Two women and three male journalists were gravely injured in the incident on the Assam-Mizoram border at Hailakandi on March 10. Attacks on journalists in the Northeastern states of the country have become dangerously routine.
The NWMI expresses outrage at the NIA’s attempt to lay down the “moral duty of a journalist’”.
The shocking and tragic assassination of Gauri Lankesh served as a grim reminder of the grave and present threats to freedom of expression in general and the dangers faced by individual journalists attempting to speak truth to power in particular. Ammu Joseph recently spoke to students in Bangalore about the implications of the murder for media freedom and independent journalism.
The Network of Women in Media in India stands in solidarity with the editors of Coimbatore-based website The Covai Post who have been receiving death threats for a story on their website and condemns the harassment of Vidyashree Dharmaraj and AR Meyammai.
Over the past week, the editors of The Covai Post, Vidyashree Dharmaraj and AR Meyammai, have been at the receiving end of death threats and harassment for a story on their website, titled ‘Girls in puberty stage paraded half-naked, offered to deity for a fortnight’, published on September 24, 2017
Women journalists routinely face gender-based violence in the workplace and the field, online and offline, and there has been an increase in this violence in recent years. This report from the UN secretary general describes the current situation pertaining to women journalists, sets out the applicable international law, provides an account of initiatives in this area, and suggests ways to strengthening the safety of women journalists.