“The relentless targeting of Rana Ayyub, one of India’s most prominent journalists, is shameful,” said CPJ Asia Program Coordinator Beh Lih Yi. “Indian authorities must swiftly investigate the doxxing of Ayyub and hold the perpetrators accountable. Using surveillance and intimidation to deter journalists from reporting effectively has no place in a country that prides itself on being the mother of democracy.”

Security personnel stopped and questioned Ayyub, a global opinion writer at the Washington Post, at checkpoints during her trip, according to those sources and CPJ’s review of video and audio recordings.

Officers asked Ayyub about who she was meeting and what she was reporting on. They said they followed her for her “safety,” and the measure was ordered by “higher office.”

Ayyub said on Friday, November 8, that a right-wing account on social media X shared her personal phone number and asked followers to harass the journalist. She told CPJ she received at least 200 phone and video calls and explicit WhatsApp messages throughout the night, including repeated one-time password requests from various online commerce platforms. 

Ayyub filed a complaint with the cybercrime police in Mumbai, India’s financial capital, on Friday. 

CPJ’s separate emails requesting comment about the surveillance and harassment complaint from the Manipur police and the Mumbai cybercrime police did not immediately receive a response. 

Ayyub’s reporting has previously led to online trolling and official intimidation. She previously faced criminal investigations, received rape and death threats, and is currently fighting a money laundering case in court.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by CPJ Staff.

New Zealand activists Youssef Sammour and Rana Hamida have been selected to join the volunteer crew on the international Freedom Flotilla ship Handala, currently visiting European ports and heading to break Israel’s siege of Gaza.

They will be farewelled at 10:30am upstairs at the Auckland International Airport on Sunday, reports Kia Ora Gaza.

Trevor Hogan, a former Irish rugby champion and pro-Palestinian activist who participated in several flotillas that were water cannoned and pirated by the Israeli military in the past, has sent a special message to the volunteers and those supporting the freedom missions in “a time of great, unquantifiable grief”.

• READ MORE: Education head condemns Israel’s ‘shameful’ ruin of UN schools in Gaza
• Why is NZ being so obstinate over its weak position on Gaza and Palestine?
  
• At least 25 killed in Israeli strikes on Gaza today, including infant
• ‘Traumatised, exhausted’: 1 million ‘trapped’ as south Gaza war rages – World Food Programme
• Kia Ora Gaza website
• Other War on Gaza reports

“While our Handala has just left the Irish port of Cobh and we continue to work on reflagging the flotilla ships stuck in Istanbul, the decades of solidarity from Ireland remains palpable, unwavering and tremendously significant for Palestinians and the wider diaspora,” said Kia Ora Gaza.

“This is a reminder to everyone watching: on those dark days, take time to regroup, regather, and come back again. Until Palestine is free.”

Trevor Hogan’s message to the world in support of Palestine.  Video: Freedom Flotila Coalition

Concerns raised over US ‘floating pier’
Meanwhile, Ahmed Omar in Monoweiss reports that in March 2024, US President Joe Biden announced in his State of the Union address that the US would be building a temporary “floating pier” on the Gaza shoreline to deliver “humanitarian aid” to the starving population in Gaza.

“No US boots will be on the ground,” he promised.

Since then, however, critics have raised concerns that the pier is not only being used for “humanitarian” purposes but is being employed for military activities that aid in the ongoing Israeli genocide in Gaza.

An intelligence source from within the resistance in Gaza, who spoke to Mondoweiss under conditions of anonymity, said there were mounting signs the US pier could also be used to forcibly displace Palestinians.

This would provide an alternative to the original Israeli plan of forcing Palestinians into the Sinai, which was rejected by Egypt early on in the war.

“The floating pier project is an American solution to the displacement dilemma in Gaza,” the source said.

“It goes beyond both the Israeli solution of displacing Gazans into Sinai . . . and the Egyptian suggestion of displacing [Gazans] into the Naqab [desert].”

Instead, the source said, the US pier would be used to facilitate the displacement of Gazans to Cyprus, and then eventually to Lebanon or Europe.

These concerns have been brought into sharp relief after the Israeli army committed a massacre in Nuseirat refugee camp last weekend, killing at least 274 Palestinians in order to retrieve four Israeli captives.

The US pier was at the centre of coverage of the massacre, as multiple news sources, videos, and eyewitness accounts from Gaza indicated that US forces may have been involved in the operation and that humanitarian trucks entering Nuseirat were hiding the Israeli soldiers that carried out the massacre.

Reported in collaboration with Kia Ora Gaza.

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.

Rana was held in jail for a week after police arrested the journalist on March 5. Rana, who works for the Bangla-language newspaper Desh Rupantor, was arrested at a local government office in the northern Sherpur district after he filed a right to information (RTI) application regarding a government-run development program, according to news reports, the local press freedom group Bangladeshi Journalists in International Media, and Mustafa Mamun, acting editor of Desh Rupantor.

Later that day, an assistant land commissioner, who is also an executive magistrate, sentenced the journalist to six months in prison on charges of disobeying an order by a public servant and insulting the modesty of a woman. The action was taken through a mobile court, which is empowered to try offenses instantly.

Mohammad Ali Arafat, state minister for information and broadcasting, stated that the country’s information commission would investigate the incident and told CPJ that he would receive a copy of the commission’s investigative report on Monday, March 18.

Arafat did not immediately respond to CPJ’s subsequent requests for comment on the report’s findings. Mamun told CPJ that as of Wednesday, he had not received a copy of the report.

Separately, at around 12 p.m. on March 14, employees at an assistant land commissioner’s office in Lalmonirhat held Mahfuz Sazu, a correspondent for the broadcaster mytv and the newspaper The Daily Observer, after the journalist filmed a land dispute hearing allegedly conducted by an unauthorized official, according to news reports, Bangladeshi Journalists in International Media, and the journalist, who spoke to CPJ.

Twenty minutes later, four members of the Lalmonirhat Press Club arrived to help Sazu and were also confined within the premises. After a district revenue commissioner arrived at the scene, the five journalists were released around 12:50 p.m.

“CPJ welcomes a government investigation into the retaliatory jailing of Bangladeshi journalist Md Shofiuzzaman Rana. Journalists should not face reprisal merely for seeking information,,” said Beh Lih Yi, CPJ’s Asia program coordinator. “Authorities should launch a transparent probe into the confinement of five correspondents in a  government office in Lalmonirhat and ensure that journalists are not harassed with impunity.”

Rana’s arrest unfolded after an office assistant refused to provide the journalist with a receipt for his RTI application. Rana then called the Sherpur deputy commissioner, or district magistrate, to resolve the issue, Mamun told CPJ, citing Rana. The chief of the local government office arrived at the scene and shouted at Rana, saying, “You are a broker journalist” (an insult used to refer to a media member who makes money through one-sided stories).

Police then arrived at the scene, arrested the journalist, and seized his two mobile phones. Rana was held for one week in Sherpur District Jail and released on bail on March 12. A local magistrate court is scheduled to hear Rana’s appeal against the verdict on April 16.

Separately, Sazu told CPJ that after filming the land dispute hearing, he interviewed three people connected to the case in the corridor of the assistant land commissioner’s office when an official unsuccessfully attempted to confiscate his phone.

The official then called the assistant land commissioner. At the same time, the office staff escorted the three people he interviewed out of the building and locked the entrance, leaving the journalist confined within the premises, Sazu said.

Sazu told CPJ that the journalist’s four colleagues later entered the building with the assistance of a local ward councilor but were also locked inside the premises. The journalists were:

• Mazharul Islam Bipu, a correspondent for the broadcaster Independent Television
• SK Sahed, a correspondent for the newspaper Daily Kalbela
• Neon Dulal, a correspondent for the broadcaster Asian TV
• Liakat Ali, a correspondent for the newspaper Daily Nabochatona

The assistant land commissioner then arrived at the scene and shouted at the journalists, calling them “brokers” and threatening to send them to jail via a mobile court, Sazu said, adding that the journalists also heard him telling an unidentified individual on the phone that he would file legal cases against them.

Later that day, the divisional commissioner of Rangpur, which encompasses Lalmonirhat, issued an order transferring the assistant land commissioner to another locality. As of Wednesday, the order had not been executed, and no further legal or administrative action had been taken, Sazu told CPJ.

Arafat did not immediately respond to CPJ’s request for comment on the incident in Lalmonirhat.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Committee to Protect Journalists.

Access Now’s report does not name the other 12 journalists and media workers, and CPJ was unable to immediately identify them. Previously, in 2022, CPJ called for an investigation into the use of Pegasus spyware on two Jordanian journalists, including Suhair Jaradat.

“The new revelations that journalists and media workers in Jordan have been targeted with Pegasus spyware underscores the need for an immediate moratorium on the use and sale of this technology, and a ban on vendors facilitating abuses,” said Sherif Mansour, CPJ’s Middle East and North Africa program coordinator, in Washington, D.C. “Journalists are not legitimate surveillance targets, and those responsible for these attacks should be held accountable.”

