Citizen journalism and human rights in north-east India

Increasingly it is the case, however, that online news reporting is being heralded for its potential to help break down these dichotomies. At stake is its perceived capacity to create discursive spaces for empathetic engagement – of bearing witness – at a distance, especially where human rights violations are concerned. This article offers an evaluative assessment of this potential.

For our purposes here, the emergent forms and practices of citizen journalism will be examined in this context via a case study examining the spontaneous actions of ordinary people compelled to adopt the role of a journalist in order to bear witness to human rights abuses in India’s North-East region. Citizen journalism, it will be argued, engenders new approaches to eyewitness reporting, a process that is shown to be uneven, contingent and frequently the site of resistance from those whose interests are called into question.

Citizen journalism in India

India’s democratic ethos is underpinned by a large and vibrant newspaper press, which played a key role in highlighting human rights violations during the freedom struggle that led to the country’s independence from Britain in 1947. Contemporary India has evolved into a media-rich poor country, and continues to face serious challenges impinging on human rights, including demands for secession; inadequate provision of health and education to its over one billion population; corruption in public life; Hindu-Muslim conflicts; violation of human rights by security forces; and the perpetuation of an iniquitous caste system. The long tradition of human rights activism during the freedom struggle was complemented by the newspaper press. In recent years, as the following case study shows, such activism has been aided by new media such as the internet.

In 2006, the first Indian website devoted to citizen journalism was set up, namely Merinews.com (meri news = my news). Six months into its operation, it won the Manthan Award for publishing the best e-news content in India for the year. It was quickly emulated by a wide variety of citizen-driven news sites. Some of the most prominent forms of human rights coverage have been followed closely in blogs, where wide-ranging debates unfold on a regular basis.

Few issues have proven more controversial on the webscape than the demands for secession in Jammu and Kashmir, and the seven North-East states. Here, we shall explore the ways in which citizens affected by human rights violations in the North-East use the internet to highlight problems and seek the repeal of laws that give wide powers to security forces involved in anti-insurgency operations.

Human rights and India’s North-East

Since India’s independence, secessionist demands have been mainly raised in three areas: Punjab, Jammu and Kashmir, and the North-East states. The demand for ‘Khalistan’ for the majority Sikhs of Punjab dominated headlines during the 1980s, but by the early 1990s the Indian state had militarily and politically ‘neutralised’ the insurgency. Nevertheless, the might of the state continues to be challenged in Jammu and Kashmir and the North-East where the idea of secession from India retains much local salience. Non-state actors seeking secession are often termed as ‘terrorists’ by official spokespersons; such branding often finds its way in news discourse due to routinised dependence on official sources by journalists. The two regions figure prominently in India’s official list of what are called ‘problem areas’ (UMHA, 2003). Here, we shall focus on the seven North-East states that have international borders with China, Myanmar (Burma), Bhutan and Bangladesh.

The seven North-East states are Assam, Manipur, Nagaland, Tripura, Mizoram, Arunachal Pradesh and Meghalaya. Since independence, they have been in the grip of more than one form of conflict: secessionist insurgency, separatism within India, struggles for local autonomy, inter- and intra-tribal clashes, locals versus ‘outsiders,’ locals versus immigrant Muslims from Bangladesh, language tussles, boundary clashes within the region, and so forth. The conflicts have invariably evoked counter-insurgency operations from security forces to curb the activities of ‘terrorists’ or their sympathisers.

Since 1947, the calendar of conflict has involved over 50,000 deaths (AFP, 2000). This needs to be seen in the context of the region’s historically tenuous links with mainland India. The various differences between mainland India and the North-East – based on ethnicity, religion, culture, language – are conflated in the not-so-covert binary of ‘us’ and ‘them’ that influences public and policy debates. The ‘otherness’ of the region is also reflected in the ad hoc coverage of its issues and events by the mainstream English and Hindi language press, a press that is routinely preoccupied by the Hindu-Muslim-politics-celebrity agenda. This preoccupation with such a narrow range of news stories results in the routine neglect of those regions defined as peripheral, such as the north-eastern states.

