SAJAforum

NEPAL: How press-friendly is the new Nepal?

"Janayudha: People's War," a  film produced by Maoists in Nepal recently bagged the best picture award in this year's National Motion Picture Awards.

The film is a Maoist story--from the birth of the movement to its stunning success, full of Maoist rhetoric. Al-Jazeera-reporter Subina Shrestha has the story:

The rhetoric is clear:

"You are the slave of feudalism. I salute the defeat of the monarchy and the sunset over the palace," a revolutionary actor remarks.

But what message does the movie and the award have for the masses and for the media?

Nabin Subba, independent filmmaker, says, "If they start using the National Film Board as a propaganda tool, then  other ideologies and thoughts will have less and less room."

PAKISTAN: Five questions for Aitzaz Ahsan, leader of the lawyers' movement

This morning, Aitzaz Ahsan, the President of the Pakistan Supreme Court Bar Association and the leader of Pakistan’s “lawyers’ movement,” spoke to a large audience at the New York City Bar Association about the lawyers’ movement, the importance of an independent judiciary, and the role of U.S. policy in Pakistan’s judicial crisis. During the past year, the New York City Bar has played an active role in support of Pakistan’s lawyers and judges — organizing a solidarity rally with other area bar associations after Gen. Pervez Musharraf imposed “emergency” rule in November, issuing a statement strongly urging Musharraf to restore the rule of law, and awarding an honorary membership, one of the organization's highest honors, to Pakistan Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry.

In his remarks, Ahsan thanked U.S. lawyers and bar associations for their “unstinting support for constitutionalism, rule of law, and reinstatement of an independent judiciary in Pakistan.” He said that last November’s rally — which drew hundreds of New York lawyers to the steps of the courthouse in lower Manhattan — “was an unprecedented collective action, and it was noticed throughout Pakistan.” Ahsan expressed his view that “what has endeared the people of America to the people of Pakistan, despite the adversarial policies of the American administration, has been the support of the bar associations.”

Following his address at the New York City Bar, Ahsan briefly talked to SAJAforum about the lawyers’ movement, the prospects for reinstatement of the judges ousted by Musharraf, and the role of Pakistan’s media:

Q: There’s been much speculation about what caused General Musharraf to try to dismiss the Chief Justice of Pakistan back in March 2007. What do you think caused him to take that step?

A: I think that Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz poisoned Musharraf’s ears after the Steel Mills Case, which was a judgment that was an indictment of the Prime Minister. After the Supreme Court decided that case, people started saying — including myself in speeches in the National Assembly — that the Prime Minister could be indicted, and ought to be indicted. So there is some evidence of the fact that Shaukat Aziz began to advise Musharraf to fire the Chief Justice, and played on his fear that the Chief Justice was going to decide against him in his bid to be the President for another term. So I think it was mainly this, a paranoia that was created in Musharraf’s mind by Shaukat Aziz.

Q: In the past, most Supreme Court justices in Pakistan have cooperated with military coup leaders and even have sought to legitimize military takeovers in their judicial decisions. What do you think has made this moment different and caused so many judges to react differently this time?

PRESS FREEDOMS: Gujarat police target the Times of India and Ashish Nandy

A reporter and editor at The Times of India have been charged with sedition and criminal conspiracy by the Gujarat police for a series of articles linking the police chief of Ahmedabad with organized crime. Prominent writer Ashish Nandy has also been targeted. From CNN-IBN:

Within days of OP Mathur taking over as the Police Commissioner of Ahmedabad, the newspaper ran a series of articles on his alleged links with the underworld. Mathur filed a complaint and the reporter and the resident editor of the paper in Ahmedabad have now been booked. The daily alleges the charges have been filed to harass the journalists. “Mathur has a poor record. When he was the head of CID, he tried to favour the state in the Sohrabuddin case,” alleged reporter Prashant Dayal.

Bharat Desai, resident editor of the daily, alleged Mathur had a sexual harassment case pending against him. On Friday, the police in Ahmedabad booked sociologist Ashish Nandy for allegedly writing a derogatory article in the same paper in January this year. The complainant, the president of an NGO, said that Nandy’s article presented Gujarat and its people in poor light. The columns were written immediately after the Gujarat elections. “I am not taking the charges seriously. It has been done to silence the critics of the Narendra Modi government,” said Nandy.

This is not the first instance when the media in the state has been targeted. The editor of a local language paper in Surat was charged for using abusive words while referring to Chief Minister Modi.

A number of well-known academics and activists in the US, India and the UK have taken up Nandy's cause by circulating a petition (his name is often spelled Ashis). The petition was started by Johns Hopkins scholar Veena Das, and has been signed by Homi Bhabha, Diana Eck, Pratap Bhanu Mehta, Arjun Appadurai, Pankaj Mishra and others. An excerpt:

The harassment of well-known intellectuals and artists hides we fear, the daily intimidation being faced by members of minorities and especially the Muslims in Gujarat. We demand that all the charges against Professor Nandy be immediately dropped. We understand that there is a great deal of anxiety in Gujarat today about its lost honour.  It might help to remind ourselves that this honour or "asmita"  will not be gained by acts of violence and intimidation but by recovering or discovering the humanity of each other. Gujarat can and will regain its own destiny by remembering the politics of nonviolence, as one of its sons by the name of Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi once taught the nation and the world.

