STATES OF CONTROL: COVID, CUTS AND IMPUNITY SOUTH ASIA PRESS FREEDOM REPORT 2019-2020 18TH ANNUAL SOUTH ASIA PRESS FREEDOM REPORT 2019-2020 2 IFJ PRESS FREEDOM REPORT 2019–2020 3 Cover Photo: AFP photographer Sajjad Hussain works near India Gate during a government-imposed CONTENTS nationwide lockdown as a preventive measure against the spread of the Covid-19 in New Delhi on April 9, This document has been produced 2020. The Indian government’s by the International Federation of response to Covid-19 has led to Journalists (IFJ) on behalf of the controls on media and journalists South Asia Media Solidarity Network being denied access to public interest FOREWORD 4 (SAMSN). information. Afghan Independent Journalists’ Association Contents Photo: Journalists in Kashmir Bangladesh Manobadhikar Sangbadik use a cramped, makeshift media OVERVIEW 5 Forum centre during the internet shutdown to Federation of Nepali Journalists file stories. Free Media Movement, Sri Lanka UNESCO is pleased to support the SPECIAL SECTIONS Indian Journalists’ Union South-Asia Press Freedom Report Journalists Association of Bhutan 2019-20 with limited financial Maldives Journalists’ Association assistance. However, since this report THE PANDEMIC AND 9 Media Development Forum Maldives has been independently developed THE PRESS National Union of Journalists, India by the International Federation of National Union of Journalists, Nepal Journalists, Asia Pacific, therefore, Nepal Press Union UNESCO has no influence over DIGITAL CONTROL 12 Pakistan Federal Union of Journalists the content. The author(s) will be Sri Lanka Working Journalists’ responsible for the choice and the SWITCHED OFF 16 Association presentation of the facts contained in the paper and for the opinions South Asia Media Solidarity Network expressed therein, which will not be (SAMSN) – Defending rights of necessarily those of UNESCO and do COUNTRY CHAPTERS journalists and freedom of expression in not commit the Organisation. South Asia. AFGHANISTAN 20 samsn.ifj.org/ The designations employed and the presentation of the material throughout The SAMSN Digital Hub – https:// this book will not imply the expression BANGLADESH 26 samsn.ifj.org/map/ provides a listing of any opinion whatsoever on the of all known cases of media rights part of UNESCO concerning the legal BHUTAN 34 violations from 2014 to 2020. status of any country, territory, city or Editor: Laxmi Murthy area, or of its authorities or concerning Executive Editor: Jane Worthington the delimitation of its frontiers and INDIA 38 boundaries. Special thanks to: MALDIVES 48 Ujjwal Acharya CC-BY-SA license Simon Beck NEPAL 54 Sangay Choki Open Access is not applicable to non- Sunanda Deshapriya IFJ copyright photos in this publication. Dilrukshi Handunnetti PAKISTAN 60 Viranjana Herath Sabina Inderjit SRI LANKA 68 Pulack Ghatack Ashraf Khan Bedabrata Lahkar MEDIA RIGHTS 76 Melanie Morrison Hujatullah Mujadidi MONITORING REVIEW Sukumar Muralidharan Moazum Mohamad Ifham Niyaz Sameera Pillai JAILED AND DETAINED 80 Umesh Pokharel JOURNALISTS IN Zaheena Rasheed Adnan Rehmat SOUTH ASIA Geeta Seshu Frank de Soyza Malini Subramaniam Aziz Ahmad Tassal LIST OF MEDIA 82 Rinzin Wangchuk RIGHTS VIOLATIONS Designed by: LX9 Design by Journalists’ Safety Indicators (JSIs), Images: With special thanks to Agence May 2019 to April 2020. France-Presse for the use of images SUPPORTED BY: Afghanistan, Bangladesh, throughout the report. Additional photographs are contributed by IFJ Bhutan, India, Maldives, affiliates and also accessed under Nepal, Pakistan, Sri Lanka a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Licence and are acknowledged as such through this INTERNET SHUTDOWNS 92 report. 4 IFJ PRESS FREEDOM REPORT 2019–2020 5 Journalists protest the world’s longest internet shutdown that has affected the regions of Jammu and Kashmir since August 5, 2019, FOREWORD OVERVIEW and remains ongoing in the control of 4G high speed mobile internet. outh Asia has always been a challenging place for journalists continue to campaign for justice. journalists. This year it got even tougher. In the period under review, the IFJ and its affiliates As the world and its media comes to grips with and documented 219 violations against the media. This includes responds to the immediate global health crisis consuming 50 jailings or detentions, 19 threats to the lives of journalists, it in every sense, the flow-on impacts socially, politically 65 non-fatal attacks, 35 threats against media institutions, 8 Sand economically just keep coming. gender-based attacks and 82 threats or attacks on rural, regional For South Asia’s media, this “great confinement” is also or minority journalists. challenging freedom of expression in ways never seen before in In India and