The groups called on Saudi authorities to release all detained journalists, lift arbitrary travel bans, and end legal and digital attacks. They also urged U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration and the U.S. Congress to protect U.S.-based journalists from Saudi transnational repression and spyware.

Saudi Arabia is one of the most dangerous countries for journalists, with at least 10 behind bars on December 1, 2024, making it the 10^th worst jailer of journalists globally in CPJ’s latest annual prison census.

Read the full statement here.

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

One among these users is BJP leader and lawyer Prashant Umrao. Responding to the railway ministry tweet, he had claimed that the two arrested individuals were named Shahid Hussain and Salman. (Archived link)

शाहिद हुसैन और सलमान

— Prashant Umrao (@ippatel) November 23, 2024

Jitendra Pratap Singh, a BJP supporter who has been found amplifying communal propaganda and misinformation several times in the past, shared the photo tweeted by the railway ministry and wrote, “Two criminals who pelted stones at the Vande Bharat Express, Shahid Hussain and Salman, have been arrested in Gaya.” (Archived link)

वंदे भारत एक्सप्रेस पर पथराव करने वाले दो अपराधी शाहिद हुसैन और सलमान गया में गिरफ्तार! pic.twitter.com/h7Wvna2BWO

— Jitendra pratap singh (@jpsin1) November 23, 2024

Right-wing X user Raju Valmiki also amplified the claim. (Archived link)

वंदे भारत एक्सप्रेस पर पथराव करने वाले दो अपराधी गया में गिरफ्तार!

आरोपियों के नाम कोई नहीं बताएगा। बुकमार्क कर लो

नाम है शाहिद हुसैन और सलमान
#ElectionResults pic.twitter.com/eZ5lfnv1Uk

— राजू वाल्मीकि (@raju_botana) November 23, 2024

These apart, many Right-wing handles like Sachin Tiwari, Arvind Mishra and others promoted the claim that the accused were Muslims.

Fact check

Alt News conducted a detailed investigation into the viral claims. The viral tweet from the Union railway ministry on November 22, 2024, did not mention the names of the arrested individuals or their religious backgrounds.

A reverse image search of the viral tweet led to a report published by Prabhat Khabar on November 17, 2024, which clarified the actual details of the arrests. According to the report, the Railway Protection Force (RPF) and the Railway Police apprehended two youths, Manish alias Badal and Vikas alias Super, residents of Jawahar Nagar Adda in Manpur, for stone-pelting incidents involving the Patna-Tata and Gaya-Howrah Vande Bharat Express trains on November 16, 2024, around 3:40 PM.

This information was corroborated by the Prabhat Khabar e-paper on November 18, 2024. 

It was also validated by a subsequent report by India Today dated November 23, 2024. 

This makes it evident that the accused were named Manish and Vikas, and not Shahid Hussain and Salman.

In other words, Two individuals named Manish and Vikas, who pelted stones on the Vande Bharat Express, were wrongly identified by social media users as Shahid Hussain and Salman. In doing so, the incident was given a false communal angle.

Alt News has previously exposed numerous instances where communal claims were fabricated in the context of railway incidents (Fact-check report 1, Fact-check report 2, Fact-check report 3). 

The post Vande Bharat stone-pelting: 2 Hindu accused misidentified as Salman, Shahid to add communal spin appeared first on Alt News.

This content originally appeared on Alt News and was authored by Pawan Kumar.

The statement was issued to mark three years since Alsingace—an award-winning academic, blogger, and human rights defender—began a hunger strike on July 8, 2021, after prison authorities confiscated his manuscript on Bahraini dialects of Arabic, which he spent four years researching and writing.

Alsingace, who has a disability, has been detained since 2011 and reportedly tortured.

The joint statement is available in English here.

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

The 4th Ankara Court of Serious Crimes convicted eight journalists on charges of membership in a terrorist organization as part of a mass trial of 11 journalists employed by the pro-Kurdish outlets Mezopotamya News Agency and JİNNEWS. They remain free pending appeal. The other three journalists were acquitted.

“Turkish authorities charged a group of Kurdish journalists with membership in a terrorist organization while presenting no solid evidence to back their accusations and yet somehow found eight of them guilty,” said Özgür Öğret, CPJ’s Turkey representative. “Authorities should not fight the journalists’ appeals and must stop filing baseless charges of terrorism against members of the media.”

The court found Mezopotamya editor Diren Yurtsever; Mezopotamya reporters Berivan Altan, Deniz Nazlım, Emrullah Acar, Hakan Yalçın, Salman Güzelyüz, and Zemo Ağgöz Yiğitsoy, and freelance journalist Öznur Değer guilty of being members of the outlawed Kurdish Workers’ Party (PKK), which Turkey has designated a terrorist organization. None of the journalists attended the hearing and were represented instead by their lawyers.

The court acquitted Mezopotamya reporter Ceylan Şahinli, JİNNEWS reporter Ümmü Habibe Eren, and former Mezopotamya reporting intern Mehmet Günhan.

The authorities detained the 11 journalists in October 2022 and indicted them in February 2023. CPJ emailed the Ankara chief prosecutor’s office for comment but received no immediate reply.

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

He relishes slaying the dragons of bigotry he encounters, starting with

*Winston Churchill, the racist. He who had labelled Indians ‘a barbarous people’, ‘a beastly people with a beastly religion’, ‘the beastliest people in the world next to Germans’. Who exacerbated the 1943 Bengal famine that had killed millions by insisting that Indian rice exports for the allied war effort not be interrupted. He who had called Gandhi ‘a naked fakir’ whom he wanted ‘bound hand and foot at the gates of Delhi and then trampled by an enormous elephant with a new viceroy seated on its back.’

*Even the Toronto Star‘s iconic Gordon Sinclair, who won fame in the 1930s with his dispatches form India – ‘the pagan peninsula’ with its ‘wild and woolly Hindus’, Brahmins, the supreme high hooper-doopers of this impossible land’, ‘scrawny, underfed untouchables’, impossible-looking beggars’ and ‘yowling idiots’. In tune with those times, [the Star] still going ga-ga over Sinclair well into my own time.

*On Iran, the only Muslim ‘experts’ and commentators on TV and in print were anti-revolution or anti-Khomeini, authenticating the worst of western prejudices. Anything different, such as mine, must have been a welcome novelty, brought to them by Canada’s largest newspaper.

*On 9//11, Rushdie see below.

One of those should-haves of his life as dragonslayer was at the annual press gallery dinner in Ottawa, where he hosted Solicitor General Robert Kaplan. When they were walking to dinner, Kaplan started waxing eloquently about his love for India and yoga but his dislike of Muslims! He assumed that being from India I could only be a Hindu. What a testament to power the Zionist Jewish mindset had/has over even a proud Muslim like Siddiqui. But bravo, Harry (sorry, Haroon) for owning up. That’s the great thing about him. He lives his multiculturalism, which means meeting the other on his/her grounds, looking for the middle ground, not stoking enmity.

Iranian Ayatollahs, Afghan communists

He shines on the thorniest issue, one of which confronted him soon after arriving at the Star, when he was sent off to Iran in 1979. Speaking Urdu (close to Persian) and fully versed in Sunni and Shia Islam, he was able to make sense of the chaos, making his way to Qom to visit Ayatollah Madari, Khomeini’s rival, who lived just down the maze of alleys from Khomeini, who was already commanding the revolution from his modest home there, rather than Tehran.

He was told it was impossible to meet with Madari, even for a Canadian Muslim, but when he revealed that he’d just come from Tabriz, where Madari’s People’s Republican Party followers had risen up against Khomeini, rejecting the Islamic state constitution, Madari relented. Madari wanted a secular state and ‘the sovereignty of the people’ not a person. He answered every question patiently for nearly two hours. That was his only interview in the wake of the revolt. It would be his last. He was placed under house arrest until his death six years later.

He also met with Morteza Pasandideh, 82, Khomeini’s older brother, who was quite jovial. Siddiqui admired them all for their stress-free lives, their inner peace all, living productive lives into their 80s or 90s. Qom is famous for sohan halwa (sweet sweet) made with pistachios, almonds and butter. Back in Toronto, he asked John Ralston Saul to taste and guess which enemy country it was from. Whatever it is, it could only have been made by a great civilization.