According to the report, phones belonging to Sabbagh and Dihmis, who cover the Middle East and North Africa as a senior editor and an investigative reporter, respectively, at the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP), were targeted with Pegasus spyware.

“What bothered me most was the impact of the surveillance on my sources, and friends, and relatives,” said Sabbagh, who is also the co-founder of Arab Reporters for Investigative Journalism. “Because of the nature of OCCRP’s work, it is a principal target for surveillance agencies. They wish to keep crime and criminality hidden. We work to expose it. And with this type of work comes a very high price.”

Dihimis called the revelation “quite the violation,” adding that “as a journalist, it was a reminder of the importance of being cautious in terms of secure communication — to protect yourself but also your sources and colleagues. As a person, it spurred a lot of paranoia,” she added.

Kuttab, a Palestinian-American journalist based in Jordan and a 1996 recipient of CPJ’s International Press Freedom Award, was targeted by Pegasus spyware multiple times, according to the report.

On March 8, 2022, two weeks after the first incident, Kuttab was arrested when he arrived at Queen Alia International Airport outside of Jordan’s capital, Amman. He was detained under the Cybercrime Law for an article written in 2019 and was released a few hours later on bail, the report said.

The report detailed seven other attempts to infect Kuttabʼs mobile device with Pegasus, including a 2023 attempt in which the attacker impersonated a journalist from media outlet The Cradle asking questions about Jordanʼs cybercrime law while sending malicious links.

“I will not be intimidated, and I will not censor myself,” Kuttab told CPJ. “It is highly irritating to be spied on, but that also comes with the job nowadays. Whatever I know, I publish, but my only concern is my sources and their protection.”

Gharaibeh, director of Jordan’s Radio Husna, and the host of its morning talking show, was targeted successfully multiple times and there were also several failed attempts to infiltrate his phone, the report said.

When asked by CPJ about the apparent reason behind the recurrent attacks, Gharaibeh said that “it could be anything from monitoring the journalists and their sources to exploiting the journalists and silencing them.”

According to Access Now, the victims in the report were targeted using Pegasus with both zero-click attacks, in which spyware takes over a phone without the user’s knowledge, and attacks in which a user has to click a link. 

CPJ has documented the use of Pegasus to target journalists around the world in order to monitor their phones’ cameras, microphones, emails, texts, and calls. Journalists have been targeted with the software in Jordan, Morocco, the United Arab Emirates, and Saudi Arabia, among other countries.

CPJ emailed NSO Group for comment, but received no response. NSO Group says it only licenses its Pegasus spyware to government agencies investigating crime and terrorism.

CPJ offers guidance for journalists and newsrooms on spyware targeting and general digital safety.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Committee to Protect Journalists.

Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina of the ruling Awami League party returned to power for her fifth term amid an opposition boycott and low voter turnout. The U.S. State Department said the elections were “not free or fair.”

Mujib Mashal, South Asia bureau chief for The New York Times, told CPJ that the newspaper was denied prior approval by the Bangladesh government to report on the polls.

Separately, on Saturday, January 6, the day before the election, the Daily Manab Zamin newspaper’s website was blocked in Bangladesh following its critical reporting on the government, according to Matiur Rahman Chowdhury, the outlet’s editor-in-chief.

Chowdhury said the outlet did not receive a government notice detailing why the website was blocked, and access was restored on Monday, January 8.

At around 1 p.m. on election day, around 15 to 20 men wearing Awami League badges attacked seven journalists– MA Rahim, a correspondent for the broadcaster Ananda TV, Rimon Hossain, a camera operator with Ananda TV; Masud Rana, a correspondent with the online news portal enews71; Sumon Khan, a correspondent with the broadcaster Mohona TV; Elias Bosunia, a correspondent with the broadcaster Bangla TV; Minaj Islam, a correspondent with the newspaper Daily Vorer Chetona; and Hazrat Ali, a correspondent with the newspaper Dainik Dabanol, during their coverage of an assault on independent candidate Ataur Rahman outside a polling station in northern Lalmonirhat district, according to Rahim and Rana.

The men beat several of the journalists with iron rods and bamboo sticks, beat and pushed others, and broke and confiscated multiple pieces of equipment including cameras and microphones—according to those sources and a complaint filed at the Hatibandha Police Station by Rana, which alleged the perpetrators were led by brothers Md. Zahidul Islam and Md. Mostafa, nephews of the incumbent parliamentarian contested by Rahman.

Md. Zahidul Islam told CPJ that he denied involvement in the attack. Islam did not respond to CPJ’s follow-up question about Mostafa’s alleged involvement in the attack.

Saiful Islam, officer-in-charge of the Hatibandha Police Station, did not respond to CPJ’s request for comment.

Separately, at around 2:40 p.m., around 25 men surrounded Sirajul Islam Rubel, a correspondent for The Daily Star newspaper, and Arafat Rahaman, a reporter for The Daily Star, as they tried to leave a polling station in the capital Dhaka after covering an alleged ballot stuffing attempt by Awami League supporters, Rubel told CPJ.

The men grabbed the journalists’ phones, deleted their video footage and photos of the incident, and blocked their exit from the center along with Daily Star reporter Dipan Nandy, who subsequently joined Rubel and Rahaman to report from the station. The trio managed to leave with the assistance of police at around 3:05 p.m., Rubel said.

Separately, at around 2:45 p.m., around 20 to 25 men beat Mosharrof Shah, a correspondent for the daily newspaper Prothom Alo, after he photographed and filmed alleged ballot stuffing by Awami League supporters at a polling station in southeast Chittagong city, the journalist told CPJ.

Shah said that while speaking to an electoral officer about the incident, the men approached the journalist, took his notebook where he wrote what he observed, and deleted footage from his mobile phone in the presence of police. The men repeatedly slapped and punched Shah before he managed to flee the scene after around 30 minutes, the journalist told CPJ, adding that he received his phone back around one hour later with the assistance of his journalist colleagues.

Shah identified one of the perpetrators as Nurul Absar, general secretary of a local unit of the Chhatra League, the student wing of the Awami League. Absar did not respond to CPJ’s request for comment.

Previously, on September 24, alleged members of the Chhatra League attacked Shah on the University of Chittagong campus.

Separately, at around 4 p.m., a group of 20 to 30 men surrounded and assaulted Saif Bin Ayub, a sub-editor for the Daily Kalbela newspaper, and took his laptop, phone, other personal items while he was photographing alleged ballot stuffing by Awami League supporters inside a polling center in Dhaka, the journalist told CPJ.

The men pushed Bin Ayub against a wall and punched him, kicked him in the abdomen, and scratched him while forcibly removing his press identification card from around his neck. The perpetrators then dragged him out of the building as he requested help from police present at the scene, the journalist said. 

Officers did not intervene and the beating continued outside for around 15 minutes, the journalist said, adding that he received his phone and broken laptop back later that day but not his wallet, wristwatch and other items.

Separately, at around 4:30 p.m., around eight to 10 men—including electoral officials and teenagers wearing Awami League badges—pushed Sam Jahan, a Reuters video journalist, out of a vote counting room in a polling station in Dhaka. Two of the teenagers then chased Jahan out of the station, he told CPJ.

Separately, Awami League supporters surrounded and obstructed the work of four journalists with the New Age newspaper—correspondent Muktadir Rashid, photojournalist Sourav Laskar, and reporters Nasir Uz Zaman and Tanzil Rahaman—during their coverage of polling stations in Dhaka, Rashid told CPJ.

Separately, unidentified perpetrators threw bricks from behind at Mohiuddin Modhu, a news presenter and correspondent for the broadcaster Jamuna Television, after the journalist tried to speak to a young teenager who attempted to cast a ballot in the Nawabganj sub-district of Dhaka district.

Biplab Barua, Awami League office secretary and special aide to Prime Minister Hasina, told CPJ that law enforcement took swift action regarding all attacks on journalists on election day. Barua added that the government is committed to launching investigations into all such incidents and bringing the perpetrators to justice.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Arlene Getz/CPJ Editorial Director.

At around 10 p.m. on Wednesday, June 14, a group of men ambushed Nadim, a correspondent for privately owned website Banglanews24 and broadcaster Ekattor TV, while he was traveling home on his motorcycle in the Bakshiganj area in the Jamalpur district of northern Mymensingh division, according to news reports, security footage of the incident published by Ekattor TV, and a witness account by Al Mujaheed, a journalist present at the scene.

A group of 15 to 20 men dragged Nadim to a dark alley, where they severely beat him and left him unconscious before he was taken to the hospital by bystanders. The journalist died the next day from excessive blood loss caused by a severe head injury.

Nadim’s family believes he was targeted in retaliation for his May 2023 series of reports for Banglanews24 about Mahmudul Alam Babu, chair of a local government unit and member of the ruling Awami League party, according to those reports. Babu denied any involvement in the attack.

Sohel Rana, officer-in-charge of the Bakshiganj police station, said six people had been arrested in connection with the attack, Prothom Alo reported Friday.

“We condemn the killing of Bangladeshi journalist Golam Rabbani Nadim in apparent retaliation for his reporting on a local politician,” said Beh Lih Yi, CPJ’s Asia program coordinator. “Bangladesh authorities must ensure that all those involved in this attack are brought to justice and end the country’s appalling record of impunity pertaining to violence against journalists.”

