Tripura: Editors Guild condemns booking of 102 people under UAPA

New Delhi: The Editors Guild of India (EGI) on Sunday condemned the Tripura Police's action of booking 102 people, including journalists, under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act and said the government cannot use such stringent laws to suppress reporting on communal violence incidents.

The Guild, in a statement, said it was deeply shocked at the police's action against journalists and said it was an attempt by the Tripura government to deflect attention away from its own failure to control majoritarian violence.

Tripura Police on Saturday booked 102 social media account holders under the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA), criminal conspiracy and forgery charges and served notices to the authorities of Twitter, Facebook and YouTube to freeze their accounts and inform all particulars of those persons to it.

This action came after Tripura Police registered a case against four Supreme Court lawyers under the stringent act and various sections of the Indian Penal Code for allegedly promoting communal disharmony with their social media posts on the recent violence in the state targeting Muslims.

The EGI said that 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 Guild said one of the journalists, Shyam Meera Singh, has alleged that he has been booked under the UAPA for merely tweeting 'Tripura is burning'.

This is an extremely disturbing trend where such a harsh law, where in the process of investigation and bail applications are extremely rigorous and overbearing, is being used for merely reporting on and protesting against communal violence. 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, it said. The EGI demanded that the state government conduct an objective and fair investigation into the circumstances of the rights instead of penalising journalists and civil society activists. Further, the Guild reiterates its earlier demand to the Supreme Court of India to take cognisance of the manner in which such laws are unjustifiably used against freedom of speech, and to issue stringent guidelines on charging journalist under them, so that these laws don't become an easy tool for suppressing press freedom, it said.

Meanwhile, the opposition Congress and CPI(M) as well as human rights bodies lambasted the state government. The opposition Congress on Sunday demanded withdrawal of cases. Tripura Pradesh Congress chief Birajit Sinha said that the mosque at Panisagar was attacked by activists of VHP and houses of minority communities were vandalised by them... they should be arrested first. I do not think the lawyers, who visited the state, came with any bad intentions and did not spread any communal hatred. Government should immediately withdraw charges against them".

The opposition CPI(M) in a statement said, after the attack on minorities in Bangladesh a group of people tried to foment communal tensions in different parts of the state.

When some lawyers visited the state as fact finders, cases were registered against them, this is an act of intolerance. If they had done any illegal activity then normal law was enough to take actions against them, but applying such stringent acts (as the UAPA) against them is an instance of intolerance , the statement said. A mosque was vandalised and two shops were set ablaze at Chamtilla in Tripura during a rally by Vishva Hindu Parishad on October 26, called to protest against the communal violence in neighbouring Bangladesh. Three houses and a few shops, reportedly owned by Muslims, were also ransacked in nearby Rowa Bazar, according to police. The state government had on October 29 alleged that a group from outside with vested interests had hatched a conspiracy against the administration to create unrest in Tripura and malign its image by uploading fake photographs of a burning mosque on social media after the October 26 incident.