Covering anti-CAA protests: Price of being a Muslim journalist

The police crackdown on journalists covering the anti-CAA protests across the country has made one thing clear. The press card, a powerful tool in the hands of every journalist, offers little protection if the name on it is that of a Muslim.

Dozens of journalists were hounded by the police across the country during the protests in the last few weeks, leading many journalist unions to stage a protest in the national capital on December 26. Among them the most vulnerable to violence, threats of violence and bias by police were those with a Muslim name.

Diminishing value of press card

The police in Delhi attacked BBC journalist Bushra Sheikh when she was covering the protests at Jamia Millia Islamia University on December 15. They allegedly broke her phone, abused her in filthy, islamophobic language and pulled her by the hair. The police, which went on a rampage inside the university, also brutally attacked Shaheen Abdullah, a journalist with the online outlet Maktoob Media.

On December 19, Ismael Zoarez, a reporter with the Kannada newspaper, Vartha Bharathi, was caned by the Karnataka Police when he was trying to capture images of them brutalising unarmed protestors in Mangalore.

On December 20, Omar Rashid, a journalist with The Hindu, was illegally detained and abused with anti-Muslim slurs by the Uttar Pradesh Police. In a clear attempt to humiliate him because of his religion, a policeman threatened to “tear his beard out”.

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For the past few years, India has been consistently rated as one of the most dangerous places in the world for journalists, alongside Iraq and Syria, by the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). As insecurity among those sections of journalists who take on the establishment grows, the future is looking far dire for journalists who happen to be Muslims.

Last week when this reporter called a Muslim journalist on behalf of The Federal to ask if she would be interested in covering the Jamia protests on a freelance basis, she flatly refused saying, “There’s no way I would go into that place as a reporter, even if I had an ID card. If a BBC journalist can be attacked, you think any of us can be safe?”

“We are feeling more afraid to engage in objective journalism because we might get targeted for what we say. Muslim journalists are being targeted and trolled online. They are even getting rape threats,” said Inayatulla Gawai, the founder editor of Bhatkal-based news portal Sahil Online.

The portal is a favourite target of right-wing online trolls and its reporters are often boycotted by officials and fraternity members alike. “So often we don’t get invited for events that other reporters are invited for,” said Gawai’s colleague Mubashir Hussain. “It is an accepted courtesy among journalists that they share information with other journalists chasing the same story. But our reporters are not part of that fraternal club,” he added.

Islamophobia and muzzling free speech

Zafarul Islam Khan, the editor of the Milli Gazette, told The Federal, that Muslim publications always faced step-motherly treatment from advertisers as well as the establishment but things started getting out of hand after 2014.

“We had to shut down our print edition and become an online publication in 2016 because of the harassment we faced when we wrote an article, based on documents secured through RTI. The article exposed the fact that the Ayush Ministry had a hiring bias against Muslims,” Khan said.

The story was picked up by a cross section of the mainstream media and snowballed into a major controversy but only Milli Gazette was targeted. A police case was registered against Khan, the reporter and the publication and the matter dragged on in court for three years before falling flat.

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“We were acquitted in the end but the pressure of fighting the case finished us. Even Muslim businessmen were scared to advertise with us after they saw the impunity with which the government and police persecuted us,” Khan said.

Pushparaj BN is the chief of bureau of the Mangalore-based Kannada newspaper Vartha Bharathi. He is one of the many non-Muslim employees of the publication which is the only mainstream newspaper in the state owned by a Muslim.

“Our online version is one of the most followed websites in the Kannada news space and our following on social media is ahead of many large legacy publications. And most importantly, we are a secular news organisation that has a very diverse newsroom,” Pushparaj said. “Yet, on the basis of some anonymous complaints, Facebook blocked our page thrice in the span of a month,” he added. The publication received a verification from the social media site only after intensive campaigning by internet democracy activists based in the US, he said.

According to Pushparaj, despite the newspaper’s sizable print-run and impressive online presence, they are treated differently by advertisers because they do not go soft on the BJP government at the Centre. “Coastal Karnataka is a communally polarised region and this polarisation can be seen in the media too,” Pushparaj said. “Advertisers don’t just look at the size of your readership, nowadays, they are more interested in your political ideology,” he added.

He said that statistics bear out the fact that Muslims are the worst victims of the communal violence in the coastal region, just as anywhere else in the country. “The sad truth is that most publications try to brush this reality under the carpet by trying to create an artificially-balanced narrative between those creating the violence and those who are its victims. We cannot turn a blind eye when Muslims are openly targeted. But in the eyes of some people, that makes us a pro-Muslim outlet,” Pushparaj said.

Uncertain future

He said that all publications in the state are facing an uncertain future as advertising revenues shrink and the economic crisis deepens. “We are facing the same troubles as everybody else in journalism. We could have still fought the economic downturn but it doesn’t look like this newspaper will be able to fight off the Islamophobia for much longer,” he said.

On December 20, a policeman tried to snatch the press ID card of this reporter at the Mangalore police commissioner’s office. He was unhappy with the not-so-friendly questions we had asked the commissioner about the arrest of a group of journalists from Kerala who had come to the city to report on the violence. The matter was settled in a second as we snatched the card back and told the policeman we had not done anything illegal and that he had no right to take the identity card.

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A Muslim journalist friend who was with us at that time and witnessed the entire episode said that he would never have dared to pull such a stunt. “You think the cop would have let you go so easily if were a Muslim with a beard?” he said. As I tried to explain that I wasn’t exactly Hindu, he snapped at me for not acknowledging my privilege. “At least you are not a Muslim.”