He toured the now-occupied US embassy and chatted amiably (sympathetically?) with the students about how they had pulled off the siege, overpowering the bulky Marines. They said their resolve got strengthened after seeing a large-size picture of Khomeini on a dartboard and several crude cartoons of Khomeini from American and British newspapers in the embassy. At Christmas they made cookies for their captives. An American priest who had come to perform the Christmas Mass said: We should be grateful that we are in a Muslim country and there are not drunk guards. Canadian Ambassador Ken Taylor told him: There are no anti-Canadian feelings here. No one has indicated any inclination to leave Tehran. There’s no panic. When he met Taylor later, he said: Mr Taylor, you’re a great liar. Taylor: That’s what I got paid for.

After an exhausting year in Tehran, the Soviets invaded (came to the assistance of) secular revolutionary Kabul and he was ordered to get there asap. But first he flew to the Iranian border and crossed into Afghanistan to meet a local tribal chieftain, who told him, ‘We’ll kick the bastards out.’ How to get there legitimately? Pakistan? Better India, which had good relations with the communists in Moscow and Kabul, so off to New Delhi and the Afghan embassy. Indira Gandhi never condemned the Soviet invasion. (How wise in retrospect.) In Kabul he was told not to go anywhere and only communicate through an official guide. Ha, ha! He snuck out the back door of his hotel, spoke to a soldier in Urdu, said ‘Canada’ and quickly found a local driver.

He credits Canada’s reputation for peaceful relations, a well-known eye clinic in Kabul. Off to (Shia) Herat where he heard Long live Islam, Long live Iran! He bought a Russian fur cap but was told never to wear it in public or he might be shot. He left via Pushtunistan to Jalalabad, Pakistan, where he met the legendary 91-year-old frontier Gandhi Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan, who like the Siddiquis had protested the division of India. He was ailing but contemptuous of Soviet attempts to appease religious Afghans. Everything in Afghanistan is done in the name of religion. But this is a political religion, not the religion of Islam and Allah and Muhammad. Communism has nothing to do with religion. It has to do with the stomach. The Russians knew this and tried to convince the Afghans that they could keep their religion, but it was too little, too late. The Russians refused to try to treat their Gandhi, fearing if he died, they would be accused of killing him.

He pressed on to the Khyber Pass, the route for a stream of invaders – Cyrus, Darius, Genghis Khan, Alexander, the Mughals. Tribal chief Mohammed Gul told him: if the Iranians can knock off the Shah and the Americans, we certainly can kick out the Russians. He saw that resistance was beginning to jell within weeks of the Soviet occupation. It took a decade for the Soviets to depart, the US and allies, including Canada, taking double the time to conclude that Afghans have both the courage and patience to bleed any occupier dry.

This being the days before internet, getting copy out required ingenuity. Siddiqui would go to the airport on the days Indian Airlines came to Kabul, meet the crew and cajole/tip them into taking copy and dropping it off at the Reuters news agency in Delhi for forwarding to Toronto. He also went on the day Pakistan International Airlines came just in case. Later he was told everything came, sometimes twice. He met Brzezinski in Peshawar (!) but he wouldn’t give Siddiqui the time of day.

Following the Iraq-Iran war, he was disgusted that western media ignored the poison gas supplied to Iraq by American, German, French, Dutch, Swiss and Belgian companies. On the Iranian front line he hid from Iraqi snipers and marveled at how soldiers dying from gassing were rushed from the front to Tehran hospitals. He was appalled by Khomeini’s hitman, a sadistic prosecutor Ayatollah Sadegh Khalkhali, the hanging judge. Later in Paris, he met Bani Sadr, the first president, who had been impeached and fled the country disguised as a woman in a chador, in an Iran Air Force jet piloted by a sympathizer. He laments that US hostility prompted Khomeini to restart the nuclear program begun under the Shah, after ending it as unIslamic.

Siddiqui’s credo

I must admit, I’ve become jaded about multiculturalism. Toronto is now mostly first or second generation immigrants. Our culture feels shallow and American now. I find the turban-wearing Uber electric scooters grazing me unawares on bike paths frightening, and pointless, as they ferry onion rings to lazy people with too much money. I bemoan the lack of interest in Canadian history, our struggle to define an identity that’s not American. Most immigrants really would prefer big, rich, warm America to Canada and would have no problem if the US decided to invade. What has happened to Canadian culture?

But then I’ve become equally jaded about our heroic history. We are all immigrants, in the case of the paleface, mostly riff-raff, having decimated our poor brown natives. The post-WWII immigrants from brown countries like Siddiqui’s India/ Pakistan are mostly university-educated, the elites of their countries, so they really are a step up from my Irish-English-Swedish peasant ancestors.

But then, I find that equally disturbing. We stole the land from the real Canadians. Now we steal the intellectual wealth from poor countries. Sure we’re richer; the imperialist ‘centre’ is always richer. Our Canadianism was and is still a fraud. So, white flag, hello multiculturalism, for better or worse. But one that should give first place to our natives as the real owners, spiritually, of the land. And no more stealing, whether it be minds from ‘over there’, or land here or ‘over there’. That means Israel, our ‘best friend’, according to PM Harper in 2013 and PM Trudeau in 2015.

Siddiqui is unapologetically for mass immigration and has no time for the ecological problems that mass migration entails. He boasts having visited India 50 times in 40 years, not to mention his other peregrinations. That grates. Yes, brown/black is just as good as white, but what’s holding us together anymore? I don’t know, but I’m happy for Siddiqui, who at least has helped Canada transform from a country of bigotry and chauvinism to … a nice, tame, bland cosmopolis.

His journey through the swinging ’60s into the terrible ’20s is an upbeat panorama of not only Canada at its peak of popularity and feel-goodness, but, reading between the lines, also the decline of Canada, its loss of feel-good innocence transformation into an unapologetic toady of US empire. He took pride in being Canadian when Ambassador Taylor helped US hostages escape Tehran in 1980, when Chretien refused to go along with the invasion of Iraq in 2003, but it’s been downhill since then, with Harper’s disastrous commitment of Canadian troops to Afghanistan, his open Islamo- and Russophobia, his worship of Israel. While Trudeau has welcomed Syrian refugees (and now Afghans, fall out from Harper’s war), he did not fulfill his pledge to renew relations with Iran, despite the Iranian exile community’s pleas. His Russophobia is pathetic. Multiculturalism is looking mighty threadbare.

Yes, following Trudeau senior, Siddiqui’s credo is that all cultural communities have ‘the right to preserve and develop their own cultures within Canadian society’, which he notes is the ethos of India, best articulated by Indian novelist Shivaram Karanth: There’s no such thing as Indian culture. Indian culture is so varied as to be called cultures. But what has happened to India’s multiculturalism under arch-Hindu nationalist Modi?

Star Foreign Editor Jimmy Atkins (R) with Star chair John Honderich, South African President Nelson Mandela & first lady Graca Machel, Star editorial board editor Haroon Siddiqui.

Free trade, Sikhs, Laïcité

Siddiqui gets along with everyone, doesn’t drink or smoke (anymore), a model Muslim in the House of War.¹ He traces his ancestors to the first caliph Abu-bakr Siddiq, and second caliph Umar al-Khattab al-Faruq. A worthy disciple of the Prophet Muhammad, the multiculturalist par excellence.² The fearsome Bee (Star editor-in-chief Beland Honderich) famously got along with Haroon. Siddiqui started from scratch in Brandon (no halal, no yogurt in 1968), then the Star, rising quickly through the ranks to foreign correspondent, front page editor, editorial page editor, and finally columnist, all the time the only Muslim in mainstream Canadian media.

He and the Star were against Mulroney’s ‘free’ trade pact with the yankee devil, realizing it was only good for fat cats. He has acted as a public spokesman explaining the problems of all immigrants and BIPOC,³ an acronym he promotes. He highlights the racism which feeds on the changing demographics from white to nonwhite, recountiing a Tanzanian immigrant pushed onto Toronto’s subway tracks, crippling him, and the existence of a KKK chapter operating openly in Toronto.

