French journalist Sébastien Farcis in India said he was forced to leave the country after the MHA refused to renew his journalism permit. He is the third journalist forced to leave the country this year.
Sébastien Farcis (Left) is the fourth foreign correspondent forced to leave India after Vanessa Dougnac (centre), and Avani Dias. (X)
Dateline Islamabad provides insights into an Indian journalist’s stint in Pakistan.
Amit Baruah, The Hindu‘s Diplomatic Correspondent provided an engrossing account of his days — between April 1997 and June 2000 — in the neighbouring country, detailing the politics, relationship/hatred towards India, and working under the constant gaze of Inter-Services Intelligence.
The book, mostly serious in tone, at times, offered lighter moments, thanks to those assigned to monitor Baruah. Such moments were hilarious to an Indian, who years ago, never imagined such a situation would come home, the largest democracy. It then seemed media freedom was merely a mirage in Pakistan.
The warning was loud and clear. “A growing religious right in Pakistan and Hindu fundamentalist forces in India remain the principal threats to the peace process,” Baruah concluded the book. The mention was specifically about former prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee offering an olive branch to Islamabad.
However, the warning had multiple layers. It now appears that it was not about bilateral relations alone. It could happen within the country when the mentioned forces gather strength and become more intolerable of criticism.
French journalist Sébastien Farcis had worked in India for 13 years. He would have continued reporting India for Radio France Internationale, other major French-language media outlets, and Swiss and Belgian public radios if he was allowed to work.
On 17 June, he was forced to leave India.
“Three months ago, on 7th March, the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) denied the renewal of my journalist permit, preventing me from practicing my profession and depriving me of all my income,” he posted on X on Thursday, 20 June.
Fracis was the third — and second French — journalist forced to leave the country since 1 January 2024.
“This work ban comes as a big shock,” he said in a statement issued in Paris, Punch quoted him. Fracis is married to an Indian citizen and has an Overseas Citizen of India (OCI), which requires a special permit to engage in missionary activities, mountaineering, and journalism.
“No reason has been provided to justify this work ban, despite formal and repeated requests made to the MHA. I have tried to appeal also, but to no avail so far,” his X (formerly Twitter) post said.
A cursory look at Fracis’s X handle showed him retweeting several anti-BJP, anti-Sangh Parivar posts.
Fracis said he had all the necessary visas and accreditations, and never worked in restricted or prohibited areas without a permit.
On several occasions, the MHA even granted me permits to report from border areas.
The work ban — communicated to him on the eve of the Indian general elections — was a big shock, the journalist said. “…with no more work nor income, my family has been pushed out of India without explanation, and uprooted overnight for no apparent reason,” he wrote.
Fracis claimed that India had banned at least five OCI journalists from working over the past two years.
Reporters Without Borders (Reporters Sans Frontières) said four OCI card-holding journalists have been refused permission to work. Farcis was not included in the RSF report.
After 13 years working as a correspondent in India, the authorities have denied me a permit to work as a journalist. I have thus been forced to leave the country.
Here is my statement. pic.twitter.com/m52Q4ABsRk— Sébastien Farcis (@sebfarcis) June 20, 2024
Unlike Fracis, French journalist Vanessa Dougnac, who covered India for two decades, was shown the cause for banning her.
She left India in February after authorities threatened to expel her for “malicious and critical” reporting.
Dougnac, who reported for La Croix, Le Soir, and Le Point, too, was an OCI cardholder. Her OCI status was revoked in September 2022 without any explanation.
“Leaving is not my choice,” Dougnac said in a statement. “I am unable to work and have been unfairly accused of prejudicing the interests of the state. It has become clear that I cannot keep living in India,” French afternoon publication Le Monde quoted her on 16 February.
Incidentally, she was served the notice a week before the arrival of French President Emmanuel Macron, the guest of honor at India’s Republic Day parade.
The Committee to Protect Journalists condemned the circumstances that forced Dougnac to leave India.