Demands in the northeast for secession, however, evoke strong reactions from the Indian state and the deployment of a large number of security forces in the region. Years of counter-insurgency operations against ‘terrorists’ have resulted in several proven and unproven violations of human rights – ranging from outright killing, to torture, to the burning of entire villages by the security forces. Several human rights organisations have chronicled violations while the Indian state has also responded by setting up a National Human Rights Commission that investigates complaints from all over the country. Security officials counter allegations of human rights violations by pointing out to the acts of violence and killing committed by non-states, and contending that such acts by non-state actors (‘terrorists’ in official parlance) also need to be considered violations of human rights, the officials contend.

A major theme of the human rights discourse is the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act of 1958 widely seen in the North-East as ‘draconian.’ The law comes into force in any part of India that is declared to be ‘disturbed’ by the state. It allows anyone of any rank in the army, or a paramilitary force under its operational command, to shoot, arrest or search without warrant – even to kill on the basis of suspicion alone. As an Amnesty International briefing on the law stated:

‘The AFSPA empowers security forces to arrest and enter property without warrant and gives the security forces power to shoot to kill in circumstances where members of the security forces are not at imminent risk. It facilitates impunity because no person can start legal action against any members of the armed forces for anything done under the Act, or purported to be done under the Act, without permission of the Central Government’ (Amnesty 2005).

The law has been applied to the state of Manipur for long periods since 1980 in view of insurgency-related incidents. Over the years, several incidents of violations of human rights in the state have been documented by local and international human rights agencies, involving many deaths, torture and destruction of property. Demands that the law be repealed to prevent abuse of power by security forces have been raised across the breadth of civil society.

However, it has assumed the dimensions of a campaign through the online reporting of a chain of events, beginning with the bombing of a convoy of Assam Rifles, a security force involved in counter-insurgency operations, in Malom on 2 November 2000. In retaliation, Assam Rifles soldiers reportedly went berserk and killed 10 civilians. The incident soon burgeoned into a major campaign for the repeal of the AFSPA.

It was around this time that newspapers in Manipur set up websites and pressure groups began to harness the potential of the internet to further their cause. Websites such as Manipuronline.com, E-Pao.net (‘pao’ stands for mail in Manipuri), Kanglaonline.com and TheSangaiExpress.com started to post material provided by citizens on a range of issues, including insurgency and counter-insurgency in the state. Through online reporting and networking, local human rights workers were able to link up with similar groups in other parts of India to raise awareness about the law and to organise protests.

Reporting human rights violations online

Events related to the Malon incident attracted national and international attention due, in large part, to a unique form of protest by a Manipuri poet, Irom Sharmila Chanu, who demanded the repeal of the law. In its aftermath, with ten civilians shot dead, she adopted the same form of protest that M K Gandhi had effectively used against the British during colonial rule: that is, a fast unto death. She was arrested on charges of attempting suicide, jailed, and force-fed thereafter. Released on bail, she travelled to New Delhi to continue her fast unto death, where she was again arrested by the police and force-fed by nose in the hospital.

Irom Sharmila’s efforts have been closely reported and commented upon by citizens in blogs and on the different Manipur-based websites listed above. Another website closely tracking the campaign is ManipurFreedom.org, which includes links to several blogs, background papers on the law, reports by various agencies, and a newsletter. It reported on 19 January 2007:

‘The health condition of Irom Sharmila Chanu deteriorates under the arbitrary detention of Delhi police in Ram Manohar Lohia Hospital. Since 7th October 2006 she has been detained in two different hospitals (AIIMS and RML) at Delhi. Since then she has lost 4 kgs. and her current body weight is only 37 kg. Today, the Delhi High Court heard the two fresh applications filed by her brother Singhajit. The first application asked for RML to be made a party to the case and also to handover all medical records to Sharmila’s family. So far the hospital had refused to give any medical reports. The High Court has now asked for copies of all medical records to be produced on Tuesday, 23rd January, the next date of hearing. The Court has expressed its opinion that Sharmila can be detained in order to protect her health. It is critical to note that during six years of detention in Manipur her weight had remained almost constant’ (Anivar, 2007).