The case of Sikhs is thorny. Sikh Canadians were mostly quietist, but when Sikh separatists were ejected from the Golden Temple by Indira Gandhi in 1984, she was assassinated, and Sikh separatists blew up an Indian Airlines plane full of Hindu Canadians in 1985. This still ranks as Canada’s worst such tragedy, but was downplayed by the Canadian government with the investigation bungled by the RCMP, as anti-Sikh/ Hindu racism grew. And it continues, the latest being a hit job on a (Sikh separatist) Canadian, openly, by India’s militant Hindu nationalist government. Multiculturalism is easily abused and hard to defend.

To their credit, the Sikhs in Canada have bounced back, entering politics (Justin Trudeau boasted more Sikhs in his cabinet than Modi), joining the RCMP, police, army, working hard, being good citizens. The bad apples didn’t spoil the whole barrel, though Sikhs have no use for India, and they really did capture the lackluster leadership convention of the NDP out of nowhere in 2017. The unlikely NDP leader Jagmeet Singh has been earnest, if not inspiring.

How does this multiculturalism pan out? Quebec separatists don’t like immigrants much, as they are not interested in living in a parochial, xenophobic province, and have enough trouble learning passable English, let alone Quebecois. They voted en masse against independence, and the pesky Muslim women want to wear hijab or worse, niqab. Vive la laïcité. Quebec has chosen to copy France’s punitive banning hijab and other restrictions. Still, English and French get along.

Tribalism, French vs English, Sikhs vs Hindus, Buddhists remains strong. That contrasts with Muslims, who quickly drop their ethnic identity for universal Islam and Canadianism (84% cite being Muslim and 81% cite being Canadian as their primary identity),⁴ as I’ve noticed at Muslim conferences, where a truly united nations reigns. That brings us to Jewish Canadians vs Muslim Canadians, the most tragic stand-off of the past century. Siddiqui doesn’t go to this forbidding territory. On the contrary, (wisely) he has spoken to Bnai Brith and Canadian Jewish Congress gatherings and kept a low profile as a Muslim Canadian. As the sole prominent Muslim journalist here, he was operating in enemy territory, as his encounter with Kaplan confirmed.

Enlightening Canadians on things Islamic

More important, he wrote engagingly about Muslims in Toronto, which hosts the largest Iranian emigre community after the US, mostly in ‘Tehronto’, a mix of pro- and anti-Khomeini, but able to live peacefully, all agreeing that the Canadian government nonrecognition of Iran and boycott is bad politics for everyone. His appreciation for this ‘great civilization’ contrasts with the negative press that Iran uniformly gets here.

Siddiqui realized quickly that Canadian media coverage and commentary ‘smelled of American propaganda’ and the US and allies were inflicting too many horrors on Muslims and Muslims lands. In 1988, the US warship Vincennes shot down an Iranian civilian airliner killing 290, prompting Bush I to boast: I will never apologize for the US. I don’t care what the facts are. Instead, Washington awarded medals to the captain and crew of the Vincennes. Did any other mainstream journalist note this then or now? He refused to blacken Islam after 9/11. Now a columnist he wrote his third post-9/11 column ‘It’s the US foreign policy, stupid,’ causing a storm of letters to the editor, a majority ‘thank you for saying it’.

Ismailis came in 1972, expelled by Idi Amin of Uganda, joined later by Ismailis from Kenya and Tanzania. Self-reliant, educated, entrepreneurial, they inspired the Aga Khan to build a museum of Islamic culture in Toronto in 2014, the only such museum in the West. Ironically it was officially opened by arch-Islamophobe PM Harper. We celebrate today not only the harmonious meeting of green gardens and glass galleries. We rejoice above all in the special spirit which fills this place and gives it its soul. But then, to Islamophobe Harper, Ismailis are Islam-lite, not considered real Muslims by most.

There are two chapters dealing with the ummah: Cultural Warfare on Muslims, and Harper and Muslims (In his ugliness, he was well ahead of Trump – and more effective). Some particularly painful episodes he covered:

*Harper invited (till then terrorist) Modi to Canada in 2014 when first elected, accompanying him to Ottawa, Toronto and Vancouver,

*He established an office of religious freedom, which he unveiled at a Mississauga Coptic church. He announced the position of a new ambassador of religious freedom at the Ahmadiyya mosque in Vaughan, defending Christian and other minorities in Muslim nations, doing nothing for Uighurs, Rohingyas, Shia in Saudi Arabia and Pakistan.

I could go on – I haven’t even got to the Rushdie circus – but I urge all Muslim Canadians, no, all Canadians, to read for yourselves. Siddiqui provides an excellent survey of all the post-9/11 Islamophobic nonsense, especially in Euroland.

The West has discredited democracy by allowing anti-Islam and anti-Muslim discourse to be one of our last acceptable forms of racism and bigotry. It’s in this milieu that Rushdie and the Rushdie affair have thrived. Has Rushdie been exploiting western prejudices or has the West been using him as a shield for its own prejudices? Or is this a case of mutual convenience?

Having rid ourselves of Harper, how quickly we forget the pain when it stops. As it has under Trudeau Jr. For all his silliness and US-Israel fawning, Justin Trudeau is true to his father’s legacy, and undid much of Harper’s bigotry, especially relating to Muslims.

We should be wary of letting the unrepentant Conservatives take back Parliament Hill. However, I don’t think it’s possible to relaunch the Harper take-no-hostages Crusade. 9/11 (whoever did it) is what motivated me and many more to become a Muslim, and October 7 is now rapidly expanding the Muslim ummah, especially in the West, the heart of the beast. The trouble for the Harpers is that the more Islam and Muslims are reviled, the more Muslims (re)turn to their religion. But then that’s the way of imperialism, creating its enemies, stoking them, as Israel did with Hamas, thinking they can then pick off the ‘terrorists’, ‘mow the grass’.

Siddiqui draws from his experience surviving partition in India, adhering to Shaykh Madani’s view that ‘there is too much diversity within Islam for democracy to work, that an Islamic state would inevitably be authoritarian.’ Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Iran are the leading examples. The best protection for peoples of faith was a democratic state that stayed neutral between faiths and advanced mutual respect.⁵

The Harpers accuse Muslims of being unwilling to integrate. Canada, Britain and the US are shining examples of the opposite.

*In the 2021 federal election 12 Muslims won seats. Two hold senior Cabinet portfolios: Omar Alghabra and Ahmed Hussen.

*In Britain, in 2019, 19 were elected. Sadiq Khan has been mayor of London since 2016.

*Humza Yousaf became first minister in Scotland in 2023, the first Muslim to lead a western nation. When Khan was sworn in as a member of the Privy Council at Bukhingham Palace in 2009, it was discovered there was no Quran in the palace, so he brought his own and left it as a present to the Queen.

*In the US 57 Muslims were elected in 2020. Keith Ellison, the first member of the House was sworn in on a copy of the Quran owned by President Jefferson, who had bought an English translation out of the ‘desire to understand Islam on its own terms.’

*Arab and Muslim entertainers, stand-up comedians, writers, actors, Little Mosque on the Prairie …

*To welcome Syrian refugees arriving in Canada, Ottawa French public schools joined to sing Talaʽ al-Badru ʽAlaynā,⁶ which went viral on YouTube.

Siddiqui’s openmindedness and lack of prejudice are his not-so-secret weapon, able to find common humanity where western propaganda serves up bile. To no small degree, thanks to Haroon and other new (brown) Canadians, Marshall McLuhan’s global village is a reality at home, the most successful heterogeneous experiment in human history.

ENDNOTES

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Eric Walberg.

On Saturday, October 28, at least 27 journalists covering rallies in the capital of Dhaka were attacked by supporters of the main opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party and the ruling Awami League party, as well as police, according to a statement by local press freedom group Bangladeshi Journalists in International Media, several journalists who spoke to CPJ, and various news reports.

BNP demonstrators demanded that Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina of the Awami League step down and allow a nonpartisan caretaker government to oversee the upcoming election scheduled for January. Police fired tear gas, sound grenades, and rubber bullets to disperse BNP protesters, who threw stones and bricks in response.

“The attacks on at least 27 Bangladeshi journalists covering recent political rallies in Dhaka must see swift and transparent accountability,” said CPJ Program Director Carlos Martínez de la Serna. “The leadership and supporters of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party and the Awami League, as well as police, must respect the rights of journalists to freely and safely report on the lead-up to the upcoming election scheduled for January.”

