Reporters Without Borders (RSF) said it is zooming in on Manipur, โwhere press freedom violations are on the rise and where journalists are increasingly being persecuted by the local government, parliament and judiciaryโ.
RSF said this days after Grace Jajo, a freelance reporter, who often covers debates in Manipurโs Legislative Assembly in Imphal, was prevented from entering the press gallery during the recent Assembly session over a Facebook post, sharing an article published by a local news website.
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The Paris-based watchdog called on the local authorities to stop trying to โintimidate reportersโ.
Grace Jajo is a freelance reporter who often covers debates in Manipurโs legislative assembly in the stateโs capital, Imphal, and who had a pass for the press gallery. But, on 22 February, โthe security guards came for me, threatening to evict me by forceโ she told RSF.
โAt one point, I was surrounded by armed guards on all sides (โฆ) I was totally shocked.โ
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After confiscating her pass and escorting her to the exit, โthey said they had an order to not let me in,โ Jajo said, โI asked to see the order but the order never came. While I waited, they treated me very badly, insulted me and finally asked me to vacate the entrance.โ
The next day, Jajo learned that the assemblyโs secretariat was accusing her of โintentionally trying to malign the official procedureโ and โbreach of privilegeโ โ a charge inherited from the colonial era that is supposed to protect the legislature from a threat to its independence.
โThe pretext was her Facebook post sharing an article that a local news website, The Frontier Manipur, had published on 20 February, in which it exercised its right to respond to the accusations of โbreach of privilegeโ and โcontempt of the Houseโ that the assemblyโs secretariat had brought against the site in connection with one of its articles. The article, about an address that Manipur chief minister Nongthombam Biren Singh had delivered to the assembly, took all of its information from an official press release,โ the RSF said.
โGrace Jajo was humiliated despite having all the necessary journalistic credentials,โ The Frontier Manipur executive editor Paojel Chaoba told RSF.
โShe was not given any explanation for not being allowed to enter the assembly. It was a shoot-first-ask-questions-later situation.โ
โBy using such methods to target journalists it doesnโt like, the assemblyโs secretariat is behaving in an absolutely unacceptable manner for an institution that claims to safeguard democracy,โ said Daniel Bastard, the head of RSFโs Asia-Pacific desk.
โWe call on assembly speaker Yumnam Khemchand Singh to immediately drop the absurd proceedings against Grace Jajo and The Frontier Manipur. And more generally, in the light of the steady decline in press freedom in Manipur, we caution chief minister N. Biren Singh against any future violation of journalistsโ rights and we remind him that he used to be a reporter before he entered politics,โ Bastard said.
On the day that Jajo was notified of the charges against her, February 23, two other journalists, Kirmil Soraisam, the director of the 7Salai news site, and Rabi Takhellambam, one of his reporters, were arrested on a โfake newsโ accusation over a small error in a story that had been quickly corrected.
They were released on bail three days later but are now charged with disturbing public order, criminal intimidation and defamation, RSF said.
Chaoba and one of his editors, Dhiran Sadokpam, were arrested a month before, on January 17, and were held overnight after The Frontier Manipur published an op-ed about the โarmed revolutionary movementโ in Manipur.
In a press release on December 1, RSF defended another target of the judicial harassment to which The Frontier Manipur is being subjected.
โIt was one of its journalists, video presenter Kishorechandra Wangkem, who had been held for the past two months. He was freed on bail ten days later but continues to be the target of constant judicial harassment. He has repeatedly been arrested since 2018, when he criticized Manipurโs chief minister and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, both members of the Bharatiya Janata Party, the ruling party at national and state level,โ RSF said.
โEven talking about press freedom is becoming problematic,โ RSF said.
After Wangkem dedicated the โKhanesi Neinasiโ programme on February 16 to freedom of expression, it was threatened with judicial proceedings on March 1.
โManipurโs state government thereby became the first in India to take advantage of a new federal code of conduct for online content that gives local officials extensive powers to restrict press freedom. After a national outcry, Manipurโs authorities backed down and withdrew their threat of prosecution,โ it added.