I haven't been able to find the Nandy article that caused the uproar. It's called "Blame the Middle Class - they are responsible for Gujarat's politics of hate." If you have a link or the document, please pass it on or leave in the comments section.

UPDATE: As mentioned in the comments field, the Nandy article is available here. Here is how it ends:

"Recovering Gujarat from its urban middle class will not be easy. The class has found in militant religious nationalism a new self- respect and a new virtual identity as a martial community, the way Bengali babus, Maharashtrian Brahmins and Kashmiri Muslims at different times have sought salvation in violence. In Gujarat this class has smelt blood, for it does not have to do the killings but can plan, finance and coordinate them with impunity. The actual killers are the lowest of the low, mostly tribals and Dalits. The middle class controls the media and education, which have become hate factories in recent times. And they receive spirited support from most non-resident Indians who, at a safe distance from India, can afford to be more nationalist, bloodthirsty, and irresponsible."]

More here:

• Indian Express
• AFP
• ZNet

PRESS FREEDOM: Pakistan & Dubai censor GEO TV again

GEO TV, an independent news channel in Pakistan, has been censored again. From Reporters Without Borders:

Reporters Without Borders calls on the governments of Pakistan and United Arab Emirates to explain how GEO News, a Pakistani privately-owned TV station that broadcasts by satellite from Dubai, was forced to drop two very popular talk shows under threat of losing its licence to operate in Dubai.

GEO TV president Imran Aslam told Reporters Without Borders that the Dubai authorities informed him last night that the station would lose its licence if "Capital Talk," a show hosted by Hamid Mir, and "Meray Mutabek" (According to me), hosted by Shalid Masood, were not taken off the air.

Officials at Dubai Media City, where the GEO TV group is based, said these programmes threatened UAE's relations with a friendly country.

Full RWB press release below. See similar rebuke from the International Federation of Journalists. Post your comments, updates, links, etc, below, please.

PRESS FREEDOM: Self-censorship in Bangladesh?

Anyone following this debate around "self censorship" under Army-backed caretaker government (known as CTG) in Bangladesh? Post your comments, links below.

A May 23 op-ed in Dhaka's The Daily Star, by Abdul Hanna, a freelancer - "Freedom of the Press":

...it is remarkable that now there is no curb on press freedom in Bangladesh, although the country has been under emergency rule since the present caretaker government assumed power in January last year. It is important to note that it is for the first time in Bangladesh that there has not been a single instance of victimisation, persecution or harassment of journalists. It is unprecedented in a country under emergency rule.

The government has lived up to the assurance given by the Chief Advisor Dr. Fakhruddin Ahmed to the editors and representatives of the media in May last year, that the provision of the emergency power 2007 ordinance providing for restriction or punishment to errant press will not be applied to the media which enjoys full and unfettered freedom. He also wanted to see the national press play the role of a parliament, debating vital national issues in the absence of Jatiyo Sansad.

Here's a response in the Dhaka Shohor blog - "The Daily Star’s Lowest Point: Error-ridden, Dishonest Op-Ed Piece Takes Pot-shots at New Age":

I do not know what Mr. Abdul Hannan’s line of work is, but researching press freedom is hopefully not it, because he is liable to be fired. Someone writing about press freedom in Bangladesh, in one of its highest circulated newspapers, is expected to know the fundamentals of the subject.

Moreover, the editors who let this go to print should ensure that there are no factual errors in the piece. There is one glaring error that underpins this entire write-up. In the fourth paragraph, the writer says:

“However, it is remarkable that now there is no curb on press freedom in Bangladesh, although the country has been under emergency rule since the present caretaker government assumed power in January last year. It is important to note that it is for the first time in Bangladesh that there has not been a single instance of victimization, persecution or harassment of journalists. It is unprecedented in a country under emergency rule.”

Mr. Hannan most likely reads the Daily Star. Which is why he seems particularly unaware of what Mr. Tasneem Khalil of the same newspaper went through last May. Which is why he does not know about Mr. Jahangir Alam Akash and his broken legs.

But surely the editors at this newspaper know what happened to their own colleague last May if not about Jahangir Alam Akash! That they let this falsehood go to print reflects very badly on them as people, but that is not my judgement to make.

See other critiques of The Daily Star here.

We welcome comments from editors of the Star and other Bangladesh watchers.

PRESS: Indian Photographer killed in Kashmir

An Indian photographer who was covering the clashes between the security forces and militants in Kashmir was shot to death after reportedly "ignoring warnings" from the security forces yesterday.