Md Rafsan Jani, a crime reporter for The Daily Kalbela newspaper, told CPJ that he was filming BNP supporters allegedly assaulting police officers when two demonstrators approached him and took his phone and identification card. A group of BNP supporters then surrounded Jani and beat him with iron rods, sticks, and pipes as he repeatedly identified himself as a journalist, he said, adding that he managed to escape after around 20 minutes. As of November 1, his items had not been returned.

S A Masum, a photographer for The Daily Inqilab newspaper, told CPJ that he was taking photos of a confrontation between Awami League and BNP supporters when his head was repeatedly struck from behind with what he suspected to be a bamboo stick, knocking him unconscious while the attackers, whom he did not identify, continued to beat him. Bystanders at the scene rescued Masum and took him to the hospital, where he was treated for a concussion and severe bruising and open lesions throughout his body, according to the journalist, who shared photos of his injuries with CPJ.

Md Sirajum Salekin, a crime reporter for the Dhaka Times newspaper, told CPJ that he was on his motorcycle on the way to cover clashes at the chief justice’s residence when a vehicle hit his motorcycle from behind, causing him to fall and break two bones in his right leg. Salekin said he believed he was targeted because he was wearing his press badge and his motorcycle was marked with a sticker of the Dhaka Times, which has critically reported on the Awami League.

Awami League demonstrators beat The Daily Kalbela reporter Abu Saleh Musa while covering their rally, according to The Daily Star.

Mohammad Ali Mazed, a video reporter for the French news agency Agence France-Presse, told CPJ that he was covering a clash between police and BNP demonstrators while holding a camera and press identification when five to six demonstrators surrounded him. The demonstrators damaged Mazed’s camera and other news equipment and beat him on his head, back, and right shoulder with bamboo sticks for around three minutes until the journalist fled the scene with the assistance of bystanders, he said.

Sazzad Hossain, a freelance photographer working with the news website Bangla Tribune and international outlets, including the British newspaper The Guardian and photo agency SOPA Images, told CPJ that BNP protesters threw broken bricks at him and trampled him while he was covering a clash with police.

Salahuddin Ahmed Shamim, a freelance photographer reporting for the news agency Fair News Service, told CPJ that he was covering BNP protesters allegedly assaulting police officers when seven to eight of the party’s supporters surrounded him, beat his backside with bamboo sticks, and kicked him for around 15 minutes.

Two journalists who spoke to CPJ– Sheikh Hasan Ali, chief photojournalist for Kaler Kantho newspaper, and Ahammad Foyez, senior correspondent for New Age newspaper– said they were struck with rubber bullets when police attempted to disperse BNP protesters, leaving them with minor injuries.

Ali told CPJ that an unidentified man hit the Kaler Kantho photographer Lutfor Rahman with a bamboo stick on his right shoulder while covering the same clashes.

Md Hanif Rahman, a photographer for the Ekushey TV broadcaster, told CPJ that he and Ekushey TV reporter Touhidur Rahman were covering an arson attack on a police checkpoint when they were surrounded by a group of 10 to 12 men who beat Md Hanif Rahman with pipes and sticks and pushed Touhidur Rahman.

Rabiul Islam Rubel, a reporter for The Daily Kalbela, told CPJ that he was among a crowd of BNP supporters while covering the clashes at the chief justice’s residence when 15 to 20 men threw bricks at him while shouting that journalists are “government brokers.”

Jony Rayhan, a reporter for The Daily Kalbela, told CPJ that BNP supporters beat him while covering their rally. Rayhan was also injured by a sound grenade that landed in front of him while police were dispersing the demonstrators, he said.

Salman Tareque Sakil, chief reporter for Bangla Tribune, told CPJ that he sustained a leg fracture after a brick was thrown at him while covering the BNP rally.

Jubair Ahmed, a Bangla Tribune reporter, told CPJ that while police were dispersing BNP demonstrators, a tear gas shell landed in front of him, blurring his vision before the protesters trampled him while fleeing the scene.

Tahir Zaman, a reporter for the news website The Report, was also injured by a rubber bullet while covering clashes at the BNP rally, according to his outlet and BJIM.

BJIM and local media named an additional 10 journalists who were attacked, but did not provide details on the incidents, which CPJ continues to investigate. Those journalists are:

• Touhidul Islam Tareque, reporter for The Daily Kalbela
• Kazi Ihsan bin Didar, crime reporter for the Breaking News website
• Tanvir Ahmed, reporter for The Daily Ittefaq newspaper
• Sheikh Nasir, reporter for The Daily Ittefaq
• Arifur Rahman Rabbi, reporter for the Desh Rupantor newspaper
• Masud Parvez Anis, reporter for the Bhorer Kagoj newspaper
• Saiful Rudra, special correspondent for the broadcaster Green TV
• Arju, camera operator for Green TV, who was identified by one name
• Hamidur Rahman, reporter for the Share Biz newspaper
• Maruf, a freelance journalist identified by one name

CPJ is investigating a report of a separate attack on at least one journalist on Saturday.

CPJ contacted BNP spokesperson Zahir Uddin Swapan, Information Minister and Awami League Joint Secretary Hasan Mahmud, and Dhaka Metropolitan Police Commissioner Habibur Rahman for comment, but did not immediately receive any replies.

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

On February 8, the Ankara chief prosecutor’s office indicted 10 Kurdish journalists, nine of whom have been under pretrial arrest since late October, on the charge of membership in a terrorist organization. The indictment was made available to the journalists’ lawyers and CPJ on Friday, February 17, after it was approved by the court.

“Turkish authorities’ recent indictment of 10 journalists on terrorism charges is the latest in a long string of prosecutions of members of the press in retaliation for their reporting,” said CPJ Program Director Carlos Martinez de la Serna, in New York. “The authorities should drop the charges, release all journalists imprisoned for their work, and put an end to equating journalism with terrorism.”

Those indicted were: pro-Kurdish Mezopotamya News Agency editor Diren Yurtsever; Mezopotamya reporters Berivan Altan, Ceylan Şahinli, Deniz Nazlım, Emrullah Acar, Hakan Yalçın, Salman Güzelyüz, and Zemo Ağgöz Yiğitsoy, freelance journalist Öznur Değer; pro-Kurdish news website JİNNEWS reporter Ümmü Habibe Eren; and former Mezopotamya reporting intern Mehmet Günhan. They were charged with being members of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), according to those reports and the indictment, which was reviewed by CPJ.

The prosecutors alleged that Mezopotamya and JİNNEWS are directly linked to the PKK, including having financial ties, and cited more than 100 news stories about the outlawed group as evidence. Other evidence used against the journalists included tapped phone calls, travel records, printed and digital material found at their homes and workplaces, social media posts, small financial transfers, and the testimony of a secret witness.

CPJ asked Resul Tamur, a lawyer for the journalists, if there was any basis for the allegations of financial ties to the PKK; he said the prosecution had “opinion-based” evidence that was “not solid.” The journalists have previously denied the charges, according to the indictment.

The defendants face up to 15 years in prison if found guilty under Turkey’s anti-terrorism laws.

All the defendants except intern Günhan were ordered imprisoned by an Ankara court in late October. Ağgöz, the mother of a newborn baby, was put under house arrest; this was lifted in late December, but she was banned from foreign travel. 

CPJ emailed the Ankara chief prosecutor’s office and the Justice Ministry for comment but received no immediate reply.

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

For nearly 75 years, the Palestinian Nakba, the ‘Catastrophe’ wrought by the ethnic cleansing of Palestine by Zionist militias in 1947-48, has served as the epicenter of the Palestinian tragedy as well as the collective Palestinian struggle for freedom.

Three decades ago, namely after the signing of the Oslo Accords between Israel and the Palestinian leadership in 1993, the Nakba practically ceased to exist as a relevant political variable. Palestinians were urged to move past that date, and to invest their energies and political capital in an alternative and more ‘practical’ goal, a return to the 1967 borders.

In June 1967, Israel occupied the rest of historic Palestine — East Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza — igniting yet another wave of ethnic cleansing.

Based on these two dates, Western cheerleaders of Oslo divided Palestinians into two camps: the ‘extremists’ who insisted on the centrality of the 1948 Nakba, and the ‘moderates’ who agreed to shift the center of gravity of Palestinian history and politics to 1967.

Such historical revisionism impacted every aspect of the Palestinian struggle: it splintered Palestinians ideologically and politically; relegated the Right of Return for Palestinian refugees, which is enshrined in UN Resolution 194; spared Israel the legal and moral accountability of its violent establishment on the ruins of Palestine, and more.

