Month: June 2022

Afghanistan’s Islamist Taliban arranged Thursday a men-only conference of about 3,500 mostly clerics and tribal elders from across the country in an apparent bid to demonstrate their hold on power and domestic legitimacy. 

  

The three-day, closed-door conference began in Kabul amid tight security in the wake of a recent spike in Islamic State-claimed terrorist attacks in the Afghan capital and elsewhere in the war-torn South Asian nation. 

  

The insurgent-turned-ruling group seized power last August, when the United States and NATO partners withdrew their final troops from Afghanistan after almost two decades of military intervention, but the world has not yet recognized the interim Taliban government. 

  

Acting Taliban Defense Minister Mullah Mohammad Yaqoob, while addressing Thursday’s inaugural session, urged participants to share their advice and suggestions to help strengthen the government so it can deal with foreign policy issues. 

“You can see that even after completing almost one year, no country — be it Muslim, non-Muslim, neighboring or regional — has formally recognized this regime,” Yaqoob said. 

  

“My fundamental demand from you all is to courageously formulate a fatwa (decree) for us that helps us end our shakiness in terms of resolving our external problems and bridge any differences that, God forbid, may arise in future between us and the (Afghan) nation,” the defense minister said without elaborating. 

  

The Taliban’s harsh treatment of women and girls and a lack of political inclusivity in governance have kept the global community from granting diplomatic recognition to the new Afghan rulers.  

  

The Islamist group has suspended secondary education for most teenage female students, ordered women to wear face coverings in public and barred them from traveling beyond 70 kilometers without a close male relative. 

  

The U.S. and the world at large have been urging the hardline group to reverse some of its curbs on women and ensure inclusive governance if it wants them to consider the Taliban’s demand for diplomatic recognition. 

Taliban chief spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid, later in the day, briefed reporters about the opening proceedings, saying women were not invited to the meeting because it was organized on the request of independent participating scholars and the government had nothing to do with attendees nor the agenda of the event. 

  

Mujahid said Hibatullah Akhundzada, the reclusive Taliban chief, “may” also attend the ongoing Kabul gathering, but he shared no further details.  

  

Taliban leaders have rejected calls for removing the restrictions on women, insisting they are in accordance with Afghan culture and Islamic Shariah law. 

  

Acting Taliban Deputy Prime Minister Abdul Salam Hanafi argued on Wednesday that women’s participation in the huddle was taking place as their male family members would attend. 

  

Critics questioned the effectiveness and legitimacy of the grand scholars’ meeting in the absence of women, almost 50% of the country’s estimated 40 million population. 

“Durable peace and reconciliation also requires inclusive administration represented by all political, religious and ethnic groups,” said Richard Bennett, the U.N. special rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Afghanistan. 

  

“It is vital that national ethnic religious and linguistic minorities, including minority women in Afghanistan, are included in all decision-making processes,” Bennett remarked at an online seminar Tuesday. 

Rina Amiri, the U.S. special envoy for Afghan women, girls and human rights, while addressing the seminar, suggested rights-related issues would require engagement with the new rulers in Kabul. 

  

“We try to identify very specific measures that the international community can consider and can try to move forward and also how we can press the Taliban to do more because they are right now the reality in the country,” Amiri said. 

  

Torek Farhadi, a former Afghan official and political commentator, is skeptical about the outcome of the meeting.  

  

“An allegiance from 3,000 selected guests by (the) Taliban in a meeting will not help fix any of the problems (facing the country), nor confer any internal or external legitimacy to (the) Taliban,” Farhadi told VOA. 

  

“The book of God in Islam is gifted to women and men equally. Depriving women to have a voice in society is going against the precepts of Islam.” 

  

The Taliban takeover and their subsequent installation of an all-male interim government prompted Washington and other Western countries to immediately halt financial assistance to largely aid-dependent Afghanistan, seize its foreign assets worth more than $9 billion, mostly held by the U.S., and isolate the Afghan banking system. 

  

The action and long-running terrorism-related sanctions on senior Taliban leaders have thrown cash-strapped Afghanistan into a severe economic upheaval, worsening an already bad humanitarian crisis blamed on years of war and persistent drought. 
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For Breshna Salaam, the Taliban’s return to power in Afghanistan last year meant a return to the same extreme poverty she and her mother had experienced under the Taliban’s first time in control of the country.  

In 1996, the Taliban fired Salaam’s mother from a public service job, denying the widow and her daughter their only source of income. In August 2021, with her mother retired, the Taliban fired Salaam from a job at the Ministry of Agriculture.  

Deprived of work and education in her own country, she applied for graduate programs abroad and was offered a scholarship at New York University.  

“I cried out of happiness when I received news of the scholarship,” Salaam told VOA.  

But her happiness did not last long.  

First, she had to pay more than $2,000 in bribes to get a new passport and a short-term visa to Pakistan, where she needs to submit a student visa application at the U.S. embassy. The embassy in Afghanistan remains closed since the Taliban entered Kabul last year.  

“I had to literally beg relatives and friends for money to pay for the passport and the Pakistani visa,” she said.  

And, there are more expenses she has to cover.  

“I have to buy a flight ticket to Islamabad, pay for my accommodation in Islamabad, have to pay $510 for U.S. visa fees, and finally, if I’m given a visa, I will have to buy my ticket to New York,” said Salaam, adding that she had no means to pay all the required expenses on her own.  

Staff at her U.S. university contributed $350 for her SEVIS fee, a payment to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security required from all international students before they submit an F-1 student visa application. Students also have to pay a $160 F-1 visa fee to the U.S. embassy. Both fees are non-refundable, even if the visa is denied.  

Calls for help unanswered   

Over the past four months, more than 500 U.S. academics and human rights activists have signed at least two appeal letters to the White House and the Department of State calling for assistance for Afghan scholars, particularly women, who strive to come to the United States to continue their education.  

“We are deeply concerned about the lives and well-being of these Afghan academics, especially women,” reads a June 21 letter signed by academics from more than 20 U.S. colleges and universities. It is addressed to Secretary of State Antony Blinken.  

The letter criticizes the delays and rejections of student visas for Afghan scholars – even while a fully funded stipend and scholarship is provided by the inviting university – and calls on Blinken to personally intervene “to rectify this shameful situation.” 

“We have received no response to the letter,” Chloe Breyer, executive director of the Interfaith Center of New York and a signee of the letter, told VOA.  

In a separate letter sent to U.S. President Joe Biden in February, more than 450 academic organizations and individuals made a similar call for support for at-risk Afghan scholars.   

“Please help facilitate access to our colleges and universities for the many Afghan scholars and students, who deserve our continued support and investment,” the letter asked Biden.  

“We have received no updates from the U.S. government,” Edward Liebow, executive director of the American Anthropological Association, told VOA.  

More than 80,000 Afghans have come to the U.S. over the past 10 months, mostly through Operation Allies Welcome, a U.S. government program designed to resettle former U.S. Afghan allies and at-risk individuals.

U.S. officials have repeatedly voiced support for Afghan women and minorities whose fundamental rights are reportedly violated under Taliban leadership.

Visa fees 

Already one of the poorest countries in the world, Afghanistan has plunged deeper into poverty over the past 10 months largely due to a cessation of foreign development aid, rampant unemployment, and international banking and economic sanctions imposed on the Taliban leadership. Afghan women, deprived of work and education, are particularly suffering the brunt of the harsh poverty, aid agencies say.  

To help Afghan scholars, U.S. academics have called on the Department of State to waive the student visa fees.  

“The cost of J-1 visas for academics and F-1 for students is a non-refundable fee of $160, a considerable challenge to most applicants, with further expense for those with family, each of whom pays the same fee,” said Breyer.  

A spokesperson for the Department of State said there is no exception in visa fees for Afghan students.  

“The department does not have the authority to waive visa fees on an ad hoc basis and the department’s regulations contain no exemption from the payment of visa fees that would apply to Afghan students, in general,” the spokesperson told VOA.  

For Breshna Salaam, the SEVIS and visa fees are as much an impediment to her education as are the Taliban’s outright denials of her right to work and learn.  

“I hear a lot from U.S. officials in the media that they support the right of Afghan women and girls to education and work, but it would be good to see some actions like waiving student visa fees for Afghan women or making the visa process a little easier so we don’t have to travel to a third country only to submit a visa application,” Salaam said.  

More than 914,000 international students were enrolled at U.S. academic centers in 2021, of which 354 were from Afghanistan, according to the Institute of International Education.  

 
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A Britain-based group says its latest study of worldwide free expression rights shows only 15% of the global population lives where people can receive or share information freely.

In its 2022 Global Expression Report, Article19, an international human rights organization, said that in authoritarian nations such as China, Myanmar and Russia, and in democracies such as Brazil and India, 80% of the global population live with less freedom of expression than a decade ago.

The report said authoritarian regimes and rulers continue to tighten control over what their populations see, hear and say.

While mentioning Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Russian President Vladimir Putin, the report singles out China’s government for “exerting ultimate authority over the identities, information and opinions” of hundreds of millions of people.  

The annual report examines freedom of expression across 161 countries using 25 indicators to measure how free each person is to express, communicate and participate in society, without fear of harassment, legal repercussions or violence. It creates a score from zero to 100 for each country.

This year, the report ranks Denmark and Switzerland tops in the world, each with scores of 96. Norway and Sweden each have scores of 94, and Estonia and Finland both scored 93. The study said the top 10 most open nations are European.

Article 19 ranks North Korea as the most oppressive nation in the world with a score of zero. Eritrea, Syria and Turkmenistan had scores of one, and Belarus, China and Cuba had scores of two.   

The United States ranked 30th on the scale. In 2011, it was 9th in the world. The U.S. has seen a nine-point drop in its score, putting the country on the lower end of the open expression category. It was globally ranked in the lowest quartile in 2021 in its scores for equality in civil liberties for social groups, political polarization and social polarization, and political violence.

The report said that over the past two decades, there have been more dramatic downward shifts in freedom of expression around the world than at any time. Many of these occur as the result of power grabs or coups, but many more nations have seen an erosion of rights, often under democratically elected populist leaders.

Article 19 takes its name from the article under the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which states, “Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.”
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US official tells VOA: ‘We are advancing these interests through engagement’
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Internet services have been suspended in the western Indian state of Rajasthan, while in the city of Udaipur, a curfew is in place over fears of retaliatory communal violence following the killing of a Hindu tailor, allegedly by two Muslim men.

Following their arrests, the suspects reportedly said that they killed the Hindu man because he insulted the Prophet Muhammad by supporting Indian politician Nupur Sharma and sharing a related post in social media.

Sharma, a spokesperson of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), made controversial comments about the Prophet Muhammad last month. Sharma’s remarks triggered a diplomatic storm, with many Islamic countries condemning the comments and registering protests against India. The BJP then suspended her from the party.

Kanhaiya Lal, the tailor, was briefly detained by police after sharing the controversial tweet earlier this month and had been receiving death threats from unknown people since then. His family on Wednesday criticized police for not providing him with protection.

The Indian government has sent a special team of the National Investigation Agency, the country’s anti-terrorism agency, to look into whether the killing was linked to any terrorist group.

On Tuesday, tensions climbed when two video clips of Lal’s killing went viral on social media.

One of the clips, allegedly made by his killers, shows the two men attacking him with cleavers. In the other, the two men allegedly declare that they have beheaded the tailor and threaten Prime Minister Modi, while brandishing the cleavers.

One of the two men also allegedly said in the video, “We live for the Prophet Muhammad, as we are ready to die for him. … Listen, Narendra Modi, you lit the fire, but we will douse it and, if God is willing, our daggers will reach your neck soon, too.”

A senior Rajasthan police official urged the media to stop showing the video because it is “too ghastly to watch.”

Hindu nationalists are calling on the Muslim suspects to be treated as terrorists and hanged. Rajasthan Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot said on Twitter that the case will be handled by a special investigation team and “speedier justice and strict punishment” will be ensured.

“Please stay calm and don’t help serve the assailants’ motive of spreading discord in the country,” Gehlot said.

The tailor’s killing has been widely condemned by Muslims, with many calling the act completely “un-Islamic.”

India’s largest Islamic organization, Jamaat-e-Islami Hind, called the killing “barbaric” and “uncivilized.”

“There is no room for justification of violence in Islam. … We strongly condemn it. No citizen should take law in his own hands,” a tweet from the organization said. 

New Delhi-based Muslim community leader Zafarul-Islam Khan said that the Udaipur killing is “completely illegal and deplorable.”

“The criminals must be appropriately punished but a minute probe is also necessary to uncover the conspiracy behind the killing. … The probe must also focus on who benefits from this crime. It flows into the polarization politics and demonizes Muslims,” Khan told VOA.

Another Muslim community leader, Syed Azharuddin, described the killing as “inhuman” and “un-Islamic.”

“We strongly condemn this killing. The culprits should be dealt with strictly, through the legal process,” Azharuddin told VOA.

“Let us not forget that the Quran teaches us saving a human is equivalent to saving entire humanity vis-a-vis killing a human is equivalent to killing entire humanity.” 
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Fears that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine would spur China to take a similar approach to Taiwan do not appear to be playing out, at least not yet, according to the top U.S. intelligence official. 

Chinese President Xi Jinping “quite clearly sees reunification of Taiwan as a goal,” Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines told an audience in Washington late Wednesday, adding Xi “continues to prefer doing that peacefully as opposed to using military force.” 

“There are not indications that he is currently intending to take Taiwan by military force even as he is planning for the potential,” Haines added. 

Senior U.S. defense officials have repeatedly warned about China’s increasing aggressiveness in and around the South China Sea and Taiwan, and a military buildup larger than any seen since World War II. 

 

Those concerns were echoed Wednesday by NATO, which accused Beijing of “bullying its neighbors and threatening Taiwan.” 

“China is not our adversary, but we must be clear-eyed about the challenges it represents,” NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said at the alliance’s summit in Madrid. 

“We see a deepening strategic partnership between Moscow and Beijing, and China’s growing assertiveness and its coercive policies have consequences for the security of allies and our partners,” he added. 

The U.S. Commerce Department on Wednesday placed export restrictions on five Chinese companies for providing military-related support to Russia. 

Asked about the restrictions, Haines echoed the concerns. 

“They’ve tried very hard to quite publicly not take a critical stance of Russia,” she said. “Yet at the same time what we do see is that they are helping the Russians in a variety of ways behind the scenes.” 

Other top U.S. officials have previously said there has been no evidence of direct Chinese government support for Russia’s military efforts in Ukraine.
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Afghanistan’s Islamist Taliban have invited about 3,000 religious scholars and tribal elders from across the country to a meeting Thursday in Kabul, where officials said national unity would be discussed.  

 

The men-only session in the Afghan capital is the first of its kind and is seen as an attempt to promote domestic legitimacy for the insurgent-turned-ruling group so it can secure much-needed international recognition.

The Taliban seized power from the internationally backed Afghan government last August, when the United States and NATO partners withdrew their final troops from the country after almost 20 years of military intervention. 

 

Taliban Acting Deputy Prime Minister Abdul Salam Hanafi said Wednesday that prominent university professors, national businessmen and influential personalities would also attend the gathering, saying an Islamic system of governance and economics, as well as social issues facing Afghanistan, would be discussed.

‘We respect them a lot’ 

 

“This will be a positive step for stability in Afghanistan and strengthening national unity,” Hanafi told state broadcaster RTA. 

 

“The women are our mothers, sisters. We respect them a lot. When their sons are in the gathering, it means they are also involved, in a way, in the gathering,” he said when asked whether female delegates had been invited to Thursday’s event.  

 

No country has yet recognized the Taliban as legitimate rulers of Afghanistan, mainly because of their harsh treatment of women and girls. The Islamist rulers have suspended secondary education for most teenage girls, ordered women to wear face coverings in public and barred them from traveling beyond 70 kilometers without a close male relative. 

 

The Taliban are also being pressed to govern the country inclusively and give all Afghan groups proper representation to ensure long-term national stability. 

Critics questioned the legitimacy of Thursday’s grand meeting in the absence of women, who make up almost 50 percent of the country’s estimated 40 million population.  

 

“An allegiance from 3,000 selected guests by [the] Taliban in a meeting will not help fix any of the problems [facing the country], nor confer any internal or external legitimacy to [the] Taliban,” said Torek Farhadi, a former Afghan official and political commentator. 

 

“The book of God in Islam is gifted to women and men equally. Depriving women to have a voice in society is going against the precepts of Islam,” Farhadi told VOA.  

 

The Taliban takeover and their subsequent installation of an all-male interim government prompted Washington and other Western countries to immediately halt financial assistance to largely aid-dependent Afghanistan, seize its foreign assets — worth more than $9 billion, mostly held by the U.S. — and isolate the Afghan banking system.

Economic upheaval

The action and long-running terrorism-related sanctions on senior Taliban leaders have thrown the cash-strapped country into a severe economic upheaval, worsening an already bad humanitarian crisis blamed on years of war and persistent drought. 

 

The U.S. and the world at large have been urging the hardline group to reverse some of its curbs on women and ensure inclusive governance if it wants the global community to consider the Taliban’s demand for diplomatic recognition.  