Al Mujaheed said in his witness account that Babu was at the scene and directing the attackers from a distance. CPJ’s calls to Babu, who was reported to be in hiding as of Friday evening, did not connect. CPJ’s text message to Babu did not immediately receive a response.

Nadim’s May articles concerned issues in Babu’s marriage, including a press conference by a woman who alleged the politician secretly married her, then abused and divorced her. Nadim also posted about the allegations on Facebook.

In mid-May, Babu filed a complaint against Nadim under the Digital Security Act for that reporting. Hours before the attack, Nadim posted on Facebook that a court had dismissed the case.

The Rapid Action Battalion, a paramilitary unit of the Bangladesh police, has joined the probe into Nadim’s death. CPJ’s calls and messages to Rana and Khandaker Al Moyeen, director of the legal and media wing of the Rapid Action Battalion, did not immediately receive a reply.

Local press groups, the Bangladeshi Journalists in International Media and the Bakshiganj Press Club, both condemned the killing, saying Nadim, who was also vice president of the Jamalpur District Online Journalists Association, was targeted due to his reporting.

Al Mujaheed told CPJ via messaging app, and Raju, Nadim’s brother-in-law, told CPJ by phone separately that they were unable to immediately comment.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Committee to Protect Journalists.

April 24, 2023, marks the tenth anniversary of the Rana Plaza tragedy in Bangladesh. On that fateful day in 2013, the eight-story building collapsed, killing over 1,100 people and injuring more than 2,500, mostly garment workers who were producing clothes for global brands.

Sumi Akhter, 26, began work at Rana Plaza in April 2013, sewing for garment supplier New Wave Style. She somehow escaped death in the collapse but lost her mother, who worked in the same building. Firefighters rescued Akhter from the rubble of mingled steel and concrete three days after the building collapsed. Her right leg was severely injured and had become gangrenous. To save the rest of her body, doctors had to amputate. Now she has to use a prosthetic leg for walking.

Akhter recalls the day of the tragedy: "In the morning when everyone had entered the building for work, suddenly it collapsed. My coworkers were shouting, urging everyone to run. I tried to run and escape, but somehow I fell down and lost consciousness. When I regained consciousness, I found myself trapped under concrete debris. There were two dead bodies on top of my legs and a concrete beam resting on them."

"The owner is not lacking in wealth, so why did they not take action to shut down the factory?"

The incident shocked the world and brought the dark realities of the global fast fashion industry to the forefront, sparking calls for change and initiating safety reforms. Bangladesh is the world's second-largest ready-made garment exporter, after China, supplying more than 300 brands across the globe, such as Walmart, H&M, Zara, Adidas, JC Penney, and Uniqlo.

Brands such as Primark, Mango, Benetton, and Bonmarché pledged to provide compensation to survivors and to victims' families, either individually or through the International Labour Organization's Rana Plaza Donors Trust Fund.

But many of those injured in the collapse, as well as families of those who died, are still suffering hardships a decade later.

Since the incident, Akhter has been unemployed and needs to change her prosthetic leg every 1.5 to two years. While she initially received free prosthetic legs, she had to purchase the most recent one herself by taking out a loan of 90,000 taka ($846).

"Sometimes I feel like it would have been better if I just died there," she says. "We don't have that much money to afford new prosthetic legs. Also, I am uncertain about my son's future."

Renu Begum, 55, lost her son Robiul Islam Manik in the Rana Plaza accident. He was 27. Robiul worked on the seventh floor as a senior machine mechanic and was the family's main bread earner.

"The owner of the factory has never checked on us or provided any financial assistance, not even a minimal amount," says Begum. "If my son were still alive, our struggles wouldn't be as difficult. Both my husband and I are ill and unable to work. If the owner had chosen to close the factory upon seeing the cracks in the building the day before the collapse, none of these would have happened. The owner is not lacking in wealth, so why did they not take action to shut down the factory?"

A recent survey by ActionAid Bangladesh found that 54.5% of Rana Plaza survivors are currently unemployed, and 89% of them have been jobless in the past five to eight years.

Mahmudul Hasan Hridoy, president of the Savar Rana Plaza Survivors Association of Bangladesh, says some survivors now beg for a living.

Since the tragedy, there has been a notable shift in attention toward worker safety in Bangladesh's readymade garment industry. The European-led Accord on Fire and Building Safety in Bangladesh, a legally binding agreement between global brands, trade unions, and NGOs, was established in 2013 to inspect and remediate garment factories for fire, electrical, and structural safety. The Accord has made significant progress, inspecting over 1,600 factories and helping to remediate safety violations in many of them.

Similarly, the U.S.-led Alliance for Bangladesh Worker Safety, a consortium of North American brands and retailers, conducted safety inspections and remediation efforts in more than 700 garment factories. Together, these efforts have resulted in closing unsafe factories, renovating others and improving working conditions for millions of workers. They have addressed issues such as electricity and fire safety, infrastructure risks, workers' health, freedom of association, and the overall working environment.

Despite the progress made, many challenges remain.

In 2018 the Alliance handed over operations to Nirapon, an NGO, and in 2021 the Accord transferred its operations to the RMG Sustainability Council, a committee of factory owners, unions, and global brands. But reportedly, there are concerns that RSC may not be as effective as Accord in terms of safety monitoring.

The safety inspection groups don't monitor subcontractor factories, which are contracted by larger manufacturers for specific stages of production, such as cutting or sewing. These factories number more than 1,000 and employ 220,000 workers.

Asked about this issue, Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association (BGMEA) President Faruque Hassan said, "We have instructed our member factories to only hire subcontractors that comply with safety regulations and take approval from the retailer client before hiring."

Low wages have not drawn the same attention as safety concerns. Rozina Begum, 25, a junior swing operator working in a garment factory, earns a monthly salary of 10,000 BDT ($95) and makes up to 13,000−14,000 ($123-$133) with overtime. She says it is tough to afford basic necessities, especially with inflation. "The cost of everyday things has gone up."

Working 10-14 hours a day to earn extra money is common, and deleterious to workers' health, says Amirul Haque Amin, president of the National Garments Workers Federation (NGWF), which represents more than 100,000 workers and has 99 registered affiliates and 1,261 factory committees.

Workers also face challenges when they are sick or injured. "Sick leaves are counted as absences," says Amin, and workers also don't always get compensation or treatment for workplace injuries. But he's optimistic about a new workers' compensation pilot initiative launched with the help of the German and Netherlands governments. The program will cover four million garment workers.

Although workers are technically free to form trade unions, many are hesitant to do so since they still face threats, intimidation, and harassment for exercising their right to freedom of association.

The Accord emphasized the ongoing need for effective worker representation in factories. Although workers are technically free to form trade unions, many are hesitant to do so since they still face threats, intimidation, and harassment for exercising their right to freedom of association.

The COVID-19 pandemic made things harder for readymade garment workers. Many lost their jobs due to factory closures and reduced demand for clothing. To help, the government and international organizations launched initiatives like cash transfers and hotlines for labor rights. But these efforts had limited funding and failed to reach all affected workers.

After the 2013 disaster, U.S. garment imports from Bangladesh briefly dropped when the U.S. withdrew "favored" trading partner status. But after the safety reforms, imports rose again. In recent years, the U.S. trade war with China has spurred U.S. imports of Bangladeshi garments even higher, from $7.5 billion in 2021 to $10 billion in 2022.

Ultimately, international brands choose Bangladesh as a sourcing destination due to low labor and production costs. However, this results in factory owners cutting costs by exploiting workers.

Hridoy believes this will continue as long as workers don't have representation.

"The same individuals who own the garment factories also hold positions in the parliament and cabinet," says Hridoy. "There is no representative of the workers in the parliament. The rulers are exploiting [us]."

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Piyas Biswas.

On April 24, 2013, a multistory garment factory complex in Bangladesh called Rana Plaza collapsed, killing more than 1,000 workers and injuring another 2,500. It remains the worst accident in the history of the apparel industry and one of the deadliest industrial accidents in the world.

Several factories inside the complex produced apparel for Western brands, including Benetton, Primark, and Walmart, shining a spotlight on the unsafe conditions in which a sizable portion of Americans' cheap clothing is produced. The humanitarian tragedy hit home as wealthy nations' shoppers wrestled with their own complicity and called for reforms–but a decade later, progress is still patchy.

As a professor of operations and supply chain management, I believe it is important to understand how the complex and fragmented supply chains that are the norm in the clothing industry create conditions where unsafe conditions and abuse can flourish–and make it difficult to assign responsibility for reforms.

Shamed into action?

Rana Plaza was not the first garment industry accident in Bangladesh. While the government had stringent building codes "on the books," they were rarely enforced. Most workers lacked the information and power to demand safe working conditions.

Yet the fact that the Rana Plaza collapse was not only a humanitarian crisis, but a public relations crisis, prompted swift action by international organizations and Western brands and clothing retailers. A campaign for full and fair compensation for families of victims was launched immediately, facilitated by the International Labor Organization, a U.N. agency. Within a few months, two initiatives were designed to bring garment factories in Bangladesh up to international standards: the European-led Accord for Fire and Building Safety, and the American-led Alliance for Bangladesh Worker Safety.

While the two initiatives differed in some important ways, both shared the common goal: to improve building and fire safety by leveraging the purchasing power of the member companies.

While the two initiatives differed in some important ways, both shared the common goal: to improve building and fire safety by leveraging the purchasing power of the member companies. In other words, Western brands would insist that production partners get up to standard or take their business elsewhere.

Altogether, the two agreements covered about 2,300 supplier factories. The coalitions conducted factory inspections to identify structural and electrical deficiencies and developed plans for factories to make improvements. The initiatives also laid the groundwork to form worker safety committees and to train workers to recognize, solve, and prevent health and safety issues. Member companies set aside funds for inspections and worker training, negotiated commercial terms, and facilitated low-cost loans for factory improvements.

Both were five-year agreements: The Alliance was sunsetted in 2018, whereas the Accord operated for a few more years before handing operations over to the locally created Readymade Sustainability Council in June 2020.

The record since

The onus and expense of making these improvements, however, were largely to be borne by the suppliers–a substantial financial burden for many factories, especially considering the low cost and slim profit margins of the clothes they were producing.

Under the Alliance and the Accord, thousands of factories were inspected for building and fire safety, identifying problems such as lack of fire extinguishers and sprinkler systems, improper fire exits, faulty wiring, and structural issues. At the end of five years, both initiatives reported that 85%-88% of safety issues were remediated. Around half of the factories completed more than 90% of initial remediation, while over 260 of the original 2,300 factories under the initiatives were suspended from contracting with member companies.

Overall, I believe that these initiatives have been successful in bringing safety issues to the forefront.

In addition, more than 5,000 beneficiaries, including injured workers and dependents of victims, were compensated through the Rana Plaza Arrangement, receiving an average of about U.S. $6,500.

Overall, I believe that these initiatives have been successful in bringing safety issues to the forefront. In terms of infrastructure improvements, however, while there has been decent progress, much still needs to be done; for example, the initiatives covered just about one-third of all the garment factories in Bangladesh. Importantly, neither addressed company sourcing practices.

Clothes yesterday and today

To understand why so much apparel manufacturing takes place in substandard conditions, we need to understand the underlying economic forces: extensive outsourcing to countries with low wages in the quest to meet demand for more–and cheaper–clothing to sell to customers in the West.

In the 1960s, the average American family spent 10% of its income on clothing, buying 25 pieces of apparel–almost all of it made in the United States. Fifty years later, around the time of the Rana Plaza disaster, the average household was spending only about 3.5% of its income on clothing–but buying three times as many items, 98% of which were imported.

In the 1960s, the average American family spent 10% of its income on clothing, buying 25 pieces of apparel–almost all of it made in the United States.

Over these decades, low-income countries in Asia and Latin America started producing more garments and textiles. Apparel production is labor-intensive, meaning these countries' lower wages were a huge attraction to brands and retailers, who gradually started shifting their sourcing.

On a $30 shirt, for example, a typical retailer markup is close to 60%. The factory makes a profit of $1.15, and the worker makes barely 18 cents. Were a similar shirt produced in the U.S., labor costs would be closer to $10.

As labor costs rose in China, Bangladesh became a very appealing alternative. Garment exports now account for 82% of the country's export total, and the industry employs four million people, about 58% of whom are women.

The growth of this sector has reduced poverty significantly and also empowered women. To meet the rapid growth of the apparel industry, however, many buildings were converted to factories as quickly as possible, often without requisite permits.

Everyone and no one

A common way that foreign companies source products from low-cost countries like Bangladesh is through intermediaries or agents. For example, when a brand places a large order with an authorized factory, the factory in turn may subcontract part of the production to smaller factories, often without informing the brand.

This highly competitive environment, with people at each step of the process looking for the lowest price and no guarantee of longer-term relationships, gives suppliers incentives to cut corners–particularly when under extreme pressure to deliver on time. This can translate into exploitative labor practices or unsafe conditions that violate local laws, but enforcement capacity is weak.

In their constant quest for lower prices, buyers may turn a blind eye to these practices.

In their constant quest for lower prices, buyers may turn a blind eye to these practices. The supply chain's opaqueness, especially when brands do not source directly, makes it difficult to investigate and remediate these practices. Since the 1990s, international scrutiny of labor conditions has grown, but reform efforts largely ignored building and fire safety, the prime reason for the Rana Plaza collapse. Because multiple buyers would often use the same factory, no single buyer felt obligated to invest in the supplier to ensure better conditions.

Garments traverse a complex global supply network by the time they reach stores thousands of miles away. Workers are caught in this web, exploited by factory management that is seldom held responsible by governments either unwilling or unable to enforce laws. Western brands escape the scrutiny of their governments by outsourcing production to low-cost countries and absolve themselves of direct responsibility. And consumers, eager for a bargain, shop for the lowest price.

This complex system makes it hard to assign ethical responsibility, because everyone, and therefore no one, is guilty.

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Ravi Anupindi.

At around 2 p.m. on Sunday, March 12, police in Uttar Pradesh arrested Rana, a 19-year-old reporter for the privately owned newspaper Moradabad Ujala, from his home in the Budh Nagar Khandwa village of Sambhal district, according to multiple news reports and the journalist, who spoke with CPJ by phone.

He was released on bail Monday evening, according to those sources.

The Chandausi police station in Sambhal filed a first information report dated March 12, which opened a criminal investigation into the journalist on the basis of a complaint by Shubham Raghav, a local leader of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party’s youth wing, who alleged that Rana was “fake journalist,” disrupted government work, and assaulted and threatened him at a political event in Budh Nagar Khandwa on March 11.

Rana denied all wrongdoing and said that the arrest and investigation were launched in retaliation for his work. Raghav told CPJ by phone that he stood by the allegations in his complaint.

“The arrest and investigation of journalist Sanjay Rana appear to be retaliatory measures aimed at silencing his critical questioning of a state official,” said Beh Lih Yi, CPJ’s Asia program coordinator. “Authorities must immediately drop any investigation brought against Rana in retaliation for his work and ensure that journalists can work without fear of reprisal.”

The first information report says that Rana is under investigation for violating sections of the penal code pertaining to voluntarily causing hurt, intentional insult with intent to provoke breach of peace, and criminal intimidation.

At that March 11 event, Rana questioned Gulab Devi, a BJP member in the Uttar Pradesh legislative assembly and state minister for secondary education, about her alleged failure to deliver on her electoral promises regarding development projects in Budh Nagar Khandwa. The journalist told CPJ that he believed the case was retaliation for those questions.

During his arrest, officers grabbed Rana by the collar, slapped him, and tied his hands with a rope, the journalist told CPJ. He was originally held in the Baniyakhed police station, outside the jurisdiction where he lives.

Rana’s editor and lawyer, Dharmendra Singh, told CPJ in a phone interview that he and Rana’s family spent Sunday night frantically searching for the journalist before he was transferred to Chandausi police station the next morning.

Police arrested Rana under a clause of the criminal procedure code allowing for authorities to conduct arrests without a warrant in the cases of more serious crimes, known as cognizable offenses; however, the offenses listed in the first information report concerning his case are all non-cognizable, according to those news reports and a Delhi-based lawyer familiar with the case, who spoke with CPJ on the condition of anonymity due to fear of reprisal.

CPJ called and messaged Devi and Sambhal Police Superintendent Chakresh Mishra for comment, but did not receive any replies.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Erik Crouch.

“Egyptian authorities must immediately and unconditionally drop the charges against Mada Masr journalists Rana Mamdouh, Sara Seif Eddin, and Beesan Kassab, and cease pursuing the unjust case against them,” said CPJ Middle East and North Africa Program Coordinator Sherif Mansour. “This judicial harassment is a clear attack on journalists and the independent press in Egypt.”

On Tuesday, Mamdouh, Eddin, and Kassab will face trial for allegedly misusing social media and offending members of the Nation’s Future Party, according to a statement by Mada Masr and news reports. If convicted, the journalists could each face up to two years in prison and fines up to 300,000 pounds (US$9,733).

This trial stems from a complaint issued by Nation’s Future Party members over a Mada Masr article by the three journalists published on August 31, 2022, which alleged that members of the party had been involved in financial misconduct, according to those sources.

CPJ emailed the Ministry of Interior and the Nation’s Future Party for comment but did not receive any response.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Erik Crouch.

On November 3, a spine-chilling assassination attempt was mounted on Pakistan’s most charismatic and popular political leader, Imran Khan, while he was addressing a political rally in Wazirabad, a small town near the capital of Pakistan’s Punjab province, Lahore.

As corroborated by eye witness accounts, there were two shooters. One of them was an amateur religious zealot armed with a pistol and meant as a diversion who was caught by the supporters of PTI, Imran Khan’s political party. The other was a professionally trained sniper who shot a burst of bullets at Imran Khan’s container with a sub-machine gun and escaped the crime scene unharmed.