Leading Palestinian Nakba historian, Salman Abu Sitta, explained in an interview a few years ago the difference between the so-called pragmatic politics of Oslo and the collective struggle of Palestinians as the difference between ‘aims’ and ‘rights’. Palestinians “don’t have ‘aims’ … (but) rights,” he said. “… These rights are inalienable, they represent the bottom red line beyond which no concession is possible. Because doing so will destroy their life.”

Indeed, shifting the historical centrality of the narrative away from the Nakba was equivalent to the very destruction of the lives of Palestinian refugees as it has been tragically apparent in Gaza, Lebanon and Syria in recent years.

While politicians from all relevant sides continued to bemoan the ‘stagnant’ or even ‘dead’ peace process – often blaming one another for that supposed calamity – a different kind of conflict was taking place. On the one hand, ordinary Palestinians along with their historians and intellectuals fought to reassert the importance of the Nakba, while Israelis continued to almost completely ignore the earth-shattering event, as if it is of no consequence to the equally tragic present.

Gaza’s ‘Great March of Return‘ (2018-2019) was possibly the most significant collective and sustainable Palestinian action that attempted to reorient the new generation around the starting date of the Palestinian tragedy.

Over 300 people, mostly from third or fourth post-Nakba generations, were killed by Israeli snipers at the Gaza fence for demanding their Right of Return. The bloody events of those years were enough to tell us that Palestinians have not forgotten the roots of their struggle, as it also illustrated Israel’s fear of Palestinian memory.

The work of Rosemary Sayigh on the exclusion of the Nakba from the trauma genre, and also that of Samah Sabawi, demonstrate, not only the complexity of the Nakba’s impact on the Palestinian collective awareness, but also the ongoing denial — if not erasure — of the Nakba from academic and historical discourses.

“The most significant traumatic event in Palestinian history is absent from the ‘trauma genre’,” Sabawi wrote in the recently-published volume, Our Vision for Liberation.

Sayigh argued that “the loss of recognition of (the Palestinian refugees’) rights to people- and state-hood created by the Nakba has led to an exceptional vulnerability to violence,” with Syria being the latest example.

Israel was always aware of this. When Israeli leaders agreed to the Oslo political paradigm, they understood that removing the Nakba from the political discourse of the Palestinian leadership constituted a major victory for the Israeli narrative.

Thanks to ordinary Palestinians, those who have held on to the keys and deeds to their original homes and land in historic Palestine, history is finally being rewritten, back to its original and accurate form.

By passing Resolution A/77/L.24, which declared May 15, 2023, as ‘Nakba Day’, the UNGA has corrected a historical wrong.

Israel’s Ambassador to the UN, Gilad Erdan, rightly understood the UN’s decision as a major step towards the delegitimization of Israel as a military occupier of Palestine. “Try to imagine the international community commemorating your country’s Independence Day by calling it a disaster. What a disgrace,” he said.

Absent from Erdan’s remarks and other responses by the Israeli officials is the mere hint of political or even moral accountability for the ethnic cleansing of over 530 Palestinian towns and villages, and the expulsion of over 750,000 Palestinians, whose descendants are now numbered in millions of refugees.

Not only did Israel invest decades in canceling and erasing the Nakba, it also criminalized it by passing what is now known as the Nakba Law of 2011.

But the more Israel engages in this form of historical negationism, the harder Palestinians fight to reclaim their historical rights.

May 15, 2023, UN Nakba Day represents the triumph of the Palestinian narrative over that of Israeli negationists. This means that the blood spilled during Gaza’s March of Return was not in vain, as the Nakba and the Right of Return are now back at the center of the Palestinian story.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Ramzy Baroud.

The despicable violent attack on Salman Rushdie not only saddened the world, many Muslims included, it demonstrated how a single ignorant attacker could take Ayatollah Khomeini’s fatwa seriously—when the vast majority of Islamic scholars around the world never have—and reanimate the same old tropes about Islam. Under Islamic law, the attack on Rushdie was assault and attempted murder, and as such Muslims overwhelmingly condemn this attack. If they don’t, they should, because, despite the common perception, Islam allows violence only in self-defense or in legitimate warfare against soldiers.

Why are we so quick to assume Khomeini’s actions and the acts of Rushdie’s attackers stem from religion? Buddhist monks in Sri Lanka have fought with Hindu Tamils and Muslims and Christians in the name of religion, as Buddhist monks in Myanmar have carried about massacres of Muslim civilians, including children, also in the name of Buddhism; yet, journalists who are quick to attribute the attack on Salman Rushdie to Islam would never attribute the actions of these Buddhist monks to Buddhism.

Fatwa does not mean death sentence, because under Islamic law everyone deserves a fair trial. A fatwa is a non-binding legal opinion, achieved by an accepted methodology, and issued by a recognized Islamic legal scholar. The vast majority of Islamic scholars rejected the death fatwa against Rushdie because Khomeini didn’t follow Islamic law to arrive at his result. Even Al-Azhar University, one of the most authoritative and venerated bastions of Islamic scholarship in the world, disagreed with the fatwa. (And Al-Azhar is much more authoritative than Khomeini, who was not followed by most Muslims around the world, much less even all Iranian Muslims.)

The fatwa did not result from religion or even religious extremism; it resulted from political extremism. Khomeini wished to burn bridges with the West and avenge himself against Rushdie, who had ridiculed him. Even later Iranian clerics said they wouldn’t enforce the fatwa. Which makes it even more tragic that some 24-year-old decades later lost his head and acted out his violent urges by using the fatwa as justification.

Rushdie’s book was indeed banned by many Muslim-majority countries, but banning is a far cry from violence. India, a Hindu-majority country, banned it first. There’s no dearth of book-banning in the West, either, nor mass protests of all kinds of religious depictions, including the films The Last Temptation of Christ or Monty Python’s Life of Brian. Indeed, it’s worth remembering that the Danish publishers who published the cartoons depicting Muhammad as terrorist refused to publish cartoons about Jesus and other cartoons about the Holocaust; yet no public outcry of “Free speech!” was raised in these two cases.

Because of one flawed fatwa by one Islamic scholar motivated by politics and revenge, the West rests secure in its misperception that Islam forbids free speech. Since the fatwa, behavior exhibited by Muslims against free speech is seen as evidence and simply slotted into that same confirmation bias. Non-Muslim incidents of suppressing free speech—which happen in our own country not infrequently—are hardly publicized.

Nothing in Islam forbids free speech. Most Islamic religious scholars throughout history “refused to classify even intentional jabs at the Prophet as criminally blasphemous.” Prophet Muhammad (d. 632 CE) himself never retaliated against personal physical or verbal attacks. His companion, Umar, once asked if he could kill someone who insulted the Prophet, and the Prophet said no. The blasphemy laws that exist in some Muslim-majority countries were actually put there by the British when they colonized those countries.

Most Muslims in the world opposed violence against Rushdie and the publisher. According to Gallup polls, more Muslims around the world than Americans oppose violence against civilians. Also according to polls, significant majorities in nearly all Muslim-majority countries say they would guarantee free speech if they could.

The key, then, is to educate Muslims and others about Islam. Studies have shown that formal Islamic education prevents radicalization; indeed, only 10% of violent Islamists have been exposed to it. If Salman Rushdie’s assailant had truly understood Islamic law, perhaps he wouldn’t have attacked an innocent man.

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

Alinejad, who has extensively covered human rights in Iran and campaigns against the country’s compulsory hijab rule, is no stranger to threats. In July, a man was arrested outside Alinejad’s Brooklyn home with a loaded AK-47. Last year, she was the target of an Iranian intelligence kidnapping plot that was foiled by the FBI. Every day, Alinejad wakes up to simmering vitriol online.

The threats haven’t stopped Alinejad’s work as a reporter and producer at Voice of America’s Persian-language service nor her administration of a popular Facebook page about Iranian women who refuse to wear hijab. She told CPJ that her journalism and activism reinforce one another as acts of defiance against the Iranian government.

CPJ spoke with Alinejad on the phone about her response to Rushdie’s stabbing, which the Iranian government has denied involvement in, and the threats against her and other Iranian journalists in exile. This interview has been edited for length and clarity. 

CPJ emailed the Iranian Foreign Ministry for comment on Alinejad’s case but did not receive a response.

How do these routine, real-life threats – some literally at your doorstep — impact your ability to work as a journalist?

Masih Alinejad: It’s not easy; I have to live in hiding. [Following the most recent threat] the FBI moved me to three different safe houses, and each time my life turns upside down. And it’s not just me: My family is at risk as well, just because I am trying to give voice to voiceless people. 

I should say that I receive a lot of support from my neighbors and fellow activists, which is appreciated. But it’s not a good feeling that you have to always watch your back.

An assassination attempt is meant to create fear, and they [the Iranian government] were quite successful in doing that. Some organizations who invited me to give a talk were worried about the safety of the people who were going to attend the event. One organization canceled. Another asked me if I have a bodyguard or someone who can offer assurance that they will provide for the safety and security of the event’s attendees. The same with a recent interview: a studio was booked for me, but I was told that there was concern for the safety of the people with whom I would working to film my interview.

What message do you think Iran is trying to send with these threats and attacks against you and others who speak out against the government?

The Iranian regime is not only trying to challenge the U.S. government on U.S. soil, but they’re sending a signal to Iranian journalists in exile. They’re saying that even America cannot be a safe haven for those who fled Iran: they can try to assassinate you or try to take you hostage, even in the U.S., or take your family members hostage inside Iran.

These things have all happened to me: They took my family hostage inside Iran: they brought my sister on TV to denounce me publicly, they put my brother in prison for two years, and now they have come after me.

It’s about the message, not me. They just want to use me as an example to create fear among journalists who live in exile, especially those who dare to criticize the Islamic republic.

[Editor’s Note: Alinejad’s brother was sentenced to eight years in prison but she said he was released on parole after two years on the condition that he no longer speak to Alinejad.]

Iranian women journalists tend to experience high volumes of online harassment, and Iranian dissidents are often targeted by bots. Can you talk more about your experience with online harassment?

I don’t really care about online harassment from unknown accounts or a cyber army attacking me. I can ignore them.

What bothers me is when accounts that have blue checks [are verified] on Twitter threaten me with death. This is real online harassment that the tech companies should feel responsible for. When a verified account, with thousands of followers puts the address of my home online, calls on the Iranian regime to kidnap me and to kill me… that’s a problem.

When the recent Iranian pro-regime activists and journalists celebrated the attack on Salman Rushdie, they said that I should be next. And yet, those accounts are still on Twitter and Instagram. They are the real threats.

All of the journalists know that this is not easy to handle. Every day I wake up and am bombarded with online harassment. They are trying to mentally make me feel unsafe; emotionally trying to isolate me; and physically trying to eliminate me.

Did the Rushdie stabbing change your calculation in terms of how you protect yourself?

It didn’t prompt me to change anything; it made me more determined. I know that if I self-censor the terrorists will win. Assassination attempts are made to compel people to self-censor.

I sometimes don’t know if talking about the fear that the regime creates will empower the regime to put even more pressure on me, or if it is more beneficial to be as vocal as possible.  

What I do know is that I’m not going to give up my job, my work, and my fight against tyranny. I have only one life and my life is no different from women inside Iran who get beaten up just for expressing themselves. I dedicated my life to give voice to voiceless people. Salman Rushdie lived in hiding for a decade — I don’t want to have the same fate. 

If we don’t get united to end terrorism, they will end us.

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

Nothing I am about to write should be read as diminishing in any way my sympathy for Salman Rushdie, or my outrage at the appalling attack on him. Those who more than 30 years ago put a fatwa on his head after he wrote the novel The Satanic Verses made this assault possible. They deserve contempt. I wish him a speedy recovery.

But my natural compassion for a victim of violence and my regularly expressed support for free speech should not at the same time blind me or you to the cant and hypocrisy generated by his stabbing on Friday, just as he was about to give a talk in a town in Western New York.

British prime minister Boris Johnson said he was “appalled that Sir Salman Rushdie has been stabbed while exercising a right we should never cease to defend”. His Chancellor, Rishi Sunak, one of the last two contenders for Johnson’s crown, concurred, describing the novelist as “a champion of free speech and artistic freedom”.

Across the Atlantic, President Joe Biden stressed Rushdie’s qualities: “Truth. Courage. Resilience. The ability to share ideas without fear… We reaffirm our commitment to those deeply American values in solidarity with Rushdie and all those who stand for freedom of expression.”

The truth is that the vast majority of those claiming this as an attack not only on a prominent writer but on Western society and its freedoms, have been missing in action for the past several years as the biggest threat to those freedoms unfolded. Or, in the case of Western government leaders, they have actively conspired in the undermining of those freedoms.

Prominent figures and organizations now expressing their solidarity with Rushdie have kept their heads down, or spoken in hushed tones against – or, worse still, become cheerleaders for – this much more serious assault: on our right to know what mass crimes have been committed against others in our name.

Rushdie has won trenchant support from Western liberals and conservatives alike, not for being a brave articulator of difficult truths, but because of who his enemies are.

Holding up a mirror

If that sounds uncharitable or nonsensical, consider this. Julian Assange has spent more than three years in solitary confinement in a high-security prison in London (and before that, seven years confined to a small room in Ecuador’s embassy), in conditions Nils Melzer, the former United Nation’s expert on torture, has described as extreme psychological torture.

Melzer and many others fear for Assange’s life if British and US authorities succeed in dragging out much longer the Wikileaks founder’s detention on what amounts to purely political charges. Assange has already suffered a stroke – as Melzer notes, one of the many potential physical reactions suffered by those enduring prolonged confinement and isolation.

#Assange’s stroke is no surprise.
As we warned after examining him, unless relieved of the constant pressure of isolation, arbitrariness & persecution, his health would enter a downward spiral endangering his life.#UK is literally torturing him to death.https://t.co/ULuM2k5XgA

— Nils Melzer (@NilsMelzer) December 12, 2021

And all of this is happening to him, remember, for one reason alone: because he published documents proving that, under cover of a bogus humanitarianism, Western governments were committing crimes against peoples in distant lands. Assange faces charges under the draconian Espionage Act only because he made public the gruesome truth about Western military actions in places like Iraq and Afghanistan.

Yes, there are differences between Rushdie and Assange’s respective cases, but those differences should elicit more concern for Assange’s plight than Rushdie’s. In practice, the exact opposite has happened.

Rushdie’s right to free speech has been championed because he exercised it to imagine an alternative formative history of Islam and implicitly question the authority of clerics and governments in far-off lands.

Assange’s right to free speech has been ridiculed, ignored or at best supported weakly and equivocally because he exercised it to hold up a mirror to the West, showing exactly what our governments are doing, in secret, in many of those same far-off lands.

Rushdie’s right to life was threatened by distant clerics and governments for questioning the moral basis of their power. Assange’s right to life is threatened by Western governments because he questioned the moral basis of their power.

Worthy victims

If we lived in functioning democratic societies in the West – ones where power is not so deeply entrenched we are largely blind to its exercise – no journalist, no media commentator, no writer, no politician would fail to understand that Assange’s plight deserves far more attention and expressions of concern than Rushdie’s.

It is our own governments, not “mad mullahs” in Iran, who threaten the free society that permitted Rushdie to publish his novel. If Assange is crushed, so is the basis of our fundamental democratic rights: to know what is being done in our name and to hold our leaders to account.

If Rushdie is silenced, we will still have those freedoms, even if, as individuals, we will feel a little more nervous about saying anything that might be construed as an insult to the Prophet Mohammed.

So why are the vast majority of us so much more invested in Rushdie’s fate than Assange’s? Simply because our sympathy has been elicited for one of them and not the other.

Ultimately, that has nothing to do with whether one or the other is more worthy, more of a victim. It has to do with how much they have, or have not, served the interests of a Western narrative that constantly reinforces the idea that we are the Good Guys and they are the Bad Guys.

Rushdie and the fatwa against him became a cause célèbre for Western elites because he offered a literary sensibility to one of the West’s most cherished modern pieties: that Islam poses an existential threat to the values of an enlightened West. Here was a man, born to a Muslim family in India, attacking the religion he supposedly knew best. He was an insider spilling the beans, stating what other Muslims were allegedly too cowed to admit in public.