Ashok Sodhi, 45, was covering a military operation intended to take out militants who had taken refuge in the town of Samba, some 45 kilometers south of Jammu. Sodhi has been working for the English language Daily Excelsior for almost 25 years.

From Reporters Without Borders:“I was always telling him to keep out of the way of exchanges of fire and this kind of clash”, his wife told news channel CNN-IBN. “However, he would often say that if he had to die in an encounter, he would.”

Here is more about Sodhi.

Meantime, fighting continues in Kashmir with some of the most clashes in the region.

What do you think? Please post your comments below.

PRESS FREEDOM: South Asian nations fail to solve journalists' murders

South Asian countries - Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bangladesh, Pakistan and India - are among the worst in the world at prosecuting the killers of journalists. A new report from the Committee to Protect Journalists, called the Impunity Index, only lists 13 countries, but it includes all the South Asian nations listed above, as well as Afghanistan, placing them in the company of Iraq (#1), Somalia (#3)and Sierra Leone (#2). India's press was praised as "one of the world's freest," but had 5 unsolved murders, making it a country where "politics and organized crime are dangerous stoies to cover."

More on the methodology:

CPJ’s Impunity Index, compiled for the first time this year, calculates the number of unsolved journalist murders as a percentage of the population in each country. CPJ examined every nation in the world for the years 1998 through 2007. Only those nations with five or more unsolved cases are included in this index. Cases are considered unsolved when no convictions have been obtained.

Some excerpts:

5. SRI LANKA

Fighting between government and separatist forces has long bled the nation. But journalists are more likely to be assassinated than to die in crossfire, with many of the victims ethnic Tamils. The victims include senior Tamil journalist Mylvaganam Nimalrajan, shot in his home in 2000. Nimalrajan’s murder is among eight unsolved cases here.

Impunity Index Rating: 0.408 unsolved journalist murders per 1 million inhabitants.

7. AFGHANISTAN

Despite the prolonged armed conflict in Afghanistan, journalists are more likely to be targeted for murder than to be killed in a combat situation. Seven cases are unsolved, including the 2007 slaying of local reporter Ajmal Naqshbandi. Running counter to the international trend, most victims have been foreign rather than local reporters.

Impunity Index Rating: 0.279 unsolved journalist murders per 1 million inhabitants.

PRESS FREEDOM: Barry Bearak safe at home in Johannesburg

Here's a message sent today by Barry Bearak of the New York Times after his safe arrival in South Africa:

I'm happily back in Jo'berg, having evaded a likely re-arrest by going overland through Zambia rather than risking the Harare airport. I received a lot of support from many places and chief among the supporters were my colleagues at The Times and my former students and friends at Columbia. I'm extremely grateful.

Zimbabwe is a very sad place right now. It appears that Mugabe is going to get away with stealing yet another election. That means continued suffering for the Zimbabwean people. My own understanding of their terrible problems increased a lot in the Harare cells, where I met many good people. I'm hoping for the day when I can safely return to that country and continue reporting.

Regards,
Barry

Earlier coverage of Bearak's ordeal:

• April 5, 2008: NYT's Barry Bearak arrested in Zimbabwe; Dileepan Sivapathasundaram released (includes CPJ alert)
• April 8, 2008: Bearak released; awaits hearing

TECH: Skewz.com - Online Media Literacy, or not?

Vipul Vyas has recently launched Skewz.com, a site that interprets the "color" of political online news content. Red and blue represent the degree to which a news item or blogpost is skewed far right or far left and a cool grey determines its perfect balance. The rating depends on registered user votes, who may post and rate articles of their choice, or read and rate available articles that have been "skewzed" by others. From the press release:

“Most online political sites offer a wealth of information, but they are difficult to sort through and often have political agendas,” says Vipul Vyas, founder of Skewz. “Skewz sorts the news so readers don't have to. It's a one-stop resource to see coverage from both sides of the political divide.”

Skewz has simplified the process of sorting news with a user-driven site that includes charts and graphs showing how major news sources are covering various issues of the political debate. There's also a comparative chart (compiled by reader feedback) so users can see how each media outlet stacks up against the rest.

“With nearly one third of the electorate declaring themselves as 'moderate' or 'independent,' every vote in this election matters,” says Jonathan Baciu, co-founder of Skewz. “Whether you want to validate your opinion or challenge it, Skewz offers a wealth of resources to easily understand and find information on either side of the debate.”

The half-Israeli, half-Indian team comprises of six professionals with engineering backgrounds, who share a passion for media literacy, and as it is apparent, political debate. From the website:

PRESS FREEDOM: NY-based Pakistani editor threatened

CPJ reports that Majeed Babar, the executive editor of Weekly Asia Tribune has received a death threat. From the press release below:

The editor of a New York-based weekly told CPJ he received a death threat. Majeed Babar, executive editor of the Weekly Asia Tribune, said a man called him on March 29 and told him, “We will cut you to pieces” in Urdu.