Bangladesh, journalists came under fire while one of the world’s most populous regions. It has put journalists covering civil disturbances and protests. In Sri Lanka and in the thick of an invisible viral war as essential workers for truth Afghanistan, the fight for safe access to information continued and freedom of expression; reporting on a crisis with impacts amid tumultuous elections. In Nepal and Pakistan, the battle and unfolding dimensions unseen in our collective lifetime. against a heavy legislative hand was waged. While in Bhutan and But during this time, we’ve also seen media do what they do the Maldives, the challenge for survival of a small but critical best: inform, hold governments to account, educate, and shine a media was never so great. light for broader society to defend democracy. And all this in the Plummeting media revenues saw the mass shedding of more face of states grabbing every opportunity to expand authoritarian than 3,000 journalist jobs in Pakistan too, while harsh online controls and increase state and corporate surveillance. controls saw Kashmir take the mantle for the world’s longest This pandemic has not only exposed media workers to physical vulnerabilities, it has also put them in the firing line of communication shutdown in a democracy. government-imposed controls on reporting and movement. The But, as this report also shows, amid Covid-19, cuts and contagion of economic fallout, has also decimated an already controls, South Asia’s media and the unions and networks that battered media sector, with many companies reducing hours, defend it persevered, standing together in solidarity to disrupt holding back salaries or simply sacking their media staff outright. authoritarian narratives. This 18th annual review of journalism in the region, States of In this war against them and truth, they have continued to Control: Covid, cuts and impunity traverses the complex experience push back, defend media rights and stand up against states of of this region’s media – already confronted with religious control. extremism, authoritarian governments, digital disruption and communication controls. It documents the challenges as well as some of the triumphs. It monitors the attacks, detentions Jane Worthington and killings and the ongoing battle against impunity where Director, IFJ Asia-Pacific s the novel coronavirus made a deadly sweep across the and ethnic polarisation and promises of national security saw the globe from the beginning of 2020, governments in South hardening of divisions among communities on religious lines, Asia tightened their iron grip over the media and democratic which spilled over into the media with vicious consequences. institutions. Even as the viral spread was declared a In India, a storm of protests against the controversial pandemic, the region saw an equally dangerous spread of Citizenship Amendment Act – seen to be violating the Afake news, increasing digital controls by governments, restricted secular constitution – across the country, polarised religious access to information, Islamophobia, police high-handedness, communities in unprecedented ways. In the run up to the amped up surveillance, curbs on movement and detentions. assembly elections in Delhi, the capital witnessed violence along Fundamental freedoms were curbed in the name of a public health communal lines, with sections of the media in the forefront crisis, and authoritarian measures implemented, including a clamp of fanning the flames and others attempting to douse violent down on citizens’ rights during a police-enforced lockdown in Islamophobia, with journalists from minority communities India and an official ‘police curfew’ in Sri Lanka. themselves facing intimidation and attacks. The media had the task of reporting the growing humanitarian In Sri Lanka, growing militarisation and a hardened national crisis, working in difficult circumstances and amidst security discourse once again wields immense influence over unprecedented physical curbs due to lockdowns and restrictions, civilian life. Despite some gains made in recent years, the Sinhala- particularly in containment zones. The Covid-19 crisis has Buddhist supremist ideology continued to have a vice-like grip exacerbated existing fault lines in the precarious freedoms that on the media, which remains in too many cases vehemently the South Asian media has fought for and the most vulnerable are pro-government, with only a few notable exceptions. The months now taking the first beating. leading up to the presidential election as well as the period The lack of safety for journalists, highlighted by poor working following it saw a spate of arrests, intimidation and harassment conditions – many media houses took days and even weeks to along cleavages already