 

Taliban leaders have rejected calls for removing the restrictions on women, insisting they are in accordance with Afghan culture and Shariah, or Islamic law. 

 

“Durable peace and reconciliation also require inclusive administration, represented by all political, religious and ethnic groups,” said Richard Bennett, the U.N. special rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Afghanistan.

“It is vital that national ethnic, religious and linguistic minorities, including minority women in Afghanistan, are included in all decision-making processes,” Bennett remarked at an online seminar Tuesday.   

 

Rina Amiri, the U.S. special envoy for Afghan women, girls and human rights, while addressing the seminar, suggested rights-related issues would require engagement with the new rulers in Kabul. 

 

“We try to identify very specific measures that the international community can consider and can try to move forward and also how we can press the Taliban to do more because they are right now the reality in the country,” Amiri said 

Washington-based Freedom House, a pro-democracy organization dedicated to the expansion of freedom around the world, organized the seminar.
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The United States and the Taliban are scheduled to hold talks in Qatar later this week that are expected to focus on economic and banking sanctions on Afghanistan, where last week’s devastating earthquake has worsened a humanitarian crisis.

Taliban Foreign Minister Amir Khan Muttaqi, along with senior Finance Ministry officials and representatives of the Afghan central bank, traveled to Doha Wednesday to attend the meeting.

Muttaqi’s office said U.S. special envoy for Afghanistan Thomas West, accompanied by Department of Treasury officials, will lead the U.S. delegation at the talks in the Qatari capital.

U.S. officials are reportedly working with the ruling Islamist group on a mechanism to allow the Afghan central bank to use its frozen foreign funds, worth billions of dollars, to deal with a hunger crisis stemming from years of Afghan war and persistent drought, according to a report this week in The Washington Post.

The proposed framework would have to ensure the Taliban insurgent group-turned-rulers do not benefit from the money and it is used only to avert a humanitarian disaster in a country where the United Nations says more than half its estimated 40 million people is in need of emergency aid.

Western countries froze around $9 billion in Afghan central bank assets, mostly held in the U.S., after the Islamist Taliban seized power from the internationally backed Afghan government last August as American and NATO troops withdrew from the South Asian nation.

Western countries also suspended financial assistance to largely aid-dependent Afghanistan, isolating the country’s banking sector in the wake of long-running terror-related sanctions on the Taliban.

Last week, U.S. President Joe Biden’s administration acknowledged that efforts were underway to seek a resolution to the Afghan funding problem and get funds moving.

“We are urgently working to address complicated questions about the use of these funds to ensure they benefit the people of Afghanistan and not the Taliban,” White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters on Saturday.

Biden issued an executive order in February that was aimed at freeing half the $7 billion in frozen Afghan central bank assets on U.S. soil. The money would be used to benefit the Afghan people while the rest would be held for the ongoing terrorism-related lawsuits in U.S. courts against the Taliban.

But humanitarian challenges have intensified in parts of Afghanistan. A powerful earthquake on June 22 killed some 1,150 people, including at least 155 children, and destroyed or damaged hundreds of homes in hardest-hit southeastern Paktika and Khost provinces, according to Taliban officials and global aid agencies.

The disaster reportedly prompted Biden aides to begin talks to allow Afghanistan at least partial use of the frozen funds, while keeping them out of the hands of the Taliban.

“So, in signing an executive order several months ago, the president took a significant step to preserve these funds and ensure they go toward benefiting the people of Afghanistan. If the president hadn’t taken this action, the funds would have remained tied up for years,” Jean-Pierre reiterated on Saturday.

The Biden administration announced on Tuesday the United States will give nearly $55 million in immediate humanitarian assistance to people in Afghanistan impacted by the earthquake.

The State Department said the funds will be used to deliver essential food items, clothing, cooking utensils, blankets, jerry cans, and sanitation supplies to prevent waterborne diseases in the disaster-hit Afghan areas.

“The United States has an enduring commitment to the people of Afghanistan, and we welcome and encourage support from our international partners in this time of great need,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a statement on Tuesday.

U.S. officials noted that Washington has been the largest humanitarian donor to Afghanistan and committed more than $774 million in humanitarian assistance over the past year.

No country has yet recognized the Taliban’s interim government, citing concerns over terrorism and human rights, particularly restrictions on women’s rights to education and work.
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Police in Delhi have arrested the Muslim co-founder of a fact-checking website for allegedly “hurting religious sentiment” of Hindus. Media rights activists called the action a new low for press freedom in India.

