Shooting of top Indian investigative journalist shocks nation

WHILE a leading Indian politician was railing against media sensationalism and lack of credibility and a major Asian communications conference was meeting in Hyderabad this week, police in Mumbai were crowing over the arrest of seven alleged assassins of a prominent investigative journalist in a case that has shocked the nation.

Veteran MiDDay crime journalist Jyotirmoy Dey was gunned down in a street not far from his home on the outskirts of Mumbai in a daylight gangland style execution on June 11.

While police displayed the seven hooded suspects in a press conference after their arrest this week and showed off a .32 calibre American-made revolver and 20 rounds of “deadly and accurate” Czech-made extra long cartridges and five empty shells - which they claimed were used in the murder - no motive was revealed.

But the police claimed the journalist had been killed under a supari (contract killing) order by a notorious gangland leader, Chhota Rajan.

Six of the accused had criminal records, including the alleged gunman Satish Kalya, who is already facing three murder cases.

Welcoming the breakthrough by the police who were under tremendous pressure to crack the crime, the national newspaper The Hindu said in an editorial that the assassination had been meticulously planned over 20 days.

Investigations were still under way and the “3000 emails in Dey’s in-box have to be examined for crucial evidence”. The newspaper added:

Having caught the suspects, the police have an even bigger challenge – unravelling the motive behind the brazen killing. Most crime reporters have excellent contacts with the underworld and a network of informers. Dey did not speak to anyone of a threat to his life or demand protection.

News reports said the suspects, while confessing to the murder, claimed they did not know Dey was a prominent journalist.

Dey, 56, had been investigating and writing on the oil mafia in India, underworld links with policemen and other issues. Journalist groups were branding his murder as an assault on the Fourth Estate of democracy. He is the third Indian journalist to have been murdered so far in 2011.

Reporters sans frontières called for a full investigation to be carried out by a federal agency to ensure impartiality by investigators. But the Mumbai High Court has ruled that local police can continue their investigation until a July 6 deadline and to produce a report.

As Indian media splashed reports about the arrest of the suspects, CNN-IBN was reporting on a new clampdown on the media by politicians, including assaults in the state of Uttar Pradesh. Its reports were billed with the speculative headline: “Is the media the new enemy of politicians?”

Ironically, The Hindu reported the leaders of various parties calling on the media not to sensationalise news and to maintain credibility in shaping public opinion.

Speaking at the launch of Jagruti Television news channel in Hyderabad last Sunday, government whip Y. Sivarami Reddy criticised some media for promoting a handful of politicians and the “street rowdy” instead of reporting on people who were “changing society for good”.
Chairman of the state’s Economic Programme, N. Tulasi Reddy said media was the lifeline for survival of democracy. But he warned that as media organisations were increasing in India, their credibility was decreasing. He praised Jagruti channel for striving to promote a society with moral and ethical values instead of pandering to sensationalism.

Meanwhile, a four-day Asian Media Information and Communication Centre (AMIC) organised annual conference on “the challenges and opportunities of globalisation, new media and the rise of Asia” featured five speakers from the Pacific among the more than 400 participants. The Pacific “delegation” was AMIC board member associate professor Martin Hadlow of Australia’s University of Queensland; Joys Eggins of the University of Goroka in Papua New Guinea; associate professor David Robie, director of New Zealand’s Pacific Media Centre; and Dr Munawwar Naqvi of Unitec in NZ.

Pictured: Top: The Hindu front page on June 28; left to right at AMIC 2011: Associate professor Martin Hadlow, Joys Eggins, associate professor David Robie and Dr Munawwar Naqvi.

• Mumbai High Court allows local police to continue investigation into reporter's murder

'Terror fatigue' over Osama bin Laden execution

IN THE wake of the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Centre in New York on September 11, 2001, the remote Central Asian state of Kyrgyzstan proved itself a key ally in the United States-led war on terror. A US military installation with a fluid identity (now Transit Center at Manas, formerly Manas Air Base and unofficially Ganci Air Base), has been a fixture on Kyrgyz soil since December 2001, providing a strategic refuelling and transshipment hub for the conflict in nearby Afghanistan.

But, as Chris Rickleton files as part the special Global Voices report on the US assassination of Osama bin Laden, in Kyrgyz society, Washington's presence in the country has often been viewed ambiguously. 9/11 conspiracy theory organisations such as Zeitgeist, have won widespread acceptance among the mainstream population. “Truthers" emerge in the form of taxi drivers and night club security personnel, who seize on foreigners, at pains to explain the scientific limitations inherent in pancake theory and the Rockefeller dynasty's sordid role in the attacks.

Apathy and cynicism
It comes as no surprise then, that the reported death of Osama Bin Laden, the popularly assumed mastermind of the attacks themselves, was treated by many Kyrgyz bloggers - and some politicians - with a sense of apathy and even cynicism.

In an article on local citizen media outlet kloop.kg [ru], senior public figures in the country revealed their doubts over the actuality of the shooting, and even Bin Laden's prior existence as a bona fide human being.

