The Editors Guild of India (EGI) on Sunday expressed shock over the Tripura Police’s action of booking 102 people , including journalists, under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA).
“The Editors Guild of India is deeply shocked by the Tripura Police’s action of booking 102 people, including journalists, under the coercive Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, for reporting and writing on the recent communal violence in the State. The State police has sent notices to various social media platforms under UAPA,” the EGI said in a statement.
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“This move comes a few days after the police had filed UAPA charges against some Delhi-based lawyers who had visited Tripura as part of an independent fact-finding enquiry commission into the communal violence,” it said.
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The EGI said one of the journalists, Shyam Meera Singh, alleged that he was booked under UAPA for merely tweeting “Tripura is burning”. “This is an extremely disturbing trend where such a harsh law, where in the processes of investigation and bail applications are extremely rigorous and overbearing, is being used for merely reporting on and protesting against communal violence,” said the EGI.
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It said: “The Guild is of the opinion that this is an attempt by the State government to deflect attention away from its own failure to control majoritarian violence, as well as to take action against the perpetrators of this. Governments cannot use stringent laws like UAPA to suppress reporting on such incidents.”
The EGI demanded an objective and fair investigation by the State government into “the circumstances of the riots instead of penalising journalists and civil society activists”.
It reiterated its earlier demand to the Supreme Court to take cognisance of the manner in which laws like UAPA were “unjustifiably” used, and to issue stringent guidelines on charging journalists under them.