WASHINGTON – The Trump administration on Friