Stories Big Media missed: Sexual assault in Manipur and, as always, climate reporting

This column in Newslaundry was published a week before the ghastly video went viral of Kuki women being stripped, paraded naked, groped and attacked by a mob of Meitei men. One of them, a 21-year-old, was gang raped.  In the column I mentioned the first stories that had appeared about the sexual violence in Manipur over the last almost three months that the state has been literally burning, in a state of civil war while the state government sat on its hands and did virtually nothing. The central government made some noises but did not move with the kind of alacrity it would have had the government in Manipur belonged to an opposition party. 

Now that the evidence is out there for all to see, the Prime Minister, who travelled the world in these months but uttered nothing, finally "broke his silence" only to churn out meaningless platitudes.  What is worse, he used even his brief statement, made outside Parliament rather than on the floor of the House, to dilute the gravity of what's happening in Manipur by mentioning how women were unsafe in a couple of opposition ruled states. 

I will write more on this in my next column later this week. But in the meantime, here's what I wrote earlier.

Broken News

Published in Newslaundry on July 13, 2023

Link: https://www.newslaundry.com/2023/07/13/stories-big-media-missed-sexual-assault-in-manipur-and-as-always-climate-reporting

News of the floods and devastation caused by the incessant rain in north India has predictably pushed Manipur onto the backburner – but it should not remain there. It is incumbent for the media to focus on the violence in the state, as I have argued in an earlier column.

After more than two months, we are finally seeing more in-depth reporting on this conflict-torn northeastern state, mostly on independent digital media platforms and some in the international media. 

Greeshma from Suno India has been doing almost daily podcasts from Manipur. They’re remarkable for the detail in them, and lets you hear the voices of the affected people. This report by Suno India focuses on the experiences of two women and illustrates what thousands like them must have gone through. 

The most recent reports by international news platforms on the conflict include one by Aakash Hassan for The Guardian, in which a Kuki farmer tells him, “People are building bunkers on both sides, they are positioning guns…New Delhi should understand that this is preparation for war.” Or this one by Soutik Biswas of the BBC that captures the latest situation in Manipur. Both reports essentially remind us that there is no “normalcy” in the state as the government continues to claim.

Despite the uptick in reporting, however, there is a crucial aspect of conflict, one that often remains shrouded in silence for a long time, and gets overlooked: sexual assault and rape of women.

Sexual violence and rape occur in most conflicts, from those between religious or ethnic groups to the ones between the local people and the police or the army. For decades now, rape has been employed as a weapon of war. Back in 1994, the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda declared rape as a war crime and a crime against humanity.

It is known that because of the stigma attached to rape in conservative societies, these assaults are often not reported to the police. Women will not speak about them. Their families too are part of the silence that surrounds sexual assault. This happens even in so-called “normal” times, but more so when people are caught in violent conflict.

This week, the first reports of sexual assaults in Manipur have appeared. This report by Sonal Matharu in The Print is one of the first. The disturbing testimonies recorded by the reporter illustrate the hesitancy of rape survivors to report the crime of rape and sexual assault. 

That these stories are only now emerging, a good two months after the horrific violence began in Manipur, is not surprising. From past experience, we know that this is what happened in Gujarat in 2002, following the communal violence. The story of Bilkis Bano is now known because of her determination to fight for justice. But for every Bilkis, there would be many others who kept quiet. 

We saw this repeated in the communal violence that gripped Muzaffarnagar and Shamli in UP in 2013. The stories of rape emerged only after the fact-finding efforts of women’s groups and journalists like Neha Dixit who doggedly followed up on these stories. Although a handful of the survivors did turn to the criminal justice system, their journey to get justice has been almost endless, as this story in Scroll tells us about a rape survivor from Muzaffarnagar. 

Thus, it is no surprise that Manipuri women, both Kuki and Meitei, have hesitated to speak on the record about what they went through. Yet, it is a story that must be recorded, and told, so that we understand the true costs of such a conflict. 

Unlike the silent survivors of rape, women in Manipur, especially Meitei women who are part of a group called Meira Paibi, have been in the news for a very different reason.  While the army has projected them as being obstructionist, the Kuki see them as partisan. The truth probably lies somewhere in between. But, at a time of such heightened polarisation, it is easy to jump to conclusions. What is important is to understand who these women are, the reasons for their militancy which was principally against the security forces, and why they are reacting as they are in the current conflict. 

