Guwahati: The Campaign Against State Repression (CASR) has condemned the raids carried out by Delhi Police at midnight on the house of four editors of ‘The Wire’ and its office based in Delhi.
Delhi police carried out the searches following a complaint from BJP Spokesperson Amit Malviya pertaining to a series of articles about Malviya enjoying special censorship on the contents being published on social media company named ‘Meta’.
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Despite ‘The wire’ publishing a report, clarifying that the media agency was deceived by one of its employees into publishing factually incorrect and unsubstantiated reports pertaining to said censorship, the Crime Branch of Delhi Police raided the house of Siddharth Vardarajan, MK Venu, Sidharth Bhatia and Jahnavi Sen on October 31, followed by the seizure of their laptops, mobile phones and other electronic devices, CASR said in a statement.
‘The Wire’ is known for its critical and ethical reporting, which is doing justice to the role of media in these times and we believe that such a raid on the media personnel of ‘The wire’ is part of a larger attack on the free press, the statement added.
“It’s not new that the independent media houses, from time to time, are being terrorised by such raids. This all had increased many folds in these fascistic times, with many journalists being subjected to incarceration and extra-judicial killings,” it added.
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The widespread attacks on press freedom from J&K to Tripura are an indicator of the continuing deterioration of civic space in the country.
The Enforcement Directorate (ED) on February 9, 2021, raided the Delhi office and residences of the owners and journalists associated with the independent media portal NewsClick.in.
Sources close to the company said that the immediate trigger was the extensive coverage of the farmers’ protests by the media outlet as it had garnered several million views
The CBI raid of NDTV is also an example of the witch hunt planned by the government. Apart from this, there are many cases being filed in Gujarat by the Adani Group on the journalists reporting on the illegitimate activities of the Corporate.
The Adani Group has mounted a defamation case against freelance journalist Ravi Nair who is based in Delhi.
Similar is the case of Jharkhand-based independent journalist Rupesh Kumar Singh, who has been booked under UAPA for allegedly aiding the ‘Maoist Leadership’.
He has been vocal on the issue of corporate loot of resources through militarisation in tribal areas of Jharkhand and its impact on people’s lives.
“Brahmanical Hindutva Fascist State is forcing the journalists to either join the cacophony of the state’s propaganda or else they are silenced. Curtailing of press freedom is part of larger campaign to control India by fuelling anti-people hate propaganda,” the CSAR said.
The mainstream pro-Hindutva media is involved in broadcasting the primetime based on targeting the oppressed minorities, oppressed sections, activists and public intellectuals based on the cooked evidence.
This led to the pogroms as had happened in Delhi last year, there is no action taken on these media houses whereas fact-checking journalists like Mohammad Zubair of Alt news are being booked under various falsified charges.
Those very few media outlets and freelancers who are still raising democratic voices are being targeted.
Finally, it must be noted that branding and targeting journalists to demoralise and demonise them is a tactic that the State is deploying with increasing frequency and intensity. Be it in the arrest of academics, activists, lawyers, journalists and poets in the Elgaar Parishad-Bhima Koregaon case or the incarceration of Journalist Rupesh Kumar Singh, Siddiqui Kappan, Fahad Shah of ‘Kasmir Walla’, Asif Sultan and now several more, it is evident that the State is becoming more and more intolerant of any critical voice or dissent.
At such times, it is imperative that democratic and progressive voices speak out, else risk being silenced forever.
CSAR urged democratic and progressive organizations and individuals to condemn this raid on Journalists of ‘the wire’ and stand in defence of Democratic and pro-people Journalism.
CSAR Demands:
1. Stop the witch-hunt against journalists of ‘The Wire’.
2. Stop harassing journalists and attacking independent media houses.
3. Release all pro-people and democratic journalists.
4. The media trials ahead of the judicial trials, purposefully done to demonize the activists, journalists, academics and other oppressed and exploited sections must be stopped immediately.