Assaults on mediapersons: Assam scribes to agitate

Guwahati, June 28: The jourlist fraternity of Assam will demonstrate their angers against the relentless brutal assaults and killing of scribes across the country tomorrow (29 June 2015) in front of Guwahati Press Club starting at 12 noon. The protest demonstration will continue till 1 pm.

Representatives of various jourlist organizations, while meeting at the local press club today, observed that the media persons based in different parts of India should get united demanding justice for all the slain jourlists and also raise voices for a tiol action plan for the safety & security of newsmen across the country.

It may be mentioned that the present month has witnessed a number of cases relating to the physical attacks on the scribes in various parts of the country, where Uttar Pradesh (Jagendra Singh) and Madhya Pradesh (Sandeep Kothari) had lost two jourlists to assailants. On the other hand, a rural reporter of Assam (Prashanta Kumar) survived an assassition bid by the suspected armed militants.

The UP also witnessed two major incidents of physical assaults on media persons (Deepak Mishra and Haidar Khan). Earlier Assam also reported few bizarre incidents where local jourlists were mishandled by policemen (to a lady television reporter), businessmen (to Mukut Roy), unruly youths ( to Partha Sakia) and a media baron (to Hildol Gogoi) in separate incidents.

India in 2014 lost two active jourlists mely Tarun Kumar Acharya from Ganjam district of Odisha (formerly Orissa) and MVN Shankar from Guntur district of Andhra Pradesh to the assailants. According to New York based Committee to Protect Jourlists, 61 jourlists were killed last year across the globe, where the motive explained that they were targeted because of their activities as media persons. The deadliest countries in 2014 include Syria (17), Ukraine (5), Iraq (5), Somalia (4), Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territory (4), Brazil (3), Afghanistan (3), Pakistan (3), Paraguay (3), Mexico (2), India (2), Yemen (1), Myanmar ( 1), Libya (1), Democratic Republic of the Congo (1), South Africa (1), Philippines (1), Bangladesh (1), Guinea (1), Central African Republic(1) etc.

This year till the third week June, 32 jourlists were killed around the world, where India’s neighbour Bangladesh recorded three gory incidents (slaughtering of secular bloggers mely Anta Bijoy Das, Washiqur Rahman Babu and Avijit Roy). Other deadliest countries till date (this year) include France (8), South Sudan (5), Syria (4), Yemen (4), India (2), Brazil (1), Iraq (1), Guatemala (1), Ukraine ( 1), Democratic Republic of the Congo (1), Mexico (1) etc, this was stated in a press release.