For people willing to invest their time into reading and understanding their cause, several newspapers such as Indian Express, have laid out useful information about the group. But as news has been reduced to headlines and a few paragraphs, or sensationalism and opinion, especially on the television, the history and the processes that lead to conflagrations, like the one in Manipur, are usually overlooked. 

This understanding of history and process is also essential when reporting the devastation caused by the deluge in north India. We see images of the destruction, but apart from the incessant and heavy rain, what are the other factors that have caused it?

Again, if people have the patience to read, there have been articles in several newspapers by experts and by journalists that spotlight this. They tell you about how infrastructure projects, such as roads, are being built without due consideration to the fragility of the Himalayas. They inform us that despite rules that concrete structures cannot be built close to riverbanks, this is being done in all the tourist hotspots, including those hit badly by the floods last week. And they also speak of the routine and uncontrolled dumping of construction debris into smaller streams that ultimately lead to the images we saw of rivers – of mud and logs – raging through the streets of small towns in Himachal Pradesh. 

All these are human interventions that have contributed to the extent of the damage caused in these last weeks.

Unfortunately, such information appears in the media after the devastation, not before. It is more than possible that local journalists have been reporting about such violations of environmental rules. But the rest of the country only knows once the devastation has taken place.

It is also clear that extreme climate-related events, such as the deluge last week, are now a frequent occurrence across the world thanks to global warming. The New York Times published an article on July 10 headlined: “Climate disasters daily? Welcome to the ‘New Normal’.” It reported on the extreme heat, storms, and floods that the United States has experienced in the recent weeks, and the possible reasons for it.

To fully understand the connections between climate change and a local flood, journalists need to constantly keep up with the science behind global warming. Not so long ago, major newspapers in the country had full-time environment reporters. 

You could argue that any well-trained reporter should be able to understand and report on these subjects. Unfortunately, given the workload of most reporters, this is not entirely possible, and there is a need for specialisation in subjects such as the environment, health, or rural and urban development. If the media had continued specialised beats like the environment, it is possible that some early warnings of the disaster building up, especially in the hill states, would have been sounded or amplified. 

The people of Manipur should be the news – not just visits by politicians

Broken News

Published in Newslaundry on June 30, 2023

Link: https://www.newslaundry.com/2023/06/30/the-people-of-manipur-should-be-the-news-not-just-visits-by-politicians

For close to two months, a state of the Indian union has been burning – literally. It is caught in what is being described as a civil war. Yet, ask an average person living in what people in the northeast of India call the “mainland” whether they are aware of what’s been happening in Manipur, and you are likely to get a puzzled look.

Manipur is the biggest story that India’s mainstream media, especially television, failed to cover adequately. As always, there were exceptions. But by and large, the channels most viewed barely touched it. 

Print media was better. But you could count the newspapers that focussed attention on Manipur in their news coverage. While the comment pages did carry articles by experts and academics, largely missing was the granular reporting that’s only possible with feet on the ground. 

Although most national English language daily newspapers do have correspondents or even bureaus in Guwahati, few of these journalists have ventured to Manipur, just a short distance away, during these two months.  Surely reduced budgets for news gathering cannot be the only explanation. As a result, over 60 days, Manipur has drifted in and out of the news, mostly out.

As I had argued in an earlier column, Manipur is not an easy story to cover. It is a state with a complex and layered history. The current conflict cannot be reduced to a simple binary of Meitei versus Kuki. At a time when divisions, real and imagined, have been inflamed to the point where no one is prepared to listen to reason, journalists attempting to report in a responsible way face a tough challenge. 

Journalists covering any kind of conflict are often faced with difficult choices.  For instance, if the only safe way to travel to a conflict zone is with the security forces, do you agree to that?  If you do, then in places like Manipur, or Kashmir, or even Chhattisgarh, you risk alienating the local population whose relationship with these security forces is fraught. In any case, what kind of story can you get barring what your hosts are willing to let you see? 

Of course, all journalists don’t ask themselves these questions. But it is evident that the choices are not straightforward. 

For instance, last week in Manipur, five journalists who accompanied an army contingent to write about its operations had to face an irate local crowd. They were heckled and people demanded that they erase whatever they had recorded. They were left with no option but to leave with the army. 