Journalist Mohammed Zubair, co-founder of Alt News, was arrested Monday after being accused of insulting Hindu beliefs in a tweet he posted in 2018. Zubair regularly highlights the marginalization of minority Muslims and identifies fake news in his tweets.

The tweet that led to Zubair’s arrest carried a photo of a hotel sign repainted from “Honeymoon Hotel” to “Hanuman Hotel.” Monkey god Hanuman is revered by Hindus.

Along with the photo, which was a screenshot from a 1983 Bollywood comedy, the text in the tweet said, “Before 2014: Honeymoon Hotel. After 2014: Hanuman Hotel.”

On June 19, a Twitter account called Hanuman Bhakt, (follower of Hanuman, in Hindi), shared the 2018 tweet and charged that linking the monkey god to honeymoon was a “direct insult” to Hindus, and urged Delhi police to “take action” against Zubair.

Delhi police said Zubair’s tweet was “highly provocative and more than sufficient to incite feelings of hatred.”

“Transmission and publication of such posts have been deliberately done by Mohammed Zubair @zoo_bear through electronic media to insult the religious feelings of a particular community with the intent to provoke breach of peace,” the First Information Report filed by police said.

Vrinda Grover, Zubair’s lawyer, said Zubair is being targeted because he is a journalist and speaking “truth to power.”

“Many others tweeted the same, but the only difference between those handles and my client is his faith, his name and his profession,” Grover said to the court, referring to Zubair being Muslim and a journalist.

Refused bail

Zubair was refused bail Tuesday before being remanded to four days of police custody.

Apart from being a critic of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government, Zubair has been known for routinely tracking and highlighting anti-Muslim hate speeches, mostly by Hindu right-wing activists.

Recently, he highlighted allegedly derogatory comments made by Nupur Sharma, a spokesperson for Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), about the Prophet Muhammad. His tweet on the issue was widely shared and sparked strong protests against India from many Muslim countries.

Tens of thousands of Hindu nationalists came out in support of Sharma. They held rallies across the country and launched a #ArrestZubair campaign on Twitter. On social media, many of them said that Zubair often posted tweets insulting Hindu gods and goddesses and he should be prosecuted.

#ReleaseZubair trending on Twitter

Following Zubair’s arrest Monday, #IStandWithZubair and #ReleaseZubair began trending on Twitter in India, with journalists, opposition party leaders and rights activists expressing solidarity with him.

Opposition party leader Rahul Gandhi tweeted, “Every person exposing BJP’s hate, bigotry and lies is a threat to them.”

Delhi-based Muslim community leader Zafarul-Islam Khan said Zubair is being targeted because he consistently exposed the lies spread by the Hindutva [right-wing Hindu] groups.

“Under this regime, anyone who opens his mouth and raises his head must be put down. The plan is to silence all critics so that peace of graveyards sways over India,” Khan told VOA.

“Another low for press freedom in India”

Demanding Zubair’s immediate release, Steven Butler, Asia program coordinator at the Committee to Protect Journalists, said in a statement: “The arrest of journalist Mohammad Zubair marks another low for press freedom in India, where the government has created a hostile and unsafe environment for members of the press reporting on sectarian issues.”

Calling Zubair’s arrest “clearly a petty, vindictive, and vengeful act,” social activist Rohit Chopra, an associate professor at Santa Clara University, told VOA that through his work, Zubair has shown how the “current government, its officials and supporters routinely spread fake news to demonize minorities, critics and their political opponents.”

Ashok Swain, head of the Department of Peace and Conflict Research at Uppsala University, said the charges against Zubair are “fictitious,” and the severity of action against him is more because he is Muslim.

“When the critic is from a minority community, the government’s action becomes much more severe, as it not only prohibits others from raising their voices but also makes the core majoritarian supporters of the ruling party happy,” Swain told VOA.

Audrey Truschke, associate professor of South Asian history at Rutgers University, said Zubair’s arrest is a startling move by an authoritarian state whose intolerance grows by the day.

“These are indeed dark times for India, which is already one of the most dangerous places in the world to be a journalist. India’s government shames itself, tarnishes its reputation, and harms its own citizens by continuing down this horrific path,” Truschke told VOA.

India fell eight places in the 180-country World Press Freedom Index this year. In 2021, it ranked 142. In 2022, it ranks 150th.
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