“It’s deeply disheartening to witness the harassment that Vanessa Dougnac… has endured at the hands of Indian authorities in the last 17 months,” Carlos Martinez de la Serna, programme director for the Committee to Protect Journalists, said.
“The Indian government must promptly establish a transparent mechanism that enables foreign journalists to seek redressal,” he said.
Just before the general elections, Avani Das of the Australian Broadcast Corporation (ABC), received a call.
But it was a year after the BBC came up with The Modi Question, a two-episode documentary showcasing the “tensions between Indian PM Narendra Modi and India’s Muslim minority, investigating claims about his role in the 2002 riots that left over a thousand dead”.
The BBC was later forced to restructure its India operations.
Das revisited the call in an article published in ABC. “A government official called me a few days after my story was published and said my visa was not going to come through so I should make plans to leave the country in two weeks,” she wrote.
“The story” she mentioned was about Hardeep Singh Nijjar, who was shot dead in the car park of a Gurudwara in British Columbia, Canada. Das had followed up the separatist’s assassination and visited his relatives in Punjab.
After the “story” went online, the Indian government made YouTube and Facebook remove it. Someone in the higher echelons of power did not like the “story”.
Das wrote that an official told her that the “story” had “crossed a line” and was “beyond extreme” because “I had visited the home of Nijjar and spoke to sympathisers of his cause”.
Following the intervention of the Australian government, her visa was extended by two months. However, working in India became too difficult so Das decided to pack up.
“I flew out of Delhi as voting began in the largest democratic exercise in history,” she wrote.
Still, outlets sympathetic to the Narendra Modi dispensation did not leave her. She was targeted online. A media house even headlined an article, “A new job and marriage lured Avani Dias back to Australia, not intimidation by the Indian government.”
The report by Jai Bharadwaj, Founder and Editor in Chief of The Australia Today, said Dias “even lobbied foreign correspondents in India to issue a statement in her support”.
I explain the facts behind @abcnews's hitjob on Australian Hindus in disguise of critiquing the Indian Government.@NewsX @DrAmitSarwal @Pallavi_Aus @SarahLGates1 @dhanashree0110 @rishi_suri @opdwivedi82 https://t.co/xMeUTkN52u
— jitarth jai bharadwaj vs जितार्थ जय भारद्वाज (@EthnicLinkGuru) June 20, 2024
“The article failed to mention my partner had been living with me in India the whole time and our wedding happened before this all began,” Das noted.
World Press Freedom Index-2024 by Reporters Without Borders ranked India 159, up two ranks from 161 in 2023.
RSF explained the improvement. “Some countries’ rises in the Index are misleading in as much as their scores fell and the Index rises were the result of falls by countries previously above them. This is the case with India (159th), which was pushed up two places despite recently adopting more draconian laws,” it said.
“Its new position is still unworthy of a democracy,” RSF delivered a blow to India’s freedom or press.
“With violence against journalists, highly concentrated media ownership, and political alignment, press freedom is in crisis in “the world’s largest democracy”, ruled since 2014 by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, leader of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and embodiment of the Hindu nationalist right,” RSF stated while releasing the data.
It further said India’s media has fallen into an “unofficial state of emergency” since Narendra Modi came to power in 2014 and engineered a spectacular rapprochement between his party, the BJP, and the big families dominating the media.
“Through pressure and influence, the old Indian model of a pluralist press is being called into question,” RSF explained.
“The prime minister is very critical of journalists, seeing them as “intermediaries” polluting his direct relationship with his supporters. Indian journalists who are very critical of the government are subjected to harassment campaigns by BJP-backed trolls,” it added.
With the latest development involving Farcis (apologies to Mark Tully), it seems there are full stops in Indian media freedom.
Jun 27, 2024
Jun 27, 2024
Jun 23, 2024
Jun 18, 2024
Jun 09, 2024
Jun 08, 2024
