BENGALURU,
India (Reuters) - Indian journalists and rights activists protested on
Wednesday against the murder of an outspoken publisher of a weekly tabloid amid
growing concerns about freedom of the press at a time of rising nationalism and
intolerance of dissent.
Gauri
Lankesh, 55, the editor and publisher of the Kannada-language “Gauri Lankesh
Patrike” newspaper, was shot dead on Tuesday by unidentified assailants near
her home in the southern city of Bengaluru.
She had
parked her car outside her gate and was walking to the main entrance of her
home when the attackers fired at least seven rounds, killing her, police said.
The motive
was not known.
Lankesh was
a fierce advocate of secularism and opposed hardline Hindu groups associated
with Prime Narendra Modi’s right-wing, nationalist ruling party.
Her weekly,
with a circulation of more than 5,000, is regarded as influential in the state,
read by policy makers and politicians.
Lankesh
spent decades with various media outlets before taking over the newspaper
started by her father.
Several
journalist groups, including the Editors’ Guild, Press Club of India and Press
Association, held protests in cities across India, calling her murder a “brutal
assault on the freedom of the press”.
They said
she was a critical, secular voice at a time when the country was being swept by
a wave of right-wing, Hindu nationalism.
“She was an
idealist and would take on the right-wing forces on several controversial
issues,” said Y.P. Rajesh, an executive editor at the news website The Print
and a long-time friend of Lankesh.
The U.S.
embassy in New Delhi also condemned the killing.
INSULTS
The murder
is a new low in India’s recent record of protecting journalists.
The
Committee to Protect Journalists has said that there have been no convictions
in any of the 27 cases of journalists murdered in India because of their work
since 1992.
This year,
the country of 1.3 billion people slipped three places to 136th in the World
Press Freedom Index, compiled by Reporters Without Borders.
The group
said Hindu nationalists, on the rise since the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)
swept to power in 2014, were “trying to purge all manifestations of
anti-national thought”.
Slideshow (3
Images)
Journalists
seen to be critical of Hindu nationalists are often insulted on social media,
and some women reporters have been threatened with assault.
People,
including BJP members, have also openly insulted journalists, using terms like
“presstitute” - a combination press and prostitute - to berate them.
In recent
weeks, Lankesh had posted videos on her Facebook page that were critical of
Modi’s economic policies and the rise of hardline Hindu groups since he came to
power.
Last year,
she was sentenced to six months in jail after a defamation case was filed by a
BJP member. She was released on bail.
Ananth
Kumar, a federal minister in the Modi government, said the state government
must arrest those behind the killing.
The state
government in Karnataka, run by the Congress party, said it had set up a
special investigations team to investigate and police were examining CCTV
footage.
M.N.
Anucheth, a senior police official investigating the case, said Lankesh was
shot in the head, neck and chest.
“This is an
attempt to silence all of us -- all of those who believe in democracy and
decency,” Ramchandra Guha, a historian told the Indian Express newspaper.
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