CPJ promotes press freedom worldwide and defends the right of journalists to report the news without fear of reprisal.
Dangerous Pursuit: Jagendra Singh and Journalist Murders in India from Committee to Protect Journalists on Vimeo.
Since 1992, 40 journalists have been killed for their work in India. 27 were murdered. None have been brought to justice.
UN right-to-internet resolution opposed by India:
A resolution by the United Nations to make web access a basic human right has been opposed by India, as well as China, Russia, Saudi Arabia and South Africa. These countries are particularly opposed to a specific part of the resolution that “condemns unequivocally measures to intentionally prevent or disrupt access to or dissemination of information online” and calls for all countries to refrain from such measures.
The UN resolution, while non-binding, still provides a strong statement that governments should refrain from blocking internet access and online freedom of speech, and a welcome support for digital rights advocates worldwide.
Unknown men today shot Rajdev Ranjan at close range, according to press reports. Ranjan, the Hindi national daily newspaper Hindustan’s bureau chief for Siwan, in the central Indian state of Bihar, was hit in the head and the chest, killing him, according to local media. Police told reporters the motive in his murder was not yet clear, but said they were not ruling out organized criminal groups as suspects.
How do we know when a photographer caters to life and not to some previous prejudice?
One clue is when the picture evades compositional cliché. But there is also the question of what the photograph is for, what role it plays within the economic circulation of images. Some photographs […] are freer of the censorship of the market. Others are taken only to elicit particular conventional responses — images that masquerade as art but fully inhabit the vocabulary of advertising. As Justice Potter Stewart said when pressed to define hard-core pornography in 1964, “I know it when I see it.”
The violence over the tightening of laws banning the consumption of beef in parts of India and debate over the reach of a right-wing Hindu agenda are having an impact on press freedom. An editor who wrote about the benefits of beef was fired last week, journalists have received death threats from extremist groups, and writers have handed back awards in protest of what they see as the government’s failure to address a rising tide of intolerance.
Image: Altaf Qadri
Jagendra Singh, Freelance
Murdered: June 8, 2015, in Shahjahanpur district, Uttar Pradesh, India
Jagendra Singh, a freelance journalist who reported critically on politics and current affairs in Hindi-language newspapers and on Facebook, died from burn injuries he sustained after a police raid at his home on June 1, local reports said.
While being treated in hospital for burns covering more than half of his body, Singh made a statement to a police officer, Amitabh Thakur, in which he said another police officer, Sriprakash Rai, had doused him in petrol and set him on fire, the Press Trust of India reported.
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India is #14 on CPJ’s 2015 Impunity Index, which calculates the number of unsolved journalist murders as a percentage of each country’s population. This month CPJ is highlighting cases from each of the 14 countries on the list ahead of the International Day to End Impunity on November 2.
Of the 11 journalist murders CPJ has confirmed as work-related in the last 10 years in India, all have been carried out with complete impunity, securing India’s spot on the Impunity Index for the eighth year in a row. Nearly all the victims reported on corruption or politics, like freelance journalist Jagendra Singh, who died from burn wounds in June. Singh reported on politics and illegal mining activities in Uttar Pradesh. In a statement before his death, he alleged that police set him on fire at the behest of a local government minister. India’s unrelenting impunity is fostering an increasingly dangerous climate for journalists. Just days after Singh’s murder, another journalist was beaten and dragged behind a motorcycle, and a reporter in West Bengal went missing, among other assaults. The Press Council of India, a statutory body, has called for a two-minute news blackout on November 2 to protest impunity in recent attacks against journalists.
IMPUNITY INDEX RATING: 0.008 unsolved journalist murders per million inhabitants
LAST YEAR: Ranked 13th with a rating of 0.006
A CPJ report on impunity.
op-ed for NYT by SONIA FALEIRO
IN today’s India, secular liberals face a challenge: how to stay alive.
In August, 77-year-old scholar M. M. Kalburgi, an outspoken critic of Hindu idol worship, was gunned down on his own doorstep. In February, the communist leader Govind Pansare was killed near Mumbai. And in 2013, the activist Narendra Dabholkar was murdered for campaigning against religious superstitions.
These killings should be seen as the canary in the coal mine: Secular voices are being censored and others will follow.
Illustration by Bill Bragg