Abuse of State Power Against Indian Journalists

We condemn the action of the Gujarat police in foisting a case of sedition on The Times of India, the editor of its Ahmedabad edition and other staffers for criticizing the choice of O P Mathur as the police commissioner of Ahmedabad.

The action of the police is not only plainly vindictive and a threat to media freedoms but a perverse misuse of laws supposedly meant to protect national security and the lives of citizens. As the Editors Guild of India has rightly pointed out sedition is a charge which was slapped on the Indian media by the colonial rulers during the freedom struggle and its abuse against the media today negates the freedom granted to the citizens by the Constitution.

We also note with grave concern that elsewhere in the country too there are attempts by those in power to use anti-terror or anti-sedition laws to muzzle dissenting voices of artists, journalists, academics and human rights defenders who are telling unpalatable truths.

Some of the clear examples of this alarming trend, which threatens Indian democracy, are the arrests of human rights activists Dr Binayak Sen in Chhattisgarh and Lachit Bordloi in Assam, journalists Prashant Rahi in Uttarakhand, Praful Jha in Chattisgarh and P. Govind Kutty in Kerala. The most recent case of such abuse of state power is the arrest of independent filmmaker and journalist Ajay TG under the notorious Chhattisgarh State Public Security Act on 5 May 2008.

We demand the unconditional withdrawal of charges against all these activists and journalists and the setting up of an independent commission to look into the misuse of anti-terror laws by state authorities. We further demand the scrapping of all legislation that violates the fundamental freedoms enshrined in the Indian Constitution.