharashtra state arrested Trivedi, a 25-year-old freelancer from India’s central Uttar Pradesh state, on Saturday, according to news reports. The cartoonist faces charges of sedition,…
News media expand, but freedom lags in Kashmir
Early this month, newspaper offices in Indian-controlled Kashmir received a note warning journalists to be more supportive of the Kashmir independence movement, according to the leading national daily, The Times of India, citing a news agency in the state’s summer capital, Srinagar. No militants took responsibility this time, but in mid-March insurgent groups issued a joint…
India’s clumsy Internet crackdown
Indian Internet advocates and journalists are in an uproar this week over the news that the government has blocked access to around 300 websites, pages, and social media accounts in an effort to quell communal violence in the turbulent northeast. The rationale is that inflammatory online content has fanned tensions between Muslims and non-Muslims in…
Militants attack Indian journalist’s house in Manipur
New York, August 14, 2012–Indian authorities should immediately investigate a grenade attack that targeted a prominent local journalist on Saturday, the Committee to Protect Journalists said today. No one was injured in the attack, which came in the wake of death threats made by local insurgents against editors, according to news reports.
Indian newspaper editor shot, in critical condition
New York, July 16, 2012–Authorities must immediately investigate Sunday’s attack on Tongam Rina, a journalist for a local Indian daily, and ensure the perpetrators are brought to justice, the Committee to Protect Journalists said today. Rina was in critical condition today in a local hospital, according to news reports.
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…