Your Excellency: The Committee to Protect Journalists and Human Rights Watch are writing jointly to protest the prosecution of Vineet Narain, founding editor of the New Delhi-based investigative journal Kalchakra. Narain faces contempt of court charges in Jammu and Kashmir State, where he says his life would be in serious danger. We urge you to order an immediate inquiry into possible political motivations behind Narain’s prosecution, and to provide him with appropriate protection if he is required to appear in court in Jammu.
Your Excellency: The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) is dismayed by last week’s brutal attack against journalists in Kashmir by members of India’s Border Security Force (BSF). We are encouraged by the apparently swift and thorough BSF investigation, and hope that it will yield concrete results.
New York, May 10, 2001 — Seventeen journalists were attacked today by Indian security forces as they attempted to cover a funeral procession in the troubled Kashmir region. The incident occurred in Magam, a town about 17 miles (28 kilometers) north of the state capital, Srinagar. Three of the journalists were hospitalized and thousands of…
DESPITE PRESS FREEDOM ADVANCES ACROSS ASIA IN RECENT YEARS, totalitarian regimes in Burma, China, North Korea, Vietnam, and Laos maintained their stranglehold on the media. Even democratic Asian governments sometimes used authoritarian tactics to control the press, particularly when faced with internal conflict. Sri Lanka, for instance, imposed harsh censorship regulations during the year in…
INDIAN JOURNALISTS ARE JUSTIFIABLY PROUD OF THEIR FREEDOM, which remained largely intact last year despite ongoing sectarian and political violence, and a general climate of intolerance that has worsened under the leadership of the ruling Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). Journalists in India’s urban centers, especially those who work for the powerful English-language national…
Your Excellency: The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) is deeply disturbed by the August 26 bombing attack on the offices of two publications in Imphal, Manipur. The attack comes just one week after newspaper editor Thounaojam Brajamani Singh was assassinated on the streets of Imphal.
Your Excellency: The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) is deeply disturbed by the imprisonment of Nongthonbam Biren, chief editor of the Manipuri-language daily Naharolgi Thoudang, and Thounaojam Iboyaima, the author of a speech recently published in the newspaper.
By Kavita Menon and A. Lin NeumannMuch of Asia remained hostile to a free, independent media, despite the growing consensus that Asian political and economic stability depends in great measure on governments’ willingness to improve transparency and lift restrictions on the press. In China, Burma, Vietnam, and even Malaysia, government suppression of the media is…