Babar said the threat was linked to opinion columns and paid advertisements promoting a beauty pageant in his print and online newspaper, the Weekly Asia Tribune. The Tribune is a multilingual publication aimed at New York’s large South Asian community.
The columns are by a California-based contributor named Imam Shumshad Nasir, who is a leader of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community, which was expelled from Pakistan in the 1970s because they were considered “non-Muslims” by the government.

The call was part of a larger pattern of intimidating incidents directed against Babar, he said.

“We call upon the New York authorities to fully investigate reports of threats,” said Joel Simon, CPJ’s executive director. “The authorities must send a clear signal to those who seek to intimidate or censor journalists.”

Full press release below. Post your comments, please.

PRESS FREEDOM: Barry Bearak released

An update about Barry Bearak (see SAJAforum item). He's been freed, but as this NYT piece says, "Mr. Bearak suffered some injuries as the result of a fall from his cell's concrete bunk to the floor seven feet below."

From CPJ:

A New York Times reporter and a British national were released on bail from Zimbabwe’s Harare Central Prison today after spending five days in detention on charges of reporting without accreditation.        

The award-winning Times journalist, Barry Bearak, is currently receiving medical treatment for a chest infection and a back injury he sustained after falling onto a concrete floor from his prison bed, which was 7 feet (2 meters) off the ground, according to the paper.

       

Bearak’s passport is being held by police and he has been ordered to remain in Zimbabwe to appear in court on Thursday. The legal charges against him have changed throughout his detention but he is expected to face the original charges of practicing without accreditation, according to the Times. Defense Lawyer Harrison Nkomo told CPJ that charges should be dropped since reporting without accreditation is no longer considered a criminal offense in light of January reforms to Zimbabwe’s accreditation laws.

From the AFP:

News from Africa                  
07/04/2008 14:43 HARARE, April 7 (AFP)

US journalist, Briton released on bail in Zimbabwe

A Zimbabwean court released Monday a US journalist and a British national on bail after charging them with reporting on the March 29 elections without accreditaion, their lawyer said.

"They have both been released on 300 million dollars bail," lawyer Harrison Nkomo told journalists outside the court. The bail amount is equivalent to 10,000 US dollars according to the official exchange rate.

He said the pair had been told to reappear in court on Thursday and ordered to stay in Harare.

New York Times correspondent Barry Bearak, 58, and a 45-year-old British national were arrested at a Harare guest house on Thursday.

Bearak has been ordered to stay at the US embassy in the capital and the Briton at a medical clinic after he slipped and injured his back in jail, Nkomo said.

See NYT story on his release and background on Bearak's South Asia connection. Post your comments below.

PRESS FREEDOM: NYT's Barry Bearak held in Zimbabwe; Sivapathasundaram released

[June 27, 2008 UPDATE: Listen to a webcast with Dileepan Sivapathasundaram]

[April 7, 2008 UPDATE: AFP reports Bearak has been released]

Barry Bearak, one of the most respected American journalists working today, has been caught up in the ugly situation in Zimbabwe. He has just spent his second night in a cell in Harare. He was there covering the elections that appear to have thrown out the corrupt government of Robert Mugabe, but the regime is doing all they can to delay the official results. From NYT, Saturday morning NY time:

A journalist for The New York Times  detained by the police in Zimbabwe spent a second night in a jail cell on Friday, after government authorities overruled the attorney general’s decision to set him free.

The journalist, Barry Bearak, and a British citizen who was also arrested, were swept up at a small hotel in the suburbs of the capital, Harare, on Thursday afternoon. The action appeared to be part of a crackdown by government forces after an election that seemed to be turning against President Robert Mugabe and his 28-year grip on the country.

Offices of the main opposition party were also raided, while an American democracy advocate helping local groups monitor the elections was arrested at the airport.

That American democracy advocate has been released. Dileepan Sivapathasundaram is a Sri Lankan-American senior program officer at the National Democratic Institute ("a non-partisan, non-profit, non-governmental organization that aims to support democratic values and practices in more than 60 countries"). He is now in with American officials and we will provide updates as we get them (more on him from a 2004 press release below).

The Times is doing all it can to help secure Bearak's release and several journalism organizations are monitoring the situation (see resources below).

Bearak and his wife, Celia Dugger, are co-bureau chiefs in Johannesburg, South Africa. They also have strong connections to South Asia as they were co-bureau chiefs in New Delhi from 1998 to 2002, just as America's interest in the subcontinent was increasing. The two-person team helped take the NYT's coverage of India and the region to a whole new level. Bearak won the 2002 Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting for his series of reports on daily life in war-torn Afghanistan (see that series and other work by him on his Times Topics page). He won a 2001 SAJA Journalism Award for "Back to Life in India, Without Reincarnation," an account of how the Association of Dead People fights for the rights of Indian citizens falsely declared dead.

If we learn of anything others can do to help him get released, we will let you know here.

