Thursday, March 28, 2024

CPJ calls for 'immediate, unconditional' release of Indian Muslim journalist

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The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) on Monday urged Indian authorities to "immediately and unconditionally" release Muhammad Zubair –an Indian journalist arrested earlier – as the body called for an end to the harassment he has been facing “in relation to his work”.

#India: “Authorities must immediately and unconditionally release @zoo_bear, and allow him to pursue his journalistic work without further interference.” @StevenBButler https://t.co/jVyv1pUh6I
— Committee to Protect Journalists (@pressfreedom) June 27, 2022

“The arrest of journalist Mohammad Zubair marks another low for press freedom in India, where the government has created a hostile and unsafe environment for members of the press reporting on sectarian issues,” said Steven Butler, CPJ’s Asia program coordinator, in Washington, D.C.

“Authorities must immediately and unconditionally release Zubair, and allow him to pursue his journalistic work without further interference.”

Read 'Extremely alarming': India blocks Pakistan govt Twitter accounts

Delhi police arrested the Muslim co-founder of a fact-checking website called Alt News earlier on Monday, accusing him of insulting religious beliefs on Twitter, a network of digital media organisations had said, condemning it as an attempt to harass him for his journalism.

Alt News's other co-founder, Pratik Sinha, said on Twitter no notice was given to Zubair before his arrest.

"He is currently detained inside a police bus in Burari for more than an hour," Sinha said, referring to a Delhi neighbourhood where Zubair was to be produced before a magistrate at his residence to authorise the journalist's remand.

Zubair was arrested based on a complaint from a Twitter account that said he insulted Hindus in a 2018 post commenting on the renaming of a hotel after the Hindu monkey god Hanuman, claimed govt sources.

As per CPJ, Zubair was also one of the two journalists investigated following social media posts on June 3 in which he had criticised three right-wing Hindu activists, calling them “hate mongers”.

At the time, he was being investigated under Section 295(a) of the Indian Penal Code for “deliberate and malicious acts” intended to hurt religious sentiments.

According to an independent Indian news website Scroll.in, the high court had declined Zubair’s plea to end the investigation on June 13.

Last year, Uttar Pradesh police had also opened a criminal investigation into the journalist over his social media posts about a video depicting a group of Hindu men beating an elderly Muslim man.

As of December 2021, seven journalists have been detained in India and in Indian Illegally Occupied Jammu and Kashmir according to the CPJ’s 2021 annual prison census. This is the highest number of detained journalists for India since 1992.

 

 


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