It’s worth pointing out that it wasn’t an assassination attempt but a shot across the bow meant to send a loud and clear warning to the leadership of Imran Khan’s PTI. The sharp shooter aimed the gun at Imran Khan’s legs and emptied an entire magazine of the sub-machine gun, and hit the bull’s eye.

Clearly, the assassin had explicit instructions only to target lower limbs of victims and avoid hitting vital organs in upper body that could’ve caused deaths and needless public furor. Injuries suffered by the rest of PTI leadership, mainly in the legs, and bystanders was collateral damage. One bystander, named Moazzam, was killed on the spot, but circumstantial evidence points that he was likely shot dead from the bullets shot by the guards protecting the container who mistakenly assumed that he was the shooter.

Multiple bullets and fragments of lead from two to three feet high metal plate around the container pierced Imran Khan’s both legs. After taking a close look at Imran Khan’s x-rays, as shown by his personal physician, Dr. Faisal, one bullet fractured Imran Khan’s right shin bone. A tiny piece of shrapnel landed near patella on the knee-cap. Another lead fragment almost pierced femoral artery that could’ve caused profuse bleeding and even death if left untreated for long.

The amateur zealot, identified as Naveed s/o Bashir, was armed with a locally made pistol he had bought for Rs.20,000 ($100). Most pistols found in Pakistan are semi-automatic and are utterly unreliable. They seldom fire an entire magazine without misfiring a couple of bullets. That’s what happened with the shooter, too. A bullet got stuck in the chamber and a valiant PTI supporter, Ibtisam Hassan, leapt on him and snatched the pistol from his hands.

Russian-made Kalashnikovs, on the other hand, are weapons of choice for sharp shooters. And since the times of the Soviet-Afghan war in the eighties, Kalashnikovs are so easily available in Pakistan that one could conveniently get an AK-47 from any arms dealer. In all likelihood, the sniper was armed with an AK-47, as the classic rattling sound of a Kalashnikov burst could be clearly heard in the video of the incident, and he likely escaped the crime scene in the narrow alleys of the town on a motor-bike with an accomplice.

The confessional statement of Naveed s/o Bashir was an eyewash, as he was a decoy. The whole assassination attempt appeared astutely choreographed. The purported assassin was not only caught red-handed but was also filmed shooting bullets in the air with a pistol while the actual hitman who professionally executed the assassination attempt remains as elusive as the masterminds of the cowardly plot.

Subsequently, Imran Khan implicated incumbent Prime Minister Shahbaz Sharif, Interior Minister Rana Sanaullah and DG-C of ISI Major Gen. Faisal Naseer in the plot to assassinate him. But the police refused to register the first information report due to fear of repercussions from the deep state for naming a serving military officer in the police report.

In any case, the director of intelligence couldn’t have ordered mounting an assassination attempt on a popular political leader and the country’s former prime minister all by himself without a nod of approval from Gen. Qamar Javed Bajwa, then the army chief of Pakistan’s military, who retired from service on November 29, weeks following the assassination plot on November 3.

In Pakistan’s context, the national security establishment originally meant civil-military bureaucracy. Though over the years, civil bureaucracy has taken a backseat and now “the establishment” is defined as military’s top brass that has dictated Pakistan’s security and defense policy since its inception.

Paradoxically, security establishments do not have ideologies, they simply have interests. For instance, the General Ayub-led administration in the sixties was regarded as a liberal establishment. Then, the General Zia-led administration during the eighties was manifestly a religious conservative establishment. And lastly, the General Musharraf-led administration from 1999 to 2008 was once again deemed a liberal establishment.

The deep state does not judge on the basis of ideology, it simply looks for weakness. If a liberal political party is unassailable in a political system, it will join forces with conservatives; and if conservatives cannot be beaten in a system, it will form an alliance with liberals to perpetuate the stranglehold of “the deep state” on policymaking organs of state.

The biggest threat to nascent democracies all over the world does not come from external enemies but from their internal enemies, the national security establishments, because military generals always have a chauvinistic mindset and an undemocratic temperament. An additional aggravating factor that increases the likelihood of military coups in developing democracies is that they lack firm traditions of democracy, rule of law and constitutionalism which act as bars against martial laws.

All political parties in Pakistan at some point in time in history were groomed by the security establishment. The founder of Pakistan People’s Party (PPP), Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, was groomed by General Ayub’s establishment as a counterweight to Sheikh Mujib’s Awami League, the founder of Bangladesh, during the sixties.

Nawaz Sharif was nurtured by General Zia’s administration during the eighties to offset the influence of Bhutto’s People’s Party. But he was cast aside after he capitulated to the pressure of the Clinton administration during the Kargil conflict of 1999 in disputed Kashmir region and ceded Pakistan’s military positions to arch-rival India, leading to Gen. Musharraf’s coup against Nawaz Sharif’s government in October 1999.

Imran Khan’s PTI draws popular support from Pakistani masses, particularly from younger generations and women that are full of political enthusiasm. PTI won the general elections of 2018 and formed a coalition government, and Imran Khan was elected prime minister. But a rift emerged between Imran Khan’s elected government and the top brass of Pakistan’s military in November 2021 over the appointment of the director general of Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), Pakistan’s powerful military intelligence service.

Eventually, Imran Khan succumbed to pressure and appointed the spymaster nominated by the top brass. But by then, the military had decided that Imran Khan had become too powerful a political leader and was encroaching on the military’s traditional domains, defense and national security policy. Therefore, deploying the astute divide-and-conquer strategy, the deep state lent its weight behind the opposition political alliance. Imran Khan’s political allies abandoned the PTI government and the coalition government fell apart in April.

Due to the British imperial legacy and subsequent close working relationship between the security agencies of Pakistan and the US during the Soviet-Afghan war of the eighties, Pakistan’s security establishment works hand in glove with the deep state of the United States, like the Turkish security establishment which is a NATO member.

Before his ouster as prime minister in a no-trust motion in the parliament on April 10, Imran Khan claimed that Pakistan’s Ambassador to US, Asad Majeed, was warned by Assistant Secretary of State Donald Lu that Khan’s continuation in office would have repercussions for bilateral ties between the two nations.

Shireen Mazari, a Pakistani politician who served as the Federal Minister for Human Rights under the Imran Khan government, quoted Donald Lu as saying: “If Prime Minister Imran Khan remained in office, then Pakistan will be isolated from the United States and we will take the issue head on; but if the vote of no-confidence succeeds, all will be forgiven.”

Imran Khan fell from the grace of the Biden administration, whose record-breaking popularity ratings plummeted after the precipitous fall of Kabul in August 2021, reminiscent of the Fall of Saigon in April 1975, with Chinook helicopters hovering over US embassy evacuating diplomatic staff to the airport, and Washington accused Pakistan for the debacle.

After the United States “nation-building project” failed in Afghanistan during its two-decade occupation of the embattled country from October 2001 to August 2021, it accused regional powers of lending covert support to Afghan insurgents battling the occupation forces.

The occupation and Washington’s customary blame game accusing “malign regional forces” of insidiously destabilizing Afghanistan and undermining US-led “benevolent imperialism” instead of accepting responsibility for its botched invasion and occupation of Afghanistan brought Pakistan and Russia closer against a common adversary in their backyard, and the two countries even managed to forge defense ties, particularly during the three and a half years of Imran Khan’s government from July 2018 to April 2022.

Since the announcement of a peace deal with the Taliban by the Trump administration in February 2020, regional powers, China and Russia in particular, hosted international conferences and invited the representatives of the US-backed Afghanistan government and the Taliban for peace negotiations.

After the departure of US forces from “the graveyard of the empires,” although Washington is trying to starve the hapless Afghan masses to death in retribution for inflicting a humiliating defeat on the global hegemon by imposing economic sanctions on the Taliban government and browbeating international community to desist from lending formal diplomatic recognition or having trade relations with Afghanistan, China and Russia have provided generous humanitarian and developmental assistance to Afghanistan.

Imran Khan’s ouster from power for daring to stand up to the United States harks back to the toppling and subsequent assassination of Pakistan’s first elected prime minister, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, in April 1979 by the martial law regime of Gen. Zia-ul-Haq.

The United States not only turned a blind eye but tacitly approved the elimination of Bhutto from Pakistan’s political scene because, being a socialist, Bhutto not only nurtured cordial ties with communist China but was also courting Washington’s arch-rival, the former Soviet Union.

The Soviet Union played the role of a mediator at the signing of the Tashkent Agreement for the cessation of hostilities following the 1965 India-Pakistan War over the disputed Kashmir region, in which Bhutto represented Pakistan as the foreign minister of the Gen. Ayub Khan-led government.

Like Imran Khan, the United States “deep state” regarded Bhutto as a political liability and an obstacle in the way of mounting the Operation Cyclone to provoke the former Soviet Union into invading Afghanistan and the subsequent waging of a decade-long war of attrition, using Afghan jihadists as cannon fodder who were generously funded, trained and armed by the CIA and Pakistan’s security agencies in the Af-Pak border regions, in order to “bleed the Soviet forces” and destabilize and weaken the rival global power.

