New Delhi: The Editors Guild of India strongly condemned the “intimidating manner” in which police registered FIRs against senior editors and journalists, including current and former office bearers of the guild, for reporting on the farmers’ protest rallies and the violence that took place on Republic Day.
In a statement issued Friday, the guild said journalists were specifically targeted for reporting the accounts pertaining to the death of one of the protestors on their personal social media handles as well as those of the publications they lead and represent.
Six journalists, including India Today’s Rajdeep Sardesai, Mrinal Pande, National Herald’s Zafar Agha, Caravan’s Ananth Nath, Vinod Jose, and Paresh Nath, were booked by the Noida Police Thursday for sedition, among other charges, over the violence during farmers’ tractor rally in Delhi.
The FIR was lodged at the Sector 20 police station following a complaint by a resident who alleged that “digital broadcast” and “social media posts” by these people were responsible for the violence during a tractor rally by farmers in the national capital.
“It must be noted that on the day of the protest and high action, several reports were emerging from eyewitnesses on the ground as well as from the police, and therefore it was only natural for journalists to report all the details as they emerged. This is in line with established norms of journalistic practice,” the statement, signed by Seema Mustafa, guild president, and Sanjay Kapoor, general secretary, said.
It also noted how the FIRs “allege that the tweets were intentionally malicious and were the reason for the desecration of the Red Fort”. Nothing can be further from truth, the guild said.
“On a day thick with information, the EGI finds these FIRs, filed in different states, as an attempt to intimidate, harass, browbeat, and stifle the media. That the FIRs have been booked under as many as ten different provisions including sedition laws, promoting communal disharmony, and insulting religious beliefs, is further disturbing.”
It added that the “targeting” of journalists “grievously violates and tramples on every value that our democratic republic stands for”.
The guild has demanded that the FIRs be withdrawn immediately and the media be allowed to report “without fear and with freedom”.
“We also re-iterate our earlier demand that the higher judiciary takes serious cognizance of the fact that several laws such as a sedition are often used to impede freedom of speech, and issue guidelines to ensure that wanton use of such laws does not serve as a deterrent to a free press,” the guild said.
Read the full statement here
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