Sheradyil Baktygulov, an independent political expert argued [ru] that “Perhaps the death of [Osama Bin Laden] actually took place, but more likely it's a conspiracy.” A member of parliament for the parliamentary faction Ata-Meken, Karganbek Samakov went further, expressing [ru] his opinion that Bin Laden was a “fictional character”.

But amidst the whirl of rumour and conjecture, more serious attempts have been made to place the event within the context of the Central Asian region's ever-deepening human rights morass.

In a post titled “I don't know anything about the death of bin-Laden but”, Kloop blogger Selbi describes [ru] some of the routine violations that have been permitted in the wake of the post-9/11 “anti-terror discourse”:

Many activists around the world fell under the definition of “terrorist” because they wanted change and wanted to speak about it peacefully and in an alternative way, many people fell under this definition because they were not born [in a certain place], because they have such a colour of skin or they don’t belong to such a religion, or simply have the suffix “stan” in their passport.

The blogger adds that worldwide customs and security checks in the age of terror have:

strengthened a hierarchy of admissions - who does and doesn't deserve to go to such and such a country, permitted [processes of] selection and discrimination within the citizen body and controlled access to various resources (economic, political, social, cultural).

'Terror fatigue'
“Terror fatigue” has become prominent in Central Asian societies as ruling elites habitually invoke the “T word” to justify human rights atrocities or drastic failures in governance. Islam Karimov's Uzbekistan, a former US ally in the war in Afghanistan, characterized victims of the Andijan massacre of 2005 as “extremists”. Kyrgyzstan, in turn, has had its own recent “spate” of dubious terror attacks.

In response to an RFER/L article covering these “attacks”, one user of the service, Tim, summed up the prevailing attitude towards the current elite's tendency to talk up the terror threat:

Why does the headline say that “Ties between Islam, Extremism emerge”?

No ties have “emerged” in Kyrgyzstan, and none emerge in you story, except in government press-releases.

The government here has long tried to make this connection, off and on, for their own domestic and international political ends. At the moment it's politically favourable - so the stories go round again, and every violent crime is linked to “Islamic terrorism”.

There has been no “recent spate of explosions” and the “massive bombing” in November was in fact a very small explosion in a drain that injured no-one and damaged nothing more than a stretch of tarmac. Two police got sore ears. And they probably made that up as well.

Back in Washington D.C, however, “Islamic terrorism” had come to life again, ironically, through the death of its chief protagonist, Bin Laden. Kloop.kg President and blogger Bektour Iskender captured [ru] scenes of ecstasy at the White House in the American capital in a photo-post titled “I am just outside the White House where they are celebrating the murder of Bin Laden”.

One of several comments left by visitors to the blog read [ru] as follows:

Of course, it's a plus that they caught Osama. But the fact that he was being hunted for far too long, suggests that until this moment he was needed the Americans. Something in their interests. Now, he's not needed and.. the main thing, though. The [idea of ] ‘celebrating murder'. This is straight from the vocabulary of terrorism. (Egamberdiev Kabulov)

Note: Thanks to an atrocious piece of journalism, readers of the Kyrgyz news agency AkiPress [ru] may have come to the conclusion that there was photographic proof of Osama Bin Laden's death. In fact, the agency had re-posted a photo which originally appeared on an anti-Washington politics blog another world is possible in 2010.

The agency neither cited the source of the photo, nor, more critically, the date the photo was originally posted. Kloop co-founder Rinat Tuhvatshin rails against the agency's amateurism here [ru]. The photo has since been proven as a fake.

Top image: Graphic by Global Voices user Anxo Resúa.

• Other Osama bin Laden reports at Global Voices

Two out of three murder charges dropped in Fiji plot case

FIJI'S ASSASSINATION conspiracy case has taken a dramatic turn with the dropping of two of three charges against eight men indicted.

The eight - including a high chief - had been accused of plotting to assassinate the self-appointed Prime Minister, Voreqe Bainimarama, and two senior regime ministers in 2007.

Presiding judge Justice Paul Madigan dropped the charges of conspiracy to murder Mahendra Chaudhry and conspiracy to murder the Attorney-General Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum because of “ambiguous” evidence.

The eight men now face one remaining count of conspiring to murder Bainimarama.

Fijilive reports:

Ratu Inoke Takiveikata, Feoko Gadekibau, Barbedoes Mills, Metuisela Mua, Sivaniolo Naulago, Eperama Waqatairewa, Kaminieli Vosavere and Pauliasi Ramulo are now free on charges that they conspired to murder Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum and Mahendra Chaudhry.

The first count still stands and that is the [alleged] plan to kill the Army Commander.

First accused Ratu Inoke Takiveikata has opted to give sworn evidence from the witness box as the case on the first count proceeds.

Five local assessors are also presiding over the case, now into its fourth week.

Ironically, the Citizens’ Constitutional Forum today also issued a statement calling on the regime to take urgent action over the independence of the judiciary. Reverend Akuila Yabaki, director of the CCF, called on the government to invite the UN Special Rapporteurs on the Independence of Judges and Lawyers to visit Fiji as soon as possible.

• Human rights or corruption? Trotting out the real Fiji issues
• Croz Walsh's updates on the conspiracy case