Regarding the objectives of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in December 1979, then American envoy to Kabul, Adolph “Spike” Dubs, was assassinated on the Valentine’s Day, on 14 February 1979, the same day that Iranian revolutionaries stormed the American embassy in Tehran.

The former Soviet Union was wary that its forty-million Muslims were susceptible to radicalism, because Islamic radicalism was infiltrating across the border into the Central Asian States from Afghanistan. Therefore, the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in December 1979 in support of the Afghan communists to forestall the likelihood of Islamist insurgencies spreading to the Central Asian States bordering Afghanistan.

According to documents declassified by the White House, CIA and State Department in January 2019, as reported by Tim Weiner for the Washington Post, the CIA was aiding Afghan jihadists before the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in 1979. President Jimmy Carter signed the CIA directive to arm the Afghan jihadists in July 1979, whereas the former Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in December that year.

The revelation doesn’t come as a surprise, though, because more than two decades before the declassification of the State Department documents, in the 1998 interview cited in CounterPunch, former National Security Advisor to President Jimmy Carter, Zbigniew Brzezinski, confessed that the president signed the directive to provide secret aid to the Afghan jihadists in July 1979, whereas the Soviet Army invaded Afghanistan six months later in December 1979.

Here is a poignant excerpt from the interview. The interviewer puts the question: “And neither do you regret having supported the Islamic jihadists, having given arms and advice to future terrorists?” Brzezinski replies: “What is most important to the history of the world? The Taliban or the collapse of the Soviet Empire? Some stirred-up Muslims or the liberation of Central Europe and the end of the Cold War?”

Despite the crass insensitivity, one must give credit to Zbigniew Brzezinski that at least he had the courage to speak the unembellished truth. It’s worth noting, however, that the aforementioned interview was recorded in 1998. After the 9/11 terror attack, no Western policymaker can now dare to be as blunt and forthright as Brzezinski.

Regardless, that the CIA was arming the Afghan jihadists six months before the Soviets invaded Afghanistan has been proven by the State Department’s declassified documents; fact of the matter, however, is that the nexus between the CIA, Pakistan’s security agencies and the Gulf Arab States to train and arm the Afghan jihadists against the former Soviet Union was forged years before the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.

Pakistan joined the American-led, anticommunist SEATO and CENTO regional alliances in the 1950s and played the role of Washington’s client state since its inception in 1947. So much so that when a United States U-2 spy plane was shot down by the Soviet Air Defense Forces while performing photographic aerial reconnaissance deep into Soviet territory, Pakistan’s then President Ayub Khan openly acknowledged the reconnaissance aircraft flew from an American airbase in Peshawar, a city in northwest Pakistan.

Then during the 1970s, Pakistan’s then Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto’s government began aiding the Afghan Islamists against Sardar Daud’s government, who had toppled his first cousin King Zahir Shah in a palace coup in 1973 and had proclaimed himself the president of Afghanistan.

Sardar Daud was a Pashtun nationalist and laid claim to Pakistan’s northwestern Pashtun-majority province. Pakistan’s security agencies were alarmed by his irredentist claims and used Islamists to weaken his rule in Afghanistan. He was eventually assassinated in 1978 as a consequence of the Saur Revolution led by the Afghan communists.

It’s worth pointing out, however, that although the Bhutto government did provide political and diplomatic support on a limited scale to Islamists in their struggle for power against Pashtun nationalists in Afghanistan, being a secular and progressive politician, he would never have permitted opening the floodgates for flushing the Af-Pak region with weapons, petrodollars and radical jihadist ideology as his successor, Zia-ul-Haq, an Islamist military general, did by becoming a willing tool of religious extremism and militarism in the hands of neocolonial powers.

Image credit: MinuteMirror.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Nauman Sadiq.

The travel bans are part of the Indian government’s systematic harassment of Kashmiri journalists, which includes a rising number of detained journalists, the use of preventative detention, anti-terror, and criminal cases against journalists in retaliation for their work, raids on homes of journalists and their family members, and other press freedom violations indicative of multi-pronged information control. “Kashmir has become an information void, a black hole,” Haley Duschinski, an associate professor of anthropology who focuses on Kashmir at Ohio University in the U.S., told CPJ via messaging app. 

CPJ interviewed seven Kashmiri journalists, five of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity, about the travel bans and their impact as well as the implications for press freedom in Kashmir. 

The journalists’ comments on how the Indian government is trying to silence independent voices are summarized below: 

Why is the Indian government imposing travel bans on Kashmiri journalists?  

The Indian government aims to maintain a “peaceful” image of Kashmir and stop critical journalists from shedding light on its rights abuses and repression by speaking on international platforms or by settling abroad, where they may aim to continue their work with fewer restrictions, the journalists told CPJ. Authorities are “afraid that these people would get out of Kashmir and tell the real story that they wouldn’t be able to tell in Kashmir,” one of the journalists told CPJ.

The Jammu and Kashmir police administers the no-fly list, primarily targeting independent journalists who report on rights violations or government abuse of power and have significant social media followings, according to five of the journalists who spoke anonymously. Two said they had seen the list from sources within the police. 

How does the Indian government apply the travel bans?

Authorities first officially inform journalists that they have been barred from foreign travel at the airport, even if they hold valid travel documents, said the journalists interviewed by CPJ. Those targeted receive little to no information about the reason for the ban and are not given formal written notification of the order, they said. 

The journalists said authorities also use airport stops as another opportunity for harassment and invasive questioning. One Kashmiri journalist said that he has faced extensive administrative obstacles, including numerous background checks, in a continued attempt to travel abroad. Others fear they will be next to be stopped at the airport, simply because of the critical nature of their coverage.

Can Kashmiri journalists legally challenge the travel bans?

A path exists for journalists to challenge travel bans in court. Indian journalist Rana Ayyub, who was stopped from traveling to London in March of this year, successfully challenged the lookout circular issued against her in relation to an ongoing money laundering case. But CPJ is not aware of any Kashmiri journalist who has challenged a ban. Journalists told CPJ that the arbitrary and opaque nature of the orders, distrust of the judicial system, and fear of government reprisal are all dissuading factors.

The journalists said they feared that challenging their bans could lead to government retaliation, such as being held under the Jammu and Kashmir Public Safety Act, which allows for up to two years of detention without trial. Three Kashmiri journalists are currently incarcerated under this law. 

“Kashmiri journalists have little faith in the judiciary, which is entirely understood from the fact that Indian courts have a miserable track record in serving justice to Kashmiri victims of human rights abuses for over 30 years,” Raqib Hameed Naik, a Kashmiri journalist living in exile in the United States, told CPJ via messaging app.

How do travel bans impact Kashmiri journalists and press freedom? 

Deprived of their right to leave the region and seek safety from a hostile environment for the press, Kashmiri journalists say the travel bans put them at risk, and leave them vulnerable to more serious forms of reprisal by the authorities.

They fear the likelihood of increasing self-censorship, the psychological impact of feeling under constant surveillance, and for their future in journalism if they are unable to travel for international reporting assignments, training programs, or jobs with foreign outlets. If barred from foreign travel, “you are putting a full stop to my career,” said one journalist who fears she is on the no-fly list due to her critical reporting. The bans are “inhumane, and a constant reminder that Kashmiri journalists live in an open-air prison,” said Hameed Naik. 

The bans also erode public trust in the journalists’ work, said several journalists. After authorities barred Pulitzer Prize winning photojournalist Sanna Irshad Mattoo from traveling abroad in July, an op-ed in the Rising Kashmir newspaper described Mattoo, Hassan, and eight other Kashmiri journalists as supporters of terrorism. “Our image has been tarnished to a level where people are skeptical about us,” one of the journalists named in the op-ed told CPJ.

CPJ sent requests for comment to Dilbag Singh, director-general of the Jammu and Kashmir police, via messaging app, and to Jammu and Kashmir Lieutenant Governor Manoj Sinha and India’s Home Ministry, which also oversees the Bureau of Immigration and the Jammu and Kashmir administration, via email, but did not receive responses.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Sonali Dhawan.

“Egyptian authorities should drop their attempt to interrogate Mada Masr journalists Lina Attalah, Rana Mamdouh, Sara Seif Eddin, and Beesan Kassab, and ensure they can work freely and without harassment,” said CPJ Middle East and North Africa Program Coordinator Sherif Mansour, in Washington, D.C. “This harassment shows how determined President Abdel Fatah el-Sisi’s government is to punish journalists for their work.”

On Saturday, September 3, Mada Masr learned that authorities had summoned at least one of its journalists for questioning after members of the ruling Nation’s Future Party had filed dozens of complaints naming reporters Rana Mamdouh, Sara Seif Eddin, and Beesan Kassab, according to the website.

On Tuesday, the Cairo prosecutor’s office summoned those three reporters and Mada Masr editor-in-chief Lina Attalah to appear for an interrogation on Wednesday, according to those news reports and a statement by the outlet, which said the journalists planned to comply with the summons.

The Nation’s Future Party members’ complaints were issued in response to an August 31 article alleging that some members of that party had committed financial crimes, according to that statement and CPJ’s review of that article.

CPJ emailed the Nation’s Future Party and the Ministry of Interior for comment, but did not receive any response.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Erik Crouch.