Apart from reporting on developments related to Irom Sharmila’s condition in New Delhi, the website also reported on campaigns launched in other parts of India to demand the repeal of the Act. These include Kerala in the south and Bihar in the East. In the history of civil society’s protests against abuse of power during counter-insurgency in the North-East, such networking with organisations in other parts of India and reporting coordinated actions was not possible. The internet has enabled such groups to enhance awareness of events and issues and evoke reactions in other parts of India. The significance of the internet-led empowerment lies in the otherwise routine neglect of such regions and their issues by the mainstream, politically powerful news media based in New Delhi (Sonwalkar, 2004).

Today, citizen journalism continues to grow rapidly – if unevenly – across the country. In January 2007, CNN-IBN, a joint venture news channel between CNN and India Business News, put up hoardings across major Indian towns with the catchline: ‘You see it. You report it.’ Viewers of NDTV, another widely watched news channel, regularly use text messaging to force courts to re-open long-standing unresolved criminal cases and to expedite the delivery of justice. The channel daily broadcasts a bulletin during prime time whose run-order is voted by viewers earlier in the day. Such strategies, taken together, highlight the ways in which ordinary people are being actively engaged in the collating and presenting of news, the collective effect of which is transforming traditional – top-down, official-led – definitions of journalism.

Conclusion

This article has sought to identify a number of the ways in which citizen journalism – especially with regard to its capacity to bear witness to human suffering – is helping to reconfigure the geometry of informational power in the ‘network society.’ The online reporting of everyday citizens, we have sought to show, possesses the capability to bring to bear alternative perspectives, context and ideological diversity to news reports, providing internet users with the means to hear distant voices otherwise being marginalized, if not silenced altogether, across uneven mediascapes.

Western journalists’ routine, everyday choices about what to report – how best to do it, and why – necessarily implicate them in a discursive politics of mediation in what are increasingly globalised public spheres. The very multi-vocality at the heart of their ‘narrativisation’ of human rights issues renders problematic any one claim to truth, and in so doing reveals that witnessing is socially situated, perspectival and thus politicised. To the extent that citizen journalism fosters points of human connection at a distance, and in so doing establishes new principles of trust and responsibility, it will help to counter the forms of social exclusion endemic to the ‘us’ and ‘them’ dichotomies otherwise permeating mainstream reporting.

References

Agence France-Press (2000) ‘Indian separatist leader pleads guilty to Thai forgery charge’, 25 May.

Amnesty (2005) ‘India: Briefing on the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act 1958,’ AI Index: ASA 20/025/2005; 9 May 2005.

Anivar (2007) ‘Irom Sharmila’s health deteriorates’, Campaign Update: Manipur Freedom. http://manipurfreedom.org/taxonomy/term/1

Castells, M. (2000) The Rise of the Network Society, Second Edition. Oxford: Blackwell.

Internet World Stats (2007) ‘Internet usage statistics – The big picture,’ internetworldstats.com,

Sonwalkar, P. (2004) ‘Out of sight, out of mind?: the non-reporting of insurgencies and small wars’, in S. Allan & B. Zelizer (eds), Reporting War: Journalism in Wartime. London: Routledge.

UMHA (2003) website of the Union Ministry of Home Affairs, Government of India, http://mha.nic.in/scen.htm

Prasun Sonwalkar is Senior Lecturer in Journalism Studies at the University of the West of England, Bristol. He is currently writing a book titled International Journalism for Open University Press.

Stuart Allan is Professor of Journalism at Bournemouth University. His most recent book is Online News: Journalism and the Internet (Open University Press, 2006).