NEW DELHI, 26 Aug: The Indian Journalists Union (IJU) has condemned the deportation of American journalist of Indian origin, Angad Singh, with Vice News, back to New York within three hours of his flight landing at Delhi’s IGI airport on the night of 24 August.
According to a Facebook post by his mother Gurmeet Kaur, “They didn’t give a reason. But we know it is his award-winning journalism that scares them.”
Singh, who covers South Asia for the Vice News, was nominated for an Emmy Award for his coverage of the devastating second Covid wave.
According to reports, Singh was on a personal visit to see his family in Punjab. A member of his family said, “He had made a documentary on the Shaheen Bagh protest. The government must be upset due to that documentary.”
Singh has shared a number of video reports, produced by Vice, on Twitter, exposing flaws in India’s Covid response, covering topics such as overwhelmed crematoriums, oxygen shortage during the 2nd wave of Covid-19, reporting lacunae in Covid-death reporting from rural India, and more.
Singh, it was said, was denied a visa recently to make a documentary film about the Dalits in the country.
In a statement, IJU President Geetartha Pathak and IJU Secretary-General Sabina Inderjit said that “the action of union home ministry smacks of vendetta and harassment. Singh was only doing his job and should have been allowed to visit his family as it was a personal visit. The ad hoc deportation is unacceptable in any free society and the ministry must give reasons for its petty action.”
The IJU said that “the ongoing trend of government authorities harassing and intimidating journalists is gravely disturbing. Recently, two Kashmiri journalists, Aakash Hassan and Sanna Matoo, were prevented at the IGI airport from flying to Sri Lanka and Paris, respectively, due to their work.”