Although the All Manipur Working Journalists’ Union issued a statement condemning what happened, this is something for which journalists ought to be prepared. Particularly in the kind of situation that prevails in Manipur, where people on both sides of the conflict have reason to resent the security forces. 

The incident is emblematic of the challenges of reporting at times of conflict. But it also points to the need for journalists, who really want people to speak to them without fear, to find ways where they are not seen as part of the very system that people find oppressive. 

Earlier, Guwahati-based Afrida Hussain, deputy editor of India Today, received threatening phone calls after a story she wrote.  A large crowd had gathered outside her hotel in Imphal. She wrote in a column, “Aren’t we supposed to bring out the truth? No one questioned me when I went to Manipur on May 5 and covered Kuki militants. But one thing against the majority community got me into trouble.”

The media plays an essential role in communicating the seriousness of a crisis or conflict when it occurs in what is considered an area that is literally on the periphery. States in the northeast of India have constantly complained that the rest of India, and mainstream media, fail in reporting on their problems.

Yet, the reality of the way mainstream media functions, and how it decides what news is important, or “national”, often precludes news from far-flung areas.  Almost automatically, places that can be easily accessed by media houses, most of whom are headquartered in the national capital, get detailed coverage. The costs for such coverage are not high, and media houses now openly cater to what they deem is their “market”.  

Such an approach has cut down reporting not just on parts of India like the northeast, but even on issues that require investment of time and money – such as the processes that are pushing people into poverty, or the continuing problems of the marginalised and those without a voice and social capital. These factors are also affecting coverage of the current crisis in Manipur. 

The conflict in Manipur is a national issue. If mainstream media had accepted this, even a month into the crisis, it is possible that there would have been more pressure on the centre to intervene. Instead, the Manipur crisis has been largely reduced to a political free-for-all.  Most of what we read in the media are statements made by politicians on opposite sides of the political divide. An occasional report gives you an insight of the suffering experienced by people in the state. But the dominant narrative is the political.

Manipur makes it to the front pages only when an important politician is involved.  Thus, home minister Amit Shah’s much belated visit to Manipur at the end of May made it to the top of the news. And on June 29, when Rahul Gandhi went to Manipur, although the reporting on his trip has mostly focussed on the police preventing him from travelling by road to Churachandpur and BJP spokespersons lambasting him for his “insensitivity” for the timing of the visit.  

Once again, what politicians say becomes the news and not the voices of the people of Manipur.

For that, you must turn to the independent digital platforms. For instance, Karan Thapar has focussed almost exclusively on Manipur in his interviews for the Wire. He has interviewed a wide range of people representing different perspectives, academics who have spoken of the history of Manipur, activists who have decried the lack of serious attention by the centre, and recently a former member of parliament, a Kuki, who had to leave her home and take shelter in a camp for the displaced. Together, these interviews provide an invaluable record of the many layers that together make up the Manipur story.

Scroll has also provided reports from on the ground including this reporter’s diary by Arunabh Saikia that illustrates the challenges journalists seeking to do independent reporting face. 

A recent long-form piece in Frontline magazine that is also worth reading for the insights it provides about Manipur is this one by Angshuman Chowdhury, where he gives the background about Kuki grievances. The writer complains that the media has “avoided an honest discussion on how the government dismissed serious Kuki grievances for years, allowing their discontent to reach boiling point. Instead, the media continues to obsess over guns and drugs, as if all of Manipur’s problems would disappear if one removes these two from the equation.”

Let me end by quoting from a powerful piece written by a respected senior journalist from the northeast, Patricia Mukhim, editor of Shillong Times. In this piece in Scroll, Mukhim spells out the troubled history of the northeast region and its relationship with the centre. What is happening today is grounded in this history. And she ends with these lines: “Delhi could not care about lives lost in the periphery which shares just 1% of its boundary with ‘India’.”

That is a devastating conclusion, one that ought to make all of us, journalists and concerned citizens, stop in our tracks and reflect on what these two months of neglect of a region under siege means for the future of this country. 

The Guillotine or slow bleed?

 I wrote this for the newly launched website of the People's Union of Civil Liberties (PUCL)

Link: https://pucl.org/manage-writings/the-guillotine-or-slow-bleed/

The guillotine or a slow bleed? A sane person would choose neither. More so if they lived in a country that they believed was a democracy. Yet, in democratic India, the very concept of press freedom has faced both – a dramatic cessation and a gradual, though deliberate, suffocation. 

As we approach the 48^th anniversary of “The Emergency”, the state of emergency invoked by then prime minister Indira Gandhi on the night of June 25, 1975, we should reflect on the past, but also ask whether the lessons from that past have informed this country’s future trajectory.

In June 1975, freedom of the press was suspended. It suddenly did not exist anymore. We were told that if you wrote critically about the government, you could personally face arrest, as well as the closure of the publication for which you wrote. In those days, the media consisted only of print. A nascent television (Doordarshan), and radio (All India Radio) were entirely controlled by the government.

Editors and journalists were arrested, even before they had a chance to write a word. Publications closed, either out of choice because they did not wish to be censored or were compelled to do so because they had violated censorship laws or were rendered financially unviable.

Smaller publications, often gutsier and more willing to speak up than the larger ones, were the most vulnerable. They depended on “goodwill” advertising, which is not determined by circulation figures. They also received advertisements from public sector companies and banks. The latter were ordered not to advertise in these publications and the former, mostly private companies, were told that if they continued, they did so at their own risk. Most chose not to take the risk.

All this was then. When press freedom was virtually guillotined.

Today, press freedom is intact, apparently. But it has slowly bled since 2014, when the Bharatiya Janata Party under Narendra Modi, won the majority in Parliament.  What remains can only be revived with a huge infusion of fresh blood.

The most dramatic change has taken place in television, a medium that reaches the maximum audience compared to other media in India.  Pre-2014, privately owned television channels were highly critical of the government of the day, at that time the United Progressive Alliance led by Dr Manmohan Singh.  Every mistake, imagined or otherwise, was amplified and discussed in detail.

Print media undertook investigations into corruption, exposed the shortcomings of government programmes, poked holes in government propaganda and highlighted human rights violations.

Post-2014, most mainstream television channels appeared to do a complete turnaround. Initially it was awe and praise for the ruling party and its leader. When Modi announced demonetisation overnight in 2016, there was barely a critical voice heard on these channels. They gave Modi the benefit of the doubt and allowed airtime for him to put forward his point of view. But only that viewpoint was heard. There was practically nothing about how millions of ordinary people suffered the consequences of this decision.

Till then, print media continued to provide space for critical comment and reporting. But even then, you could see that these spaces were shrinking.

By 2019, when the BJP returned with a much larger majority in Parliament, the change in the media was almost universal.  Television became an extension of the government’s propaganda machine.  It fuelled narratives, especially the Hindutva agenda of demonising Muslims, that the government and the ruling party wanted amplified. And it literally drowned out the few token voices that were willing to say something to the contrary.

Some of this was the consequence of owners of these channels being convinced that the BJP and Modi were the answer for India. And some from the pressures of business and the fear that falling foul of a powerful government would not serve their best interests.  Whatever the reasons, or a combination thereof, by 2019 the capitulation of mainstream TV, barring one channel, was almost complete. This was finally completed in December 2022, when that last, lonely, critical voice was muffled by a business ally of Modi taking it over. 

Print media does not have the reach of television.  Some spaces remain for critical writing and opinion. But they are shrinking by the day as these media houses become increasingly dependent on government advertising. Private advertisers must also be watching their backs, much as they did during the Emergency, by not being seen to support critical media.

The equivalent of the small publications that stood up and spoke out during the Emergency, are the digital news platforms. At the moment, these are virtually the only spaces where legitimate criticism of government policy and programmes, and of human rights violations, can be reported.  Their financial future is precarious given the government’s ability to pressure anyone supporting any form of dissent.

Yet, although the reach of these platforms is nowhere close to that of television, the current government is determined to restrict their reach even further.  This has come in the form of a proposed amendment to the IT rules that allows the government to set up a “Fact Checking Unit”. This body can decide that anything reported on a government programme is “fake”, “false” or “misleading” and compel any intermediary or social media platform to take it down.  Currently, this amendment is being challenged in court. But if it were to go through, it would be a virtual death blow for independent digital platforms that depend on social media to distribute their content.

Indira Gandhi had proclaimed that she invoked the emergency to “save democracy”. The Modi government believes that every draconian step it takes is saving, what it chooses to call the “mother of democracy”.

The intent is the same; only the methods differ. By learning from the past, this government has realised that it has no need to guillotine press freedom. It merely needs to bleed it slowly till the concept itself becomes lifeless.