[On a personal note, I want to add that I have had the privilege of working directly with Barry when he joined the Columbia Journalism School faculty for a couple of years after his Delhi posting. I had first met him in 1998 as he was preparing to head to India and was doing his prep work - spending weeks and months learning about the region, the people and the issues  before he headed out. He threw himself into teaching the same way: preparing in a way I had never seen a new prof do before. He sat in on other classes, watched his colleagues and never stopped taking notes. By the end of his first semester he'd emerged as one of our best and most popular teachers, so it was tough to learn that he and Celia were heading back into the field, for this Johannesburg job. We look forward to his safe release from jail, and after his posting, his eventual return to the classroom.]

Resources and more info:

• NYT executive editor Bill Keller's memo on Bearak's arrest
• Keller on Bearak, day two.
• CPJ on the history of press repression in Zimbabwe

Please post your comments below.

SRI LANKA: NYT on Chinese influence on Sri Lanka

Often ignored, Sri Lanka finally seems to have convinced The New York Times that it does deserve a front page (at least on their website), thanks to Somini Sengupta's two recent articles.

Sengupta rightly said it when she began yesterday's article on the escalating Sri Lankan conflict - "There are no eyes on this war." Clearly, there aren't as many eyes there should be on this war-torn island nation. The second article this morning (caught it at 3 a.m.) describes how Sri Lanka is stacking up Chinese aid while openly ignoring serious human rights and press freedom issues.

In this article, "Take Aid from China and Take a Pass on Human Rights," Sengupta writes:

FOR 25 years, the dirty little war on this island in the Indian Ocean has stretched its octopus arms across the world. The ethnic Tamil diaspora has provided vital funding for separatist rebels; remittances from Sri Lankan workers abroad have propped up the economy; the government has relied on foreign assistance to battle the insurgency.

Today, a shifting world order is bearing new fruits for Sri Lanka. Most notably, China’s quiet assertion in India’s backyard has put Sri Lanka’s government in a position not only to play China off against India, but also to ignore complaints from outside Asia about human rights violations in the war.

Despite losing major aids from many western countries over its human rights abuses, Sri Lanka seems to be doing just fine. According to the article, China's assistance has grown fivefold in the last year to almost $1 billion.

Sri Lanka’s foreign secretary, Palitha Kohona, put it plainly when he said that Sri Lanka’s “traditional donors,” namely, the United States, Canada and the European Union, had “receded into a very distant corner,” to be replaced by countries in the East. He gave three reasons: The new donors are neighbors; they are rich; and they conduct themselves differently. “Asians don’t go around teaching each other how to behave,” he said. “There are ways we deal with each other — perhaps a quiet chat, but not wagging the finger.”

THREE QUESTIONS: Sevanti Ninan, editor of The Hoot

These watchful owl eyes are the symbol of one of the most important media watchdog institutions in the world. The Hoot, at www.TheHoot.org, is a Delhi-based website that watches the media in the entire subcontinent. And what a task that is. With everything from government interference in several of the countries, to a celebrity and infotainment-obsessed culture in others, The Hoot has emerged as a one-stop shop for anyone interested in the media in South Asia.

Here's how the sites editors describe themselves:

We believe that the task of monitoring the media in a democratic polity is as important as the work of the news media themselves. We cannot have the watchdogs become either sleeping dogs or lapdogs.To sustain this site we require the support of organizations and individuals who believe that free and ethical news media form the cornerstone of democracy. In order to do this task we require resources, material and intellectual. We exhort you to help us in either way. Please write for us. Please send us information, alerts and tips. We promise to follow up. Write to editor@thehoot.org.We also look forward to your monetary support. No amount is too small for us and our task. We want to create a corpus that will sustain this media portal.
[More about the site and its parent organization, the Media Foundation, here.]

The site's left rail provides an archive of items about various aspects of the region's media, while the right side offers resources aimed at journalists, journalism students and even readers.

Here are a couple of recent items that show the breadth of what The Hoot covers.

• Restoring Freedom to the Media in Pakistan: A new Hoot study describes the dimensions of the problem, even as victorious leaders of the Pakistan People’s Party and the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz commit themselves to lifting restrictions on the press. SEVANTI NINAN outlines who the oppressors were over the last three years.
• Shoddy edits on the Budget: So many editors waste time being seen on TV instead of poring over the documents like the old timers used to. DARIUS NAKHOONWALA carps about the general devaluation of editorial comment.
• When India gets going…: The development of community radio in India is going to have an international effect when it really gets going. STEVE BUCKLEY, president of the World Association of Community Radio Broadcasters, tells PIYA KOCHHAR.
• Why the US Elections are hot news in Kerala: Muslims, who constitute 50 per cent of all non-resident Keralites, take a keen interest in US politics and its implications for Muslim nations.  N P CHEKKUTTY  on Kerala’s appetite for global news.

I rely on The Hoot to keep up with what's going on in the region, so I decided to learn more about how the site works. I asked Sevanti Ninan, its tireless editor, to answer three quick questions. Her answers are below. Post your comments, please.

