A Congolese journalist who was arrested on 7 October has been charged with defamation. Kasereka Taipa, who works for local radio station Moto Oicha, and also reports for radio Victoire Horizon, had accused the national intelligence agency (ANR) of levying a tax on anyone wanting to build a permanent structure. After being detained at ANR regional headquarters for four days, Taipa has now been released. His trial begins on 15 October.
A newspaper journalist who photographed a Roman Catholic protest is facing charges of “practising journalism without accreditation“. Flata Kavinga was arrested at the demonstration on 10 October and detained for over 24 hours. His camera was confiscated. Although he has been released, Kavinga’s lawyer said that police are considering charging him under the Access to Information and Protection of Privacy Act (AIPPA). The controversial legislation, enacted in 2002, has been heavily criticised by media rights groups.
The editor of the vesti.uz website, Russian Vladimir Berezovskiy, has been found guilty of slander and insult and pardoned without sentencing by Tashkent’s Yakkasaray district court.
Berezovskiy believes the case against him was cooked up and the trial has been accompanied by numerous violations. For example, Justice Nodyr Akrabov barred Danis Bashirov, an official from the Russian embassy in Uzbekistan, from the hearing, saying the diplomat needed permission from the Supreme Court.
During the hearing Berezovskiy’s lawyer Sergei Mayorov had to challenge the court as it had rejected several important motions from the defence.
The ever-readable Salil Tripathi, in his column in India’s Mint, points us to a disturbing story in Mumbai. The university there has withdrawn a book by renowned author Rohinton Mistry after a member of the right-wing Hindu Shiv Sena group complained it was offensive to his party.
…Rajan Waulkar, vice-chancellor of Mumbai University became the poster child of acquiescence to bullying when he hastily withdrew Mistry’s acclaimed previous novel Such A Long Journeyusing his emergency powers, after an undergraduate student aspiring for political leadership of the Shiv Sena’s youth wing, the Bharatiya Vidyarthi Sena, complained that the book made disparaging remarks against his party and his people. His claim to lead the youth wing rests on what he considers his inherent birthright—he is born in the Thackeray family.
Such A Long Journey is a thoughtful narrative about the scarcity-prone India at the cusp of the Bangladesh war of 1971, when Gustad Noble, a bank clerk, gets enmeshed in a conspiracy to assist the Mukti Bahini, the India-backed armed group fighting for Bangladesh’s freedom. He is brought to the shadowy world by an old acquaintance who is an intelligence officer, loosely based on the life of Rustom Nagarwala, who allegedly imitated prime minister Indira Gandhi’s voice and got a State Bank of India officer to hand him Rs. 60 lakh after the phone call, ostensibly for Bangladesh’s liberation.
The junior-most Thackeray’s complaint is vague, and political analysts might see his grandstanding as part of his desire (and his father Uddhav’s desire) to regain political ground, ever since Uddhav’s bête noire, his cousin Raj Thackeray, began wolfing down the Shiv Sena’s jhunka bhakar through his party, the Maharashtra Navnirman Sena.
Salil points out an uncomfortable truth for fundamentalists:
Hindu nationalists get riled when they are compared with Muslim leaders declaring fatwas. But the difference between those who want Such A Long Journey or Breathless in Bombay banned and the clerics who hate Rushdie—and the cartoonists of Jyllands-Posten—is marginal. Their threats chill free speech.