India is earning a bad name when it comes to protecting its journalists. While high on euphoria for figuring in the top 100 destinations for ease of doing business, India has also been ranked at the 12th spot in the list of nations where scribes are killed with impunity.
The Committee to Protect Journalists’ (CPJ) 10th annual Global Impunity Index, published annually, names countries where journalists are murdered and their killers go free. India is ranked at number 12 with the likes of Somalia (1), Syria (2), Pakistan (7) and South Sudan (4), and among “countries that bill themselves as democracies but have repeatedly appeared on the index”, such as the Philippines (5), Mexico (6), Brazil (8) and Russia (9).
The CPJ observed 100 per cent rise in impunity ratings in India and named criminal and political groups as well as government officials among those getting away with murder in the country.
“Impunity thrives in conflict environments, where powerful actors often use violent intimidation to control media coverage, while weak-to-nonexistent law and order increases the likelihood of attacks,” it says.
It noted that about 93 per cent of murder victims were local reporters and most of them covered politics and corruption, while naming the murders of journalists Gauri Lankesh and Umesh Rajput as “killings carried out with complete impunity” in India.
It pointed out that “India (along with South Sudan and Syria) has never responded to UNESCO’s requests for the judicial status of journalist killings in the country”.
The index calculates the number of unsolved murders over 10 years as a percentage of each country’s population. For the 2017 list, murders between September 1, 2007 and August 31, 2017 in each nation were analysed, and nations with five or more unsolved cases for the period were highlighted. Afghanistan dropped off the list for the first time as targeted killings of journalists were seen as declining.
Four countries on this year’s index – India, Mexico, Nigeria, and the Philippines – are on the governing council of the Community of Democracies, a coalition dedicated to upholding and strengthening democratic norms, the CPJ pointed out.