PRESS FREEDOM: Canadian journo held by US military in Afghanistan

Another journalist is held without any charge by the American military forces. According to a recent press release by the Committee to Protect Journalists, Canadian TV journalist Jawed Ahmad has been arrested and detained by the US military forces at Bagram Air Base near Kabul in Afghanistan.

Ahmad, who is only 22 years old, has been detained since October 2007 according to his brother  Siddique Ahmad. From the CPJ press release (Read the full text below):

Siddique told CPJ that Ahmad said he was called to meet his CTV colleagues at Kandahar airport and then arrested. It is unclear who called him. CTV confirmed that Workman was in Kandahar at the time, but said that the correspondent had not planned to meet with Ahmad on that day. Ahmad told Siddique that he was being held because the U.S. military believed he had contacts with local Taliban leaders and was in possession of a video of Taliban materials, Siddique said.

Meanwhile, Reporters Without Borders has called on U.S. defense secretary Robert M. Gates to intercede on behalf of this young journalist. (Read full text of RSF press release below).

"We call on US defence secretary Robert M. Gates to intercede on behalf of this young Afghan reporter who is clearly the victim of an arbitrary decision," the press freedom organisation said. "The lack of legal procedures and material evidence confirms that his detention is unjustified. We point out that it is not illegal for journalists to have professional contacts with all parties to a conflict including, in Afghanistan, the Taliban."

According to New York Times reporter Carlotta Gall, who knew Ahmad from her trips to Kandahar, Ahmad had only worked in journalism for one year. From the AP article:

"All of the local press corps have numbers of the Taliban and interview them regularly," she told the CPJ. "Jawed had nothing more than the others in the way of contacts with the Taliban."

With this, Ahmad becomes the third journalist to be held by U.S. forces in the Middle East. Al Jazeera cameraman Sami al-Hajj has been detained in Guantanamo since December 2001 and Associated Press photographer Bilal Hussein was arrested in April 2006.

Any comments? Please post them below.

HUMAN RIGHTS: Bangladesh asked to tackle its torture problem

Releasing a 39-page report - "The Torture of Tasneem Khalil: How the Bangladesh Military Abuses Its Power Under the State of Emergency" - US-based Human Rights Watch has called upon what it called the 'reform-minded' Bangladeshi government and its donor countries to urgently tackle the endemic problem of torture.

From HRW:
The arbitrary arrest and torture of journalist Tasneem Khalil by Bangladesh’s notorious military intelligence agency highlights abuses under the country’s state of emergency and the interim government’s failure to restrain the security forces, Human Rights Watch said in a new report today.<snip>

At a detention center operated by the Directorate General of Forces Intelligence (DGFI), the military intelligence agency, officers brutally beat and threatened Khalil, a journalist for the English-language Daily Star, part-time consultant for Human Rights Watch, and a news representative for CNN. Demonstrating just how confident they are that they will not be held accountable, DGFI officials even brought Khalil to meet the editor of his paper before returning him to the detention center for further beatings.

I recommend reading the complete report here.

According to the report, some common forms of torture in Bangladesh include brutal practices such as burning with acid, hammering of nails into toes, drilling of holes in legs with electric drills, electric shocks, beatings on legs with iron rods, beating with batons on backs after sprinkling sand on them, ice torture, finger piercing, and mock executions.

PRESS FREEDOM: Journalist gunned down in Quetta

Pakistan's reputation as being an unpleasant place for journalists was bolstered after Chisti Mujahid, a reporter and photographer for the Urdu weekly Akhbar-e-Jehan (where his column "Quetta ki Diary" appeared regularly), was shot dead while getting into his car to go to work. A Pakistani newspaper said that Mujahid was a columnist for the Daily Jang and also an eye doctor.

The Baloch Liberation Army has claimed responsibility and according to Dawn, Pakistan's leading newspaper, a BLA spokesperson called Quetta Press Club to inform that Mujahid was killed because he was working against the Baloch cause.

According to Reporters Without Borders, Mujahid had a "strongly worded" headline for an article after the killing of a BLA leader Mir Balach Marri last November. He is the first journalist to be killed in Pakistan this year after six were murdered last year.

From the RSF press release: (Read full press release below)

Reporters Without Borders today strongly condemned the murder of Chishti Mujahid, photographer and reporter for the Urdu-language weekly Akhbar-e-Jehan, in Quetta, capital of the the southwestern province of Balochistan on 9 February, and called on local officials to punish those responsible.

"The killing of this respected journalist in a region bloodied by fighting between the army and separatists is deplorable," it said. "The Balochistan Liberation Army (BLA)'s claim of responsibility raises fears of a more aggressive attitude towards the media by separatist groups."

Of course, this comes a month after reporter Nicolas Schmidle was kicked out of Pakistan for his piece on next generation of Taliban. With the government restricting freedom of press and militant groups targeting journalists, reporters might start finding it increasingly hard to write freely and fairly in/from Pakistan.

Is Pakistan becoming increasingly unsafe for journalists? Please post your comments below.

