People's Democracy

HUNDREDS of journalists working in the national capital served a strong warning to the central government on July 6 and resolved that – "we will fight tooth and nail all fascistic attempts to curb the press freedom." Providing a glimpse of their resolve, the scribes broke police cordon at four points to reach the doorstep of Advani’s office, the North Block, to deliver their memorandum to him.

The action programme held under the aegis of the Delhi Union of Journalists (DUJ) saw a colourful display of placards and banners denouncing the attacks on media. Before the march, a meeting outside the Press Club was addressed by senior journalist and Rajya Sabha member Kuldip Nayyar, CPI(M) MP Nilotpal Basu, CPI leader D Raja, Arif Mohammed Khan, Swami Agnivesh besides journalist Seema Mustafa, Tehelka editor Tarun Tejpal, DUJ president S K Pande and All India Newspaper Employees Federation vice president Santosh Kumar.

The speakers asked the journalists to prepare for a long drawn battle where shades of Emergency and press censorship were increasingly visible.

The rally began from the Press Club of India and was stopped at four points by the police. The journalists were adamant to reach the North Block and succeeded.

Later, a delegation met the home minister L K Advani and apprised him of the concerns of the media and specifically highlighted the cases of the harassment of the Tehelka journalist, the arrest and manhandling of Iftikhar Gilani and the beating up of R L Singh, the editor of the Voice of Buddha, in New Delhi by the police. Adavni asked for further details which were also sent. They also listed the raids on Surya TV in Kerala as motivated.

The delegation in a supplementary memo stated that data of the years 1992 to 1995 cannot impinge on the security of India in 2002 to warrant arrest of journalist Gilani in 2002 and added that extracts from published material that has not been proscribed in India till date cannot be deemed to be a crime.