Though it was doubtless not his intention or his fault, Rushdie was quickly adopted as a literary mascot by Western liberals who were pushing their own “clash of civilizations” thesis. That is not a judgment on the merits of his novel – I am not equipped to make that assessment – but a judgment on the motivations of so many of his champions and on why his work resonates so strongly with them.

Racist worldview

In a real sense, that is true of all literature. It earns its status within a cultural milieu, one policed by media elites with their own agendas. It is they who decide whether a manuscript is published or discarded, whether the subsequent book is reviewed or ignored, whether it is celebrated or ridiculed, whether it is promoted or falls into obscurity.

We tell ourselves, or we are told, that this process of weeding out is decided strictly on the basis of merit. But if we pause to think, the reality is that a work finds an audience only if it stays within a socially constructed consensus that gives it meaning or if it challenges that consensus at a time when challenges to the consensus are overdue.

George Orwell is a good example of how this works. He prospered – or at least his reputation did – from the fact that he questioned certainties about the “natural order” that had long been enforced by Western elites but had become hard to sustain after two world wars in quick succession. At the same time, he exposed the dangers of an authoritarianism that could be easily ascribed to the West’s main adversary, the Soviet Union.

Orwell’s body of work contains ideas that speak to universal values. But that is only part of the reason it has endured. It also benefited from the fact that the ambiguity inherent in those universal lessons could be recruited to a much narrower agenda by Western elites, readying for a Cold War that was about to become the tragic legacy of those two preceding hot wars.

Much the same is true of Rushdie. His novel served two functions: First, its main theme chimed with Western elites because it reassured them that their prejudice against the Muslim world was fully justified – not least because the novel provoked a violent backlash that appeared to confirm those prejudices.

And second, The Satanic Verses indemnified Western elites against the accusation of racism. Rushdie inadvertently provided the alibi they so desperately needed to promote their racist worldview of a civilized West opposed by a barbaric, insecure East. It served as midwife to the rantings of Islamophobic tracts like Melanie Phillips’ Londonistan and Nick Cohen’s What’s Left?.

Literary sedition

For the past two decades, we have been living with the appalling consequences of the West’s smug condescension, its wild posturings, its violent humanitarianism – all masking a thirst for the Middle East’s most precious resource: oil.

The result has been the wrecking of whole countries; the ending of more than a million lives, with millions more made homeless; a backlash that has unleashed even more terrifying forms of Islamist extremism; a deepening self-righteousness among Western elites that has ushered in an all-out assault on democratic controls; an entrenchment of the power of the war industries and their lobbies; and a relentless undermining of international institutions and international law.

And all this has served as an endless excuse to delay addressing the real issue plaguing humanity: the imminent extinction of our species, caused by our addiction to the very resource that got us into this mess in the first place.

Sadly, the attack on Rushdie, and the ensuing indignation, will only intensify the trends noted above. None of that is Rushdie’s fault, of course. His desire to question the authority of the clerical bullies he grew up among is an entirely separate matter from the purposes to which Western elites have harnessed his personal act of literary sedition. He is not responsible for the fact that his work has been used to underpin and weaponize a larger, flawed Western narrative.

Nonetheless, Friday’s violent assault will once again be used to shore up a fearmongering narrative that empowers politicians, sells newspapers, and, if we can still see the bigger picture, rationalizes the West’s dehumanization of more than a billion people, its continuing sanctions against many of them, and the advancement of wars that fabulously enrich a tiny section of Western societies that continue to evade major scrutiny.

Hollow joke

Those elites have evaded scrutiny precisely because they are so successful at vilifying and eliminating anyone who seeks to hold them to account. Like Julian Assange.

If you think Assange brought trouble upon himself, unlike Rushdie, who is simply a hapless victim caught in the crossfire of a menacing “clash of civilizations”, it is because you have been trained – through your consumption of establishment media – into making that entirely unfounded distinction. And those training you through their dominant narratives are not a disinterested party, but the very actors who have most to lose should you arrive at a different conclusion.

In Assange’s case, there has been an endless stream of lies and misdirections that I and many others have been trying to highlight on our marginal platforms before we are algorithmed into oblivion by Google and Facebook, the richest corporations on the planet.

My latest: Sweden did not intend to prosecute Assange because it never had a case, writes UN expert. The aim was to trap him in an interminable process of non-prosecution while confining him in ever-worse conditions while the public was turned against him https://t.co/qGOLynClIO

— Jonathan Cook (@Jonathan_K_Cook) May 5, 2022

As Melzer pointed out at length in his recent book, the Swedish authorities knew from the outset that Assange had no case to answer on sex allegations they had no intention of ever investigating. But they made a pretence of pursuing him anyway (and left the threat of onward extradition to the US hanging over his head) to make sure he lost public sympathy and looked like a fugitive from justice.

Anyone who writes about Assange knows only too well the army of social media users adamant that Assange was charged with rape, or that he refused to be interviewed by Swedish prosecutors, or that he skipped bail, or that he colluded with Trump, or that he recklessly published classified documents unedited, or that he endangered the lives of informers and agents.

None of that is true – nor, more significantly, is it relevant to the case the US, aided by the UK government, is advancing against Assange through the British courts to lock him up for the rest of his life.

For Assange, the West’s much vaunted principle of free speech is nothing more than a hollow joke, a doctrine weaponized against him – paradoxically, to destroy him and the free speech values he champions, including transparency and accountability from our leaders.

There is a reason why our energies are so heavily invested in worrying about a supposed menace from Islam rather than the menace on our doorstep, from our rulers; why Rushdie makes headlines, while Assange is forgotten; why Assange deserves his punishment, and Rushdie does not.

That reason has nothing to do with protecting free speech, and everything to do with protecting the power of unaccountable elites who fear free speech.

Protest the stabbing of Salman Rushdie by all means. But don’t forget to protest even more loudly the silencing and disappearing of Julian Assange.

• First published in Mint Press

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Jonathan Cook.

It was a chilling reminder that the fatwa condemning him to death never risked going stale, even if it might have been put into a form of archived cold storage.  Declared by the Iran’s sickly spiritual ruler, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, Rushdie’s remarkable crime was to have blasphemed against the Prophet Muhammad in the novel The Satanic Verses.  The supreme leader, having hardly distinguished himself in a bloody war against Iraq, needed a supreme distraction.

The entire exercise was an example of how irony and humour have no place for dour, dogmatic priestliness.  How dare an author, in a work of fiction, playfully and plausibly claim that the Prophet was not the sole editor of the message to Angel Gibreel (Gabriel), and that Satan had cheekily inserted his role into it?  And that this was done using the medium of Gibreel Farishta’s hallucinations?

Dare Rushdie did, and this exhortation to state-sanctioned killing of an author and all those associated with translating and disseminating the book exposed the underbelly of cowardice that often accompanies attempts to defend literary freedoms.  Rushdie’s translator Hitoshi Igarashi was, in fact, murdered, while his Norwegian publisher, William Nygaard, was gravely wounded.  The Turkish translator, Aziz Nesin, escaped a mob assault that led to 37 deaths in Silvas, Turkey.

It was one thing to find fanatics who had never read the book and wished to do away with the author in a fit of state subsidised zealotry.  But then there was that camp: those who, in principle, opposed the fatwa but still wished to attack Rushdie as an act of cultural understanding and solidarity with his enemies.  (Grahame Wood of The Atlantic calls them the “Team To Be Sure”, who rubbished the West’s free speech defence of Rushdie, claiming that mischief might have been averted if only he hadn’t been so inclined to offend.)

The events of 1989 cast a long shadow.  There were those in holy orders, who thought that the Ayatollah had a point.  There was Dr. Robert Runcie, Archbishop of Canterbury, who called for a strengthening of blasphemy laws to cover religions other than Christianity, though he was also careful to “condemn incitement to murder or any other violence from any source whatever.”  Very Church of England.

And there was former US President Jimmy Carter, who seemed to take issue that an author’s rights were considered fundamental even in the face of insulting religions.  What, came the insinuation, about the insulted?  Where would their anger go?  Rushdie’s First Amendment freedoms might be “important”, but there had been “little acknowledgment that this is a direct insult to those millions of Moslems whose sacred beliefs have been violated and are suffering in restrained silence”.  Contemplated homicide against an author, in other words, was being excused, even if the “death sentence” was an “abhorrent response”.

It was even more galling to see fellow novelists mauling the underdog, showing how solidarity among scribes is rarer than you think.  The Marxist author John Berger did not think much of Rushdie’s case, hiding behind a sham argument that producing threatening literature might well endanger “the lives of those who are innocent of either writing or reading the book.”  Berger’s ingratiating note was an attempt to convince other Islamic leaders and statesmen to avoid “a unique 20^th-century holy war, with its terrifying righteousness on both sides.”

Roald Dahl, man of dysfunctional virtue and author of disturbed children’s tales, decided in a letter to The Times that Rushdie was a “dangerous opportunist”, as if engaging in irony in such matters is to be avoided.  He had to have been “aware of the deep and violent feelings his book would stir up among devout Muslims.”  His suggestion: a modest dose of self-censorship.  “In a civilized world we have a moral obligation to apply a modicum of censorship to our own work to reinforce this principle of free speech.”  Censors from Moscow to Tehran would have approved.

Nor did John le Carré, consummate writer of espionage novels, disagree.  “I don’t think it is given to any of us to be impertinent to great religions with impunity,” he told The New York Times in May 1989.

In November 1997, with le Carré complaining of being unfairly branded an anti-Semite, Rushdie wrote a pointed reminder it would have been easier “to sympathize with him had he not been so ready to join in an earlier campaign of vilification against a fellow writer.”  It would have been gracious were “he to admit that he understands the nature of the Thought Police a little better now that, at last in his own opinion, he’s the one in the line of fire.”

Le Carré sniped back accordingly, taking the position he claimed to have had in 1989: “that there is no law in life or nature that says great religions may be insulted with impunity.”  Little time was spent then, and now, on the malicious, sinister nature of religious totalitarianism that has been a monstrous burden on expression, critique and sober thought.  Instead, the creator of Smiley and the Circus wished to strike a “less arrogant, less colonialist, and less self-righteous note than we were hearing from the safety of his admirers’ camp.”

As Wood writes, the honourable response to the attack on Rushdie would have been to admit a failure to protect a brave author and declare “that we are all Rushdie now”.  Read his work; throw his name in the faces of the regime’s apologists and their homicidal dolts.  After all, while the Republic of Iran has claimed to have lost active interest in killing the author, it will not object to an independent enthusiast doing the same.  The decision encouraging Rushdie’s murder, stated Khomeini’s successor, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, “is a bullet for which there is a target.  It has been shot.  It will one day sooner or later hit the target.”

This crippling germ of authorial assassination is incarnated in more current forms, without the lethal element: cancel culture, the desire to actively enact one’s offended disposition to liquidate, banish and extirpate the views of your opponent.  They offend you because you, somehow, have answers beyond question.  Assassination is simply one of the most extreme forms of censorship, an attempt to silence and kill off the vibrant chatter that makes an intellectual world live.  Sadly, as Rushdie recovers, the maybe mob and their complicity should be noted, their names marked on walls high.  The inner censoring assassin is everywhere.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Binoy Kampmark.

Renowned Indian British novelist Salman Rushdie is in critical condition and faces a long road to recovery after he survived an assassination attempt Friday morning in western New York. Rushdie is one of the most highly acclaimed writers in the world today and has lived underground for many years after facing systematic threats of assassination for his writing. We feature Rushdie in his own words, when he gave a rare speech in 2004 on the freedom of expression at an event hosted by PEN America. “Will we become our enemy or not? Will we become repressive as our enemy is repressive? Will we become intolerant as our enemy is intolerant, or will we not?”

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

“The Committee to Protect Journalists is appalled that President Joe Biden did not make any meaningful statement about the murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi after his meeting with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman,” said Sherif Mansour, CPJ’s Middle East and North Africa program coordinator. “For Biden to say he has made his views ‘crystal clear’ is empty talk. U.S. intelligence says MBS approved Khashoggi’s killing. Biden’s failure to hold him to account suggests states can get away with sanctioning such killings and has profound implications for press freedom everywhere.”

CPJ called earlier Friday for the Biden administration to commit to an FBI-led investigation into the May 11 killing of Palestinian American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh and for Biden to press for the release of journalists jailed in Saudi Arabia and Egypt as he completes his Middle East tour. 

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

Since that political transition, journalists have faced physical assault and online and legal harassment, according to multiple news reports and the journalists, who spoke to CPJ by phone. The new PML-N government has also announced several bureaucratic and legislative reforms that will impact press freedom and freedom of expression.

On April 21, a group of around 20 PTI employees assaulted Khawar Mughal, a reporter for the privately owned broadcaster 92 News, at a party gathering at the Minar-i-Pakistan monument in Lahore, the capital of the northeast Punjab province, according to Dawn and Mughal, who spoke to CPJ by phone.

When Mughal arrived at the venue, with the 92 News logo on his microphone, the employees beat, kicked, and pushed the journalist, snatched his microphone, and accused the TV channel of airing anti-PTI programs, saying they would not allow the outlet to cover their gathering, according to those sources.

When other journalists stepped forward to help Mughal, the employees threatened them with the same treatment until they backed away, according to those sources. Mughal told CPJ that he sustained minor injuries across his body but did not require medical attention.

Police have registered a first information report, which opens an investigation, against the unnamed perpetrators, according to a copy of the report that CPJ reviewed. Lahore police spokesperson Mazhar Hussain did not respond to CPJ’s request for comment sent via messaging app.

At a PTI party gathering in Lahore on April 22, an unidentified person held up a banner with a veiled rape threat against Gharida Farooqi, a host for the talk show “G for Gharida” on the privately owned broadcaster News One, according to a tweet by Freedom Network, a local press freedom group, and Farooqi, who spoke with CPJ by phone. Farooqi told CPJ that she filed a complaint with the Federal Investigation Agency, adding that photos of the banner were shared widely across social media.

Since 2014, Farooqi has filed around eight complaints with the Federal Investigation Agency in response to gendered online harassment, including death and rape threats, she said, adding that the Federal Investigation Agency has not brought any of the perpetrators to justice. CPJ has previously documented gendered online harassment against Farooqi. Tahir Rai, the newly appointed director-general of the Federal Investigation Agency, did not respond to CPJ’s emailed request for comment.

Also on April 22, the Pakistan Electronic Media Regulatory Authority (PEMRA), the country’s broadcast regulator, issued a formal notice to the privately owned ARY News channel after it covered comments by Asad Majeed, the former Pakistani ambassador to the United States, about an alleged foreign conspiracy to topple former Prime Minister Khan, according toDawn and a copy of the notice.

The notice requested the broadcaster to demonstrate why legal or disciplinary action should not be taken against it. It also ordered ARY News CEO Salman Iqbal to appear for a hearing on April 29 and submit a written response to PEMRA, according to Dawn. PEMRA’s media office did not respond to CPJ’s emailed request for comment. CPJ emailed ARY News for comment but did not receive a reply.

Separately, on April 19, newly appointed Minister for Information and Broadcasting Marriyum Aurangzeb announced it would scrap the proposed Pakistan Media Development Authority, a regulatory body proposed under the previous government that would have put the country’s entire media under a single government-led authority, according to Dawn. CPJ had previously called on former Prime Minister Imran Khan to halt plans to establish the body.

Aurangzeb also announced that the new government would review the 2016 Prevention of Electronic Crimes Act (PECA), particularly the sections in which the right to freedom of expression was “misconstrued,” according to Dawn. CPJ has repeatedly documented how the law has been used to detain, investigate, and harass journalists in retaliation for their work.

Aurangzeb also decried the PECA ordinance, which was introduced under the previous government in February 2022, calling it a “black law,” according to Dawn. CPJ had previously called on authorities to revoke the proposed ordinance, which would have expanded prison terms for online defamation on social media platforms to five years. The Islamabad High Court struck the law down earlier this year.

Aurangzeb further announced that the 2021 Protection of Journalists and Media Professionals Act, passed under the previous government, would be implemented soon, according to Dawn. However, the act in its current form, which CPJ reviewed, includes a section that prohibits journalists from disseminating “false or untrue” materials, which may be used to further crackdown on press freedom.

On April 23, Aurangzeb said that the new government would revise the PEMRA laws to stop “fake news,” according to The Express Tribune. Aurangzeb did not respond to CPJ’s request for comment sent via messaging app.

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

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This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Patrick Cockburn.