Earlier on SAJAForum:

• Pakistan Deports Reporter Nicolas Schmidle
• CPJ on Attacks on Press in 2007 in South Asia
• Afghani Journalist Faces Death Sentence for Blasphemy
• Nepali Journalist's Hand Cut Off
• Two Nepalese Dailies Disrupted by Maoists
• Cartoonist Jailed Over Mohammad Cartoons
  
• 25 Journalists Killed in South Asia During 2007

PRESS FREEDOM: President Karzai tells not to worry about sentenced journalist

Few weeks earlier, SAJAForum reported about a young Afghani journalist, Sayed Perwiz Kambakhsh, who has been sentenced to death by a court for alleged blasphemy. As journalist organizations all over the world, including groups such as Reporters Without Borders and Committee to Protect Journalists, continue to condemn this decision, something hopeful might be finally on its way.

According to Reporters sans Frontiéres, Afghani president Hamid Karzai, during his meeting with a delegation from Afghanistan Independent Journalists Association, told  them that they had no reason to worry about Kambakhsh.

From the RSF press release (Full text below):

Reporters Without Borders welcomes the undertakings given today by President Hamid Karzai as regards Sayed Perwiz Kambakhsh, the young journalist who has been sentenced to death on a trumped-up charge of distributing information that insulted Islam. Karzai told a delegation of Afghan journalists that they had no reason to worry about him.

"We want to believe that President Karzai really is determined to find a rapid solution to this appalling affair," the press freedom organisation said. "The death sentence passed on Kambakhsh by a court in Mazar-i-Sharif is unworthy of Afghanistan, whose constitution protects free expression. We call for the case to be quickly transferred to Kabul and for the conviction to be quashed."

Kambakhsh, 23, who is a journalism student at a local university, was sentenced for publishing, what the court called controversial articles on verses in the Koran about women. However, some have claimed that his sentence was an indication to warn his brother, Ibrahimi, who had been writing articles for the Institute on War and Peace Reporting criticizing some local authorities.

Do you think Karzai will free this young journalist? Please post your comments below.

Earlier on SAJAForum:

• CPJ on Attacks on Press in 2007 in South Asia
• Afghani Journalist Faces Death Sentence for Blasphemy
• Nepali Journalist's Hand Cut Off
• Two Nepalese Dailies Disrupted by Maoists
• Cartoonist Jailed Over Mohammad Cartoons
  
• 25 Journalists Killed in South Asia During 2007

RESOURCES: Malaysia's Indian Community Struggles for Minority Rights

[UPDATE, Feb. 10, 2008: New York Times' Thomas Fuller covers the Malaysian situation: "Indian Discontent Fuels Malaysia's Rising Tensions" ]

Indians in Malaysia are engaged in a struggle for their rights as minority citizens in a country built on the premise of excluding them.  Here are some resources for covering the situation.

November 25, 2007: Water Cannons & Tear Gas:

On Nov. 25, 2007, HINDRAF (the Hindu Rights Action Force) organized a protest in downtown Kuala Lumpur that drew somewhere between 10,000 and 30,000 Indians, mostly Tamils of Indian and Sri Lankan descent who are citizens of Malaysia.  They had intended to present a document to the British High Commission demanding restitution for their time as indentured laborers in British Malaya and the subsequent hardships they have suffered after independence under the constitutional guarantees, drafted by the British, and later policies that favor native Malays in government, education, and business.  They were also responding to the increasing chauvinism they feel from the majority Malay, especially the destruction of Hindu temples by land developers.

When the permit for the rally was denied, HINDRAF marched anyway.  Declaring the protest illegal, the government deployed riot police with tear gas and water cannons (video: Al Jazeera, News Asia, NTV8 Malaysia).  The sight of tens of thousands of Indians marching peacefully through downtown Kuala Lumpur, only to be met with armed suppression, has shocked the country.

The Economist provides an excellent background:   

In the 50 years of peninsular Malaysia's independence from Britain, the ethnic Indians have been more quiescent than the richer, better educated and more assertive ethnic Chinese, who make up about one-quarter of the population. Under an implicit “social contract”, the two minorities, mostly descended from migrant workers, were given citizenship in return for accepting that ethnic Malays and other indigenous groups, together known as bumiputras (sons of the soil), would enjoy privileged access to state jobs and education. All the races have done well from strong economic growth since independence. The Indians and Chinese suffer even lower poverty rates than the bumiputras. But whereas the majority population have, with official help, started catching up with the Chinese in the property and shares they own, the Indians still have few assets. Often they are stuck in rented homes and low-skilled urban jobs.

PRESS FREEDOM: CPJ on Attacks on the Press in 2007 in South Asia

The year 2007 was not the best year for South Asian journalists. As we reported earlier, this was in fact the bloodiest year in South Asian history.

In his analysis, "Amid South Asian Conflict, Remarkable Resilience," CPJ's Asia Program coordinator Bob Deitz says that despite increased violence upon press in countries like Pakistan and Sri Lanka, news media are far from being daunted - instead they have done a remarkable job.

"The changes can be rapid, depending on leaders’ ambitions, the state of the economy, or a worsening security situation. But the media’s persistence, resourcefulness, and cohesion have often formed a bulwark against attacks.
<snip>
"Failed governments have come and gone. Their executives, legislatures, and judiciaries are easily and regularly corrupted, but South Asian journalists have persevered to uphold a higher ideal."

From the analysis, which is part of CPJ's Attacks on the Press in 2007:

Traffic is sparse during a late-night run to the Bandaranaike International Airport north of the Sri Lankan capital, Colombo. Because of insecurity caused by war between the Sinhalese-dominated government and Tamil separatists in the country’s north and east, the streets are given over to police and army checkpoints. On this September night, the air still foggy from the day’s monsoon, reporter Iqbal Athas rides in a rental car, on his way to catch a Thai Airways flight that would take him to Bangkok. An award-winning defense columnist for the English-language Sunday Times, Athas is leaving the country for his own safety: His recent reports on arms sales irregularities have drawn threats, harassment, and, on one occasion, an unruly mob of protestors outside his home. “The harassment and threats have come and gone in the past,” Athas says, “and I have to assume they will again.” He would return to Colombo in less than two weeks.

Here are the 2007 country summaries and press freedom reports on India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Afghanistan and Burma.

Please post your thoughts below.

Earlier on SAJAforum:

• Afghani Journalist Faces Death Sentence for Blasphemy
• Nepali Journalist's Hand Cut Off
• Two Nepalese Dailies Disrupted by Maoists
• Cartoonist Jailed Over Mohammad Cartoons
  
• 25 Journalists Killed in South Asia During 2007 

PAKISTAN: Nicholas Schmidle essay on being kicked out because of his NYT piece

Last month, we covered the expulsion of Nicholas Schmidle, a contributor to the New York Times Magazine from Pakistan (and until then, a Pakistan-based fellow with the Institute of Current World Affairs. He was expelled for his piece about "Next-Gen Taliban." He has written a first-person essay for the Washington Post that starts this way:

The police came for me on a cold, rainy Tuesday night last month. They stood in front of my home in Islamabad, four men with hoods pulled over their heads in the driving rain. The senior officer, a tall, clean-shaven man, and I recognized one another from recent protests and demonstrations. Awkwardly, almost apologetically, he handed me a notice ordering my immediate expulsion from Pakistan. Rain spilled off a nearby awning and fell loudly into puddles.

I asked, somewhat obtusely, what this meant. "I am here to take you to the airport," the officer shrugged. "Tonight."

The document he'd given me provided no explanation for my expulsion, but I immediately felt that there was some connection to the travels and reporting I had done for a story published two days earlier in the New York Times Magazine, about a dangerous new generation of Taliban in Pakistan. I had spent several months traveling throughout the troubled areas along the border with Afghanistan, including Quetta (in Baluchistan province) and Dera Ismail Khan, Peshawar and Swat (all in the North-West Frontier Province). My visa listed no travel restrictions, and less than a week earlier, President Pervez Musharraf had sat before a roomful of foreign journalists in Islamabad and told them that they could go anywhere they wanted in Pakistan.

Read the rest of the piece and post your comments below.

PRESS FREEDOM: Burmese government suspends newspaper, arrests poet

The Burmese government has suspended the publication of a weekly magazine Myanmar Times for one week because it published what Burmese government qualifies as "unauthorized news."

According to the Committee to Protect Journalists:

Burma’s Press Scrutiny Board ordered the temporary closure because of the newspaper’s January 11 Burmese-language edition, which included an article about the government’s decision to raise satellite fees from 6,000 kyat (US$4.80) to 1 million kyat (US$800), The Associated Press reported. Many Burmese citizens have privately installed satellite dishes in recent years to receive foreign news broadcasts instead of the heavily censored, government-controlled fare.   

The newspaper apparently did not  receive prior government permission to publish the news item, which was first  reported by Agence France-Presse. All news publications in Burma publish as weekly editions because of a time-consuming pre-censorship process which systematically ensures that nearly no news critical of the government is published.   

Meanwhile, The Miami Herald reports that the Burmese government has arrested Saw Wai, a poet known for his ode to love, after he published a Valentine's Day poem with a hidden criticism against Than Shwe, the country's military junta leader.

PRESS FREEDOM: Journalist faces death sentence for blasphemy

A young journalism student has been sentenced to death by a court in the northern Afghani city of Mazar-e-Sharif for alleged blasphemy. Sayed Perwiz Kambakhsh, 23, a Balkh University student who reported for the newspaper Jahan-e-Naw, was tried in court without any lawyer defending him, a Reporters san Frontiers report says.

Kambakhsh was supposedly arrested because of a controversial article commenting on verses in the Koran about women, although it has now been established that he was not the article’s author. Rahimullah Samandar, the head of the Afghanistan Independent Journalists Association, said he was in fact arrested because of articles writt