How the Foreign Media Covered Gauri Lankesh’s Murder

This is how foreign media covered Gauri Lankesh’s murder.

(Photo: AP)

Journalist-activist Gauri Lankesh was shot dead in front of her home in Bengaluru on Tuesday night. Her murder has triggered a national debate about freedom of press, with the journalistic community coming together to condemn her killing in the strongest words. While a movement seems to be simmering in India, charged by the anger and anguish surrounding her murder, here’s how foreign media covered Lankesh’s killing.

The New York Times

In an editorial titled ‘The Murder of an Indian Journalist’, The New York Times spoke of a “climate of mob rule” prevailing in India currently.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi has let a climate of mob rule flourish in India, with his right-wing Hindu supporters vilifying “secularists.” The venom that reactionary social media trolls direct at journalists, or “presstitutes” as they call them, is especially vicious, but not entirely new. At least 27 Indian journalists have been killed since 1992 “in direct retaliation for their work,” according to the Committee to Protect Journalists. Only one of the killers has been convicted.

In another piece, titled ‘In India, Another Government Critic Is Silenced by Bullets’, pointed out the spate of killings of rationalists and journalists in India, bringing to light the deaths of rationalists MM Kalburgi and Narendra Dabholkar, and communist Govind Pansare in the last three years.

Lately, the rationalists have been pretty busy. Some followers of India’s governing party have attacked Muslims and pushed a hard-line Hindu agenda. But many Indians don’t share this outlook and have tried to fight back, arguing that India is losing its multicultural identity and becoming more of a one-party, Hindu state. The three other activists killed in a somewhat similar manner in the past four years had also opposed the rise of hard-line Hinduism.

Also Eliminated at Point Blank: Gauri Lankesh, a Journalist of Courage

Financial Times

In a piece titled ‘Journalist's Killing Sends Shockwaves Across India’, the Financial Times reported the events surrounding her death. At the end of her piece, the paper published details of the three other prominent killings that remain unsolved.

Al Jazeera

In a piece titled ‘Gauri Lankesh: A 'Fearless' Indian Journalist Silenced’, Al Jazeera spoke to Lankesh’s colleagues and fellow journalists like Sudipto Mondal. Mondal was quoted as saying:

Let’s not forget she could have landed any job she wanted; she was that good of a journalist. She could have been a senior editor at a mainstream English [language] newspaper. But she chose not to do that. She chose to work with a small Kannada publication. She taught herself how to write Kannada, as she did not start as a Kannada journalist.

Another friend of Lankesh, Ganesh Devy, told Al Jazeera:

There have been attacks on writers and thinkers in the recent past, particularly since the ascendancy of Mr [Prime Minister Narendra] Modi. There has been murder of rationalist [Narendra] Dabholkar in Pune, [Govind] Pansare, a left party worker in south Maharashtra [state], Dr Kalburgi in Karnataka’s Dharwad, where I currently live.

BBC

The BBC carried an obituary for Lankesh, titled ‘The Fearless Journalist-Activist Gauri Lankesh’.

In her breathless, high-pitched voice, Lankesh would usually ask her editor friend why his newspaper hadn’t taken a stronger stand on an issue close to her heart. “If you big guys can’t take a more robust stand, how are we going to do it?”

The author Soutik Biswas, wrote of her weekly ‘Gauri Lankesh Patrike’, and the causes it stood for:

In the southern Indian city of Bangalore where she lived, Lankesh edited an eponymous weekly tabloid she inherited from her father in the local Kannada language. Financed entirely by subscriptions – part of an activist tabloid culture in the state of Karnataka, which shunned adverts – Gauri Lankesh Patrike was known for its feisty leftist views. It also reflected the editor’s view and ideology.

The Guardian

In an opinion piece, titled ‘The Murder of Journalist Gauri Lankesh Shows India Descending Into Violence’, The Guardian highlighted the recent spate of violent incidents in India.

Author Mari Marcel Thekaekara, a human rights activist in Tamil Nadu wrote:

In the last two decades, the voices of Hindu extremists have become more vocal, frighteningly shrill. They’ve become emboldened with the culture of impunity which seems all-pervasive. When minorities are killed, often falsely accused of trading, eating or carrying beef, by cow vigilantes, our most vocal, always tweeting Prime Minister Modi says not a word. The silence is deafening. This has encouraged the fanatics to lynch, attack and kill people.

Meanwhile, the Committee to Protect Journalists has condemned Lankesh’s killings in the strongest words.

CPJ Asia Program Coordinator Steven Butler said:

We urge police in Karnataka to thoroughly investigate the murder of Gauri Lankesh, including whether journalism was a motive. India needs to address the problem of impunity in journalist murders and ensure the press can work freely.

Amnesty International India has questioned the state of freedom of expression in the country in their press release.

Gauri Lankesh was never afraid of speaking truth to power. Her assassination must be thoroughly investigated and the perpetrators brought to justice.

Asmita Basu, programmes director at Amnesty International India