Indian Police Arrest Admins of Dissident News Site for Alleged China Ties

New Delhi police on Tuesday arrested both the editor and human resources manager for NewsClick, a website critical of President Narendra Modi’s administration that allegedly received illegal financial support from the Chinese government.

NewsClick founder and Editor-in-Chief Prabir Purkayastha and administrator Amit Chakravarty were arrested a few hours after police raided the homes of several journalists linked to NewsClick. The arrests were justified under India’s anti-terrorism law, which has been criticized for stifling free speech.

The police said no less than 46 people were questioned during the raids, and numerous electronics were confiscated, including laptops and cell phones. The raid’s targets included current NewsClick employees, former employees, and freelancers.

The inspiration for the raid appears to be a New York Times (NYT) article from August that chronicled the activities of “charismatic American millionaire” and “socialist benefactor of far-left causes” Neville Roy Singham.

The NYT report traced “hundreds of millions of dollars” Singham gave to groups that “mix progressive advocacy with Chinese government talking points,” including the notorious American antiwar group Code Pink and the U.S.-British activist group No Cold War that defends Chinese Communism against criticism from the West.

The report found Singham financed NewsClick, which has mixed Chinese regime talking points into its news coverage. For example, one NewsClick report said, “China’s history continues to inspire the working classes.”

One Indian official, Junior Information Minister Anurag Thakur, specifically cited the NYT exposé as a reason to investigate NewsClick for its allegedly “anti-India agenda.”

The NYT itself described NewsClick on Tuesday as a “scrappy outlet best known for its sharp invective against Narendra Modi, the country’s right-wing prime minister,” and only briefly mentioned its own reporting that “connected NewsClick to an international network that funds pro-China propaganda.”

Tuesday’s article did not mention Singham by name. Instead, the NYT seemed more interested in theories that Modi’s government decided to shut NewsClick down because it was digging into the Adani Group scandal:

NewsClick’s contributors include a wide array of Mr. Modi’s critics, including a stand-up comedian and a historian as well as journalists. One of the reporters taken in for questioning is doing the most serious investigative work on the Adani Group, an embattled conglomerate with close ties to Mr. Modi, according to Kavita Krishnan, a feminist activist and former leader of a leftist political party.

Ms. Krishnan said that The Times’s coverage of NewsClick and the funding network had left her “concerned that the Modi government would weaponize the story as an excuse, as a pretext for fresh attacks on journalists who are doing very important work.”

Whatever the motivations for the raids and arrests, they brought a strong response from press freedom advocates. On Wednesday, 16 journalists and media organizations wrote to the chief justice of the Indian Supreme Court, pleading for an intervention in the NewsClick case.

“When journalists are summoned and their devices seized in the name of investigation, there is an inherent malice in the process that must be checked,” the letter said. “The fact is that today, a large section of journalists in India finds itself working under the threat of reprisal.”

The Press Club of India (PCI) said it was “deeply concerned” about the NewsClick raids and “stands in solidarity with the journalists.” Like many other critics of the raids, PCI urged the Indian government to reveal the exact charges and evidence against NewsClick as soon as possible.

A protest was held in Freedom Park in Bengaluru on Thursday, organized by some of the same groups that wrote to the Indian Supreme Court. Demonstrators denounced the NewsClick raids as an “attack on press freedom,” claiming the raids were based on “fabricated evidence” and conducted without proper legal authorization.

“On behalf of all lawyers, I say that seizing the devices of lawyers threatens the privacy of our clients. What if one of them is a citizen speaking truth to power? How is it legal to target journalists and lawyers? This is extremely unconstitutional,” said Avani Chokshi, a lawyer from the All India Lawyers Association for Justice, one of the protest organizers.

Another protest in New Delhi on Wednesday featured hundreds of journalists and activists who demanded the Indian government stop threatening media organizations.

“This is the latest attack on press freedom in India. We urge the Indian government to immediately cease these actions, as journalists must be allowed to work without fear of intimidation or reprisal,” Asia program coordinator Beh Lih Yi of the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) said in New Delhi.

The Indian opposition also weighed in against the NewsClick raids.

“These are not the actions of a ‘mother of democracy’ but of an insecure and autocratic state. Why does a government as strong and authoritarian as this one is, feel threatened by a news website?” said opposition lawmaker Shashi Tharoor of the Indian National Congress (INC) party.

“Intolerance is unworthy of everything that India represents. The government has disgraced itself and our democracy today,” Tharoor said.