Sumit Galhotra/CPJ Asia Program Research Associate

Sumit Galhotra is the research associate for CPJ's Asia program. He served as CPJ's inaugural Steiger Fellow and has worked for CNN International, Amnesty International USA, and Human Rights Watch. He has reported from London, India, and Israel and the Occupied Territories, and specializes in human rights and South Asia.

Big businesses attempt to muzzle critical reporting in India

This month Keya Acharya is responding to a nine-page legal notice demanding she pay 1 billion rupees ($16.3 million) over her article on India’s rose industry. Her legal troubles are a window on to a pattern of how big businesses are using India’s outdated defamation laws to silence criticism of their operations.

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Conditions increasingly restrictive for foreign correspondents in China

When China hosted the summer Olympics in 2008 it promised greater press freedom, but six years later conditions for international journalists are increasingly more restrictive, as evidenced by a report released today by the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of China.

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Ahmed Rilwan Abdulla, pictured with his mother Aminath Easa, went missing on August 8, 2014. (Ya'sha Adnan)

Minivan News reporter Ahmed Rilwan Abdulla missing for one month

Today marks one month since Ahmed Rilwan Abdulla, a reporter for the independent news website Minivan News, disappeared. Friends, family, and colleagues believe he was abducted.

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A protester enters the newsroom of the state-run Pakistan Television which was stormed on Monday. (AFP/Aamir Qureshi)

Threats and attacks against press amid political crisis in Pakistan

The ongoing political crisis in Pakistan turned deadly over the weekend with three protesters dead and at least 500 wounded in the capital, Islamabad. As is often the case, the press was not spared from violence, with dozens of journalists covering the rally injured by police or protesters, according to news reports and the Pakistan…

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Journalists surround Bangladeshi Attorney General Mahbubey Alam following a verdict at the International Crimes Tribunal court premises in Dhaka on January 21, 2013. (AFP/Munir uz Zaman)

Restrictive broadcast policy in Bangladesh raises concerns

This week, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s cabinet approved a restrictive policy governing Bangladesh’s broadcast media. While the policy calls for the creation of an independent commission to oversee electronic media–a positive step, in principle–it’s unclear how and how quickly the commission will be formed. Meanwhile, the policy restricts what can be broadcast, raising red flags.

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Blasphemy charges, threats loom for outspoken journalist in Pakistan

Forty-nine year-old magazine editor and publisher Shoaib Adil fled his home in the eastern city of Lahore last month and went into hiding with his wife and children. Adil faces threats and possible charges of blasphemy–a crime punishable by life imprisonment or death–in connection with a book he published in 2007, written by a judge…

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Slideshow: Raising awareness on India’s troubling Internet laws

Today, the Global Network Initiative launched a campaign to raise awareness on India’s Internet laws. The GNI, of which CPJ is a founding member, is a coalition of technology companies–including Facebook, Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo–and human rights groups and Internet freedom advocates.  The coalition, in collaboration with the Internet and Mobile Association of India, has…

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Blogger Roy Ngerng, shown at a June 2013 protest against licensing regulations on news websites, has been fired from his job in health-care since being accused of defamation by the prime minister. (Reuters/Edgar Su)

In Singapore, blogger under pressure, CPF under scrutiny

A critical Singaporean blogger continues to suffer financial and legal pressure because of a blog post that allegedly accused the city-state’s prime minister, Lee Hsien Loong, of corruption. The episode is part of a disturbing pattern of government legal and financial pressure on critics, but it is also a lesson in how censorship can backfire.

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Worrisome curbs on free speech emerge since Modi’s election

Earlier this month, Indian authorities arrested seven people for publishing a photo of India’s new prime minister, Narendra Modi, alongside figures such as George W. Bush, Osama bin Laden, and Adolf Hitler, under the headline, “Negative Faces.” The seven, who could face lengthy prison terms if convicted, are but the latest Indians facing criminal proceedings…

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When Pakistan’s largest news channel becomes the news

Today, Pakistan’s most watched news channel, Geo News, was ordered off the air and fined by the Pakistan Electronic Media Regulatory Authority (PEMRA). Earlier this week, CPJ documented an attack on Zafar Aheer, an editor of the Urdu-language Daily Jang, by six masked men–the latest in a series of attacks, threats, and acts of intimidation…

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