We host a conversation about “Left Internationalism in the Heart of Empire,” which is the focus of an essay by Cornell University law professor Aziz Rana in Dissent magazine. Rana argues for the creation of a “transnational infrastructure of left forces across the world” and says movements of the left need “clear alternatives to the hardest questions” of foreign policy crises, such as the Russian war in Ukraine. We also speak with Darryl Li, professor at the University of Chicago, who is one of many scholars who published a response to Rana’s piece in the new issue of Dissent that highlights the importance of a nuanced and solution-oriented critical analysis of U.S. foreign policy.

This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

A Rangamati magistrate granted Elahi interim bail on June 8, pending an additional hearing at the Chittagong Cyber Tribunal, which adjudicates alleged cybercrime offenses, where he was granted permanent bail on June 14, according to a report in the Dhaka Tribune and the journalist. The next hearing in his case is scheduled for July 31, Elahi said.

Police arrested Elahi in relation to a December 3, 2020, article he published in Pahar24, which detailed alleged irregularities concerning a property rented by Nazneen Anwar, daughter of Furoza Begum Chinu, a former member of parliament with the ruling Awami League and head of the Rangamati District Women’s Awami League, according to those reports and the journalist.

On December 8, 2020, Chinu and Anwar each filed separate complaints, which CPJ reviewed, against Elahi in relation to his article, alleging that the journalist had defamed them, Elahi said.

On March 15, 2021, the Rangamati police submitted a report to a magistrate, which CPJ reviewed, stating that they investigated Elahi under sections of the Digital Security Act related to defamation and publishing offensive, false, or threatening information after receiving those complaints. The police report said it would allow the court to decide a course of action.

On June 7, 2022, the Chittagong Cyber Tribunal issued a warrant for Elahi’s arrest, which CPJ reviewed, under unspecified sections of the Digital Security Act.

Elahi was taken to Rangamati’s Kotwali police station after his June 7 arrest, he said, adding that Anwar was at the scene and demanded the officers put him in a cell when he was placed in a chair in the front office. When reached by phone by CPJ, Anwar said she had asked officers why Elahi was allowed to use his phone in custody.

Anwar told CPJ that she stands by the allegations in the complaint. Chinu did not respond to CPJ’s text message requesting comment. Kabir Hossain, officer-in-charge at the Kotwali police station, did not respond to CPJ’s request for comment sent via messaging app.

In a separate case, on June 7, 2022, the Khulna Cyber Tribunal accepted a police chargesheet that had been filed on August 31, 2021, against Abu Tayeb, Khulna bureau chief for the privately owned broadcaster NTV, and Subir Rana, a reporter for the privately owned newspaper Daily Loksamaj and privately owned news website New Age, according to a copy of the chargesheet, which CPJ reviewed, and the two journalists, who spoke with CPJ by phone.

A hearing in their case is scheduled for September 20, according to Tayeb. The chargesheet accuses the journalists of violating sections of the Digital Security Act related to the publication of offensive, false, or threatening information; defamation; and deterioration of law and order. Those offenses can carry a prison sentence between three and seven years, and a fine of between 300,000 taka (US$3,230) and 600,000 taka (US$6,460).

The chargesheet accuses Tayeb and Rana of violating the Digital Security Act with Facebook posts they each published in April 2021 accusing a local company affiliated with Talukder Abdul Khalek, mayor of the Khulna City Corporation, a municipal agency that oversees the development and maintenance of the city, of evading taxes.

Tayeb made those allegations both in a report for NTV and on his Facebook page, and Rana also published the allegations on his page, according to CPJ research, both journalists, and a screenshot of the posts, which CPJ reviewed. Tayeb told CPJ that within 24 hours after the article and Facebook post were published, Khalek called him and ordered him to remove the report and the post, and he had complied.

On April 20, Khalek filed a complaint against Tayeb and Rana and published a rejoinder in The Daily Purbanchal newspaper, which CPJ reviewed, denying the allegations and warning that legal action would be taken against those who spread the information shared in their posts.

Tayeb was detained in relation to the case from April 20 to May 10, 2021, when he was released on bail, according to CPJ documentation and the journalist. Rana was also detained from June 3 to July 7, when he was released on bail, according to the journalist and the Bangladesh High Court bail order, which CPJ reviewed.

The investigating officer in the case did not respond to CPJ’s request for comment sent via messaging app. Khalek did not respond to CPJ’s text message requesting comment.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Erik Crouch.

Warning that the court-ordered redrawing of New York's congressional map has already left marginalized communities in the state with less representation, grassroots organizer Rana Abdelhamid on Tuesday announced that she was ending her campaign in the state's 12th District because the new district boundaries cut her off from the communities she hope to represent.

"Because my community and I were cut out of our district, we were left with no other choice," Abdelhamid said in a statement. "The new NY-12, which was drawn through an undemocratic process, no longer includes Queens or Brooklyn."

Before Acting State Supreme Court Justice Patrick McCallister, a Republican, approved the new map earlier this month, New York's 12th District included part of the diverse Queens neighborhood of Astoria, where Abdelhamiid was raised as the daughter of Egyptian immigrants.

"For a district that has had a corporate-backed incumbent for three decades, this glimpse of people power was a dream."

The new map stretches from Midtown to upper Manhattan, pitting Rep. Carolyn Maloney, who has represented the 12th District since 2013, against Rep. Jerrold Nadler. Both Democrats have served in Congress since 1993.

To continue her bid to represent her community, Abdelhamid would have to run against a fellow progressive—either Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in the 14th District or Nydia Velázquez in the 7th.

"The GOP-drawn redistricting map foisted on New Yorkers didn't just pit incumbents against one another, it cut the knees out from really impressive young progressive candidates," said Jordan Zakarin, a reporter and producer for More Perfect Union, a media outlet focused on organized labor and worker rights.

The redistricting process diluted "our opportunity for representation and political power," Abdelahmid said of her community, which includes "working class, Black and brown, Muslim and Arab communities of interest."

Had Abdelhamid won a congressional seat, the staunch progressive who backs Medicare for All and the Green New Deal would have been the first Egyptian-American in Congress and the first Muslim member to represent New York City.

"For a community with no representation in New York City politics, for a community that was harassed and profiled by law enforcement for years, a community that continues to be gentrified, whose story is barely told, this glimpse of representation was a dream," Abdelhamid said.

"For a district that has had a corporate-backed incumbent for three decades," she added, "this glimpse of people power was a dream."

The founder of a non-profit which trains women in self defense, political organizing, and financial literacy, Abdelhamid focused her campaign on investing in public housing, demilitarizing police forces, strengthening Medicare and expanding the program to all Americans, and other economic and racial justice initiatives.

New York City Comptroller Brad Lander, who supported Abdelhamid's campaign told Gothamist that New York Democrats who are "hoping to preserve control of the House" are "using gerrymandering to institutionalize their partisan advantage" just as Republicans are.

"That's a devil's bargain," Lander said.

Abdelhamid pledged to continue working to represent her community, saying, "This is not the end of our time in politics, but only the beginning. We have a lot of work to do."

"I know she'll be back, but this stings," tweeted Maya Rupert, a political strategist who has worked on campaigns for New York mayoral candidate Maya Wiley, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), and former Democratic presidential candidate Julián Castro.

New York City Council Member Tiffany Cabán said the redrawn congressional map has robbed New Yorkers of multiracial, working class leadership "that's desperately needed right now in Congress."

"I have no doubt that in whatever capacity Rana chooses to continue organizing, she will keep fighting for us," said Cabán. "For all of us."

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams - Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community and was authored by Julia Conley.

On February 4, authorities froze her bank account for the second time in six months as part of a money laundering and tax evasion investigation into whether Ayyub had mishandled money that she raised for victims of COVID-19. On March 29, Indian authorities refused to let her fly to a journalism event in London because of the probe.

Ayyub told CPJ and wrote on Substack she collected the money into her bank account, but used it legitimately for charitable purposes. Ayyub’s defenders, including journalist groups, believe the actions against her are in retaliation for her journalism. Last month, U.N. Special Rapporteurs called on Indian authorities to end “the judicial harassment against her,” in a post on Twitter.

Ayyub, a Muslim journalist who is often critical of Hindu right-wing politicians, has a long history of being trolled and threatened online for her work. In 2018 her face was morphed onto a pornographic video clip and circulated via WhatsApp, and over the last year she was listed on two anti-Muslim apps that offered her for sale in a demeaning fake “auction” publicized on Twitter.

The harassment escalated in January, when Ayyub received more than 26,000 tweets, many of them containing death and rape threats, after she tweeted criticism of the Saudi Arabia government’s ongoing role in the Yemen war. The threats only intensified when a news website published a video that included a doctored photo of a tweet purportedly by Ayyub, saying, “I hate India and I hate Indians.”
 
Ayyub has long contended that the most vicious threats against her originate from fans of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi; an investigation in Indian newspaper The Wire found that political operatives of Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party systematically targeted Ayyub and other female journalists using an app called Tek Fog. Now she believes that the government is using another means to target her with its tax probe.

