IMPHAL/NEW DELHI, 4 Sep: Manipur Chief Minister N Biren Singh on Monday said that his government has filed an FIR against the president and three members of the Editors Guild of India (EGI), and accused them of trying to create more clashes in the state which is rocked by ethnic strife for nearly four months.
The EGI recently claimed that the media’s reports on the ethnic violence in Manipur were one-sided and accused the state leadership of being partisan.
“The state government has filed an FIR against the members of the Editors Guild who are trying to create more clashes in the state of Manipur,” Singh said.
Those booked are EGI President Seema Mustafa, and three members – Seema Guha, Bharat Bhushan and Sanjay Kapoor.
Guha, Bhushan and Kapoor visited the state last month to study media reportage
of the ethnic violence.
The chief minister said also that they should have met the representatives of “all communities” and “not some sections only” before coming to a conclusion.
PCI demands withdrawal of FIR
The Press Club of India (PCI) has condemned the registration of the FIR against EGI’s fact-finding committee, along with its chief, who had examined media coverage of the ethnic violence in Manipur.
“It is a case of shooting the messenger, rather than taking measures to restore peace in the state. We demand that the FIR against EGI President Seema Mustafa and the three members be withdrawn immediately,” the PCI said in a statement.
The Manipur Police booked the four for allegedly trying to create more clashes in the state rocked by ethnic strife for nearly four months. The PCI claimed that the Manipur Police invoked Section 66 A of the Information & Technology Act, even though the provision has been struck down by the Supreme Court.
“This is a strong-arm tactic by the state government, which amounts to intimidation of the apex media body of the country,” it said.
In its report on the media coverage of the ethnic violence in Manipur, the guild said that journalists in the state wrote one-sided reports, internet ban impacted their ability to communicate with each other, and the state government played a partisan role in the ethnic conflict.
The three-member fact-finding team, comprising EGI members Seema Guha, Bharat Bhushan and Sanjay Kapoor, reported that the media in Manipur seemed to have become ‘Meitei media’ with editors consulting each other and agreeing on a common narrative to report an incident.
“This, the EGI team was told, was because they did not want to inflame the already volatile situation further,” the report said, adding that the downside of such an approach during an ethnic violence is that it can easily slip into forging a common ethnic narrative.
The report said that, with the internet suspended, and communication and transport in disarray, the media had to rely almost entirely on the narrative of the state government.
“This narrative under the N Biren Singh dispensation became a narrow ethnic one playing up to the biases of the majority Meitei community,” the report said.
“The state government also tacitly supported this vilification by allowing the Manipur Police to file an FIR against the Assam Rifles, suggesting that one hand of the state did not know what the other was doing or this was a deliberate action,” the report said.
“There are clear indications that the leadership of the state became partisan during the conflict. It should have avoided taking sides in the ethnic conflict but failed to do its duty as a democratic government, which should have represented the entire state,” the report said. (PTI)
