Shri Narendra Modi, Hon’ble Prime Minister, Government of India, New Delhi.
Respected Prime Minister,
Indian Journalists Union (IJU) is greatly pained and shocked at the unabated attacks on Journalists and murdering them in different parts of the country. IJU requests you to urgently enact a law to protect the mediapersons.
Such attacks on mediapersons, who expose corruption and misdeeds of anti-social vested interests, or who do not toe the line of the establishment, have proved to be a threat to Journalists and freedom of press.
The latest victim is Isravel Moses, a 26-year old television Journalist, who reported on illegal encroachment of Government land and sale of Ganja (Cannabis Sativa), was hacked to death in Nallur village off Kanchipuram in Tamil Nadu on November 8, 2020. On the same day another Journalist, 35-year old Sayed Adil Wahab, was found brutally murdered in a forest area near Bhopal, the state capital of Madhya Pradesh.
On September 27 this year 25 Journalists got rounded up and attacked in broad daylight by nearly 300 goons of sand mafia at Kanker in Bastar district of Chhattisgarh. An Editor and senior Journalist Kamal Shukla sustained serious injuries on his head. Earlier on June 14, 2018, Shujaat Bukhari, a prominent Journalist from Kashmir and the Chief Editor of Kashmir Times, was shot dead by 3 militants in the heart of Srinagar, when he was returning home from his office. His manifest views on bringing peace to the Valley did not go well with the militants. The killing of Journalists is more rampant in smaller towns, while the figures in metro towns are quite low. It is cases like the killing of Journalists like late Gauri Lankesh in Bengaluru in 2017, that draw much countrywide attention and impel the police to investigate the murder.
Alarmed at the rising trend in the number of media persons killed, the Chairman of Press Council of India (PCI), Justice Chandramauli Kumar Prasad, urged the Government “to enact a special law for protection of Journalists and speedy trials of cases of attack on Journalists.” It is appreciated that Maharashtra has become the first State in the country to enact a law in 2017 making the attack on Journalists a non-bailable and cognisable offence. Taking the cue from Maharashtra the Chhattisgarh government is enacting Chhattisgarh Protection of Mediapersons Act.
Unfortunately, India has been going down on the World Press Freedom Index during the last couple of years. In the annual reports of Reporters Without Borders, India has steadily gone down in the global index from a rank of 138 in 2018 to 140 in 2019, and further down to 142 in 2020. Thus there is an urgent need to bring a law to protect the Journalists and freedom of press in our biggest democracy of the world. The Indian Journalists Union, therefore, appeals to you to enact a law immediately to stop attacks on media persons in the country.
B.R. Prajapati, President & G. Prabhakaran, Secretary General, IJU, New Delhi, November 17, 2020