“The entire machinery of the state was unleashed against me,” she wrote on her Substack newsletter.

BJP spokesperson Syed Zafar Islam did not respond to CPJ’s request for comment sent via text message.

Ayyub’s recent legal troubles began in May 2021, when income tax authorities initiated an investigation into her on charges of tax evasion. In an interview with CPJ, Ayyub said authorities opened the investigation after OpIndia, a pro-BJP right-wing website, published articles accusing her of illegalities in her charitable efforts. Between April 2020 and June 2021, Ayyub had raised 26.9 million rupees (US$350,000) via Ketto, an Indian online fundraising platform, to help people impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Income tax authorities notified her that the entire sum should have been considered personal income because she collected it in her personal account instead of setting up a separate account for fundraising purposes. (CPJ has reviewed the notification.) Her bank account was frozen in August 2021 until she paid a 10.6 million rupee income tax (US $210,000) as well as an additional 4.5 million rupees ($59,000) as advance tax on her income from Substack and the sale of a property.

Ayyub said she paid the taxes under protest in order to unfreeze the accounts, and is challenging the taxation in court. She claims she already paid the taxes she owed on the charity – some 10.6 million rupees (US$140,000) – and donated 7.5 million rupees (US$99,000) to PM Care and CM Relief Fund, charities headed by Modi and Maharashtra Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray respectively. She said that income tax authorities kept five million rupees frozen (US$66,000) and that the rest she spent buying food grains. CPJ contacted the PM Care and CM Relief Funds to confirm the donations but did not receive a reply to its emails.

“It is abundantly clear that no part of the relief campaign funds remains unaccounted for,” she wrote on Substack, “and there is absolutely no scope for any remote allegation of misuse of the personal funds.”

Ayyub again had access to her account — but not for long. Within a few months, the Enforcement Directorate, a financial fraud investigative body housed in the ministry of finance, opened another investigation in relation to the COVID-19 charity campaign and in February froze her bank account for 180 days, she said. (CPJ also reviewed the directorate’s notice.)

The Enforcement Directorate’s notice, which specifically dealt with a 17.7 million rupee sum (US$230,000), claimed that Ayyub violated the Prevention of Money Laundering Act and “received donations from the general public donors with pre-planned intent to cheat the general public donors.” The amount frozen includes Ayyub’s earnings from her writing and other sources of income, she said on Substack.

The Enforcement Directorate and the income tax authorities did not respond to CPJ’s requests for comment sent via email.

The new probe was triggered after Uttar Pradesh police in September of last year filed a first information report, the first step in an investigation, against Ayyub based on a complaint by Hindu IT Cell, a Hindu right wing group, which has accused her of money laundering, cheating, dishonest misappropriation of property, and criminal breach of trust over her COVID-19 charity campaign.The first information report also accused her of receiving foreign funds into her personal account, allegedly violating India’s foreign contributions law. Ayyub has said that she instructed Ketto to return foreign funds.

“Some of our members had donated to her campaign but were very disappointed with the way she handled the money. Therefore we lodged a complaint with the police,” Hindu IT cell’s co-founder Vikas Pandey told CPJ in a phone call.

In an interview in Mumbai, Ayyub told CPJ that she raised money during the pandemic as she tried to help those in need, particularly migrant workers. “Initially I was spending my own money and then people started offering to help. Then someone suggested that I use Ketto to raise funds for a bigger impact.” she said. “If I wanted to raise money for my own personal use, I could have easily done it.”

Ayyub rejects the accusation of money laundering. “Where have I laundered the money to?” she asks. The Enforcement Directorate notice made reference to a trip Ayyub took to Goa, in southwestern India, as evidence of personal use of funds which Ayyub said was absurd. “They are accusing me of going on a holiday to Goa using [the] money,” she said, noting that the trip cost her only tens of thousands of rupees, or just a few hundred dollars. “Don’t I earn enough to afford such a small expense?” she added. She is in the process of challenging the Enforcement Directorate’s order in a court.

“My lawyer has made me promise never to do any good for anyone,” she said jokingly. “Look where it has landed me.”

Meanwhile, Hindu right wing activists, including the Hindu IT Cell, filed multiple complaints against Ayyub with police across three states, demanding an investigation into Ayyub in relation to her February 9 interview with the BBC World News in which Ayyub called a mob of right-wing protesters harassing Muslim college girls wearing hijab “Hindu terrorists.” The interview was in the context of a hijab ban in public educational settings in the southwestern state of Karnataka.

On March 3, police in Karnataka opened an investigation based on these complaints into Ayyub and accused her of deliberate and malicious acts intended to outrage religious feelings in violation of the Indian penal code. If charged and convicted, she could face up to three years in prison and an unspecified fine, according to the law. Karnataka Director General of Police Praveen Sood did not respond to CPJ’s emailed request for comment.

Ayyub, for her part, has vowed to continue her journalism. “I will survive this,” she told CPJ. “I have survived worse.”

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Kunal Majumder/CPJ India Correspondent.

On Tuesday, immigration officials at the Chhatrapati Shivaji International Airport in the western city of Mumbai stopped Ayyub, an investigative journalist and a Washington Post commentator who has frequently criticized the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party’s policies and politics, and told her she was not allowed to travel to London, according to news reports and the journalist, who spoke with CPJ by messaging app.

Airport officials told Ayyub that she could not leave the country because she is the subject of a recently opened money laundering investigation and that the Enforcement Directorate of the Indian finance ministry was sending her a summons to appear on April 1, 2022, Ayyub told CPJ. Ayyub received the emailed summons one hour before her flight departure.

“Preventing Rana Ayyub from traveling abroad is another incident in a growing list of unjustified and excessive actions taken by the Indian government against the journalist,” said Steven Butler, CPJ’s Asia program coordinator, from Washington, D.C. “Indian authorities should immediately cease all forms of harassment and intimidation against Ayyub.”

The Enforcement Directorate froze Ayyub’s bank account in February and accused her of laundering money that she raised to help those affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. Ayyub has denied the allegations and called it an attempt to intimidate her. The account also included income that Ayyub earned writing for The Washington Post and a newsletter on Substack, according to a Substack post by Ayyub.

Ayyub was flying to London to speak at an event about online violence against female journalists organized by the International Center for Journalists, a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit, according to those news reports. Ayyub has been subjected to intense online trolling and received numerous threats, as CPJ has documented.

The Ministry of Home Affairs, which oversees the country’s immigration authorities, and the Enforcement Directorate did not immediately respond to CPJ’s request for comment sent via email.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Committee to Protect Journalists.

On Sunday, March 27, a group of around 10 men assaulted Rana, a reporter for the privately owned newspaper Daily Ausaf, in the Bhakkar district in the northeast Punjab province, according to a bystander’s video of the incident; a statement by the National Press Club in Islamabad, Pakistan; a statement by the Rawalpindi Islamabad Union of Journalists, and Rana, who spoke to CPJ by phone.

Rana told CPJ that on March 22, he published a report, which he has since deleted, on his Facebook page – which has around 35,000 followers– alleging that relatives and political associates of Ameer Muhammad Khan, a member of the Provincial Assembly (MPA) for the ruling Tehreek-e-Insaf party in Punjab province, were engaging in criminal activities. Rana said that in response to his report, police raided the home of one of Khan’s close political associates, who is also a member of the Tehreek-e-Insaf party.

On March 27, Rana was shopping in a local store when a group of 10 of Khan’s relatives and political associates pulled him onto the street and held him by his wrists, repeatedly whipping him with ropes, and pouring a chemical usually used for painting on his eyes and ears, the journalist told CPJ. Rana said he lost consciousness five minutes into the attack, and the attackers then left the scene.

On the day of the attack, police registered a first information report, which opens an investigation, against 10 individuals, six of whom are named, at the local Kallur Kot police station, according to a copy of the report reviewed by CPJ.

“Police must launch an immediate investigation into the assault against journalist Zahid Shareef Rana and not allow any possible political pressure to derail it,” said Steven Butler, CPJ’s Asia program coordinator, in Washington, D.C. “Authorities need to put an end to Pakistan’s long record of impunity for crimes against journalists, including beatings, disappearances and murder. With the attack on Rana caught on video, police can offer no excuse for a failed investigation.”

Rana said he received medical treatment at a local hospital following the attack, adding that he sustained lesions all over his body and has lost hearing from the chemical poured into his right ear.

Rana told CPJ that he was previously targeted on January 5 after conducting a live interview with an opposition politician with the Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz) party, who accused Khan of corruption and abuse of power.

Rana said that about an hour after the interview aired, a car repeatedly attempted to ram into the vehicle he was traveling in, hitting the back twice before his friend managed to drive away. Rana, who documented the incident on his Facebook page at the time, said the car’s license plate was publicly registered to Khan’s first cousin.

The same day, police at the Kallur Kot station registered a first information report about the incident, Rana said, adding that the perpetrators have not yet been brought to justice.

CPJ emailed the office of MPA Khan and the Bhakkar district police office but did not immediately receive any replies.

[Editors’ Note: The second paragraph was updated to correct the location of the Punjab province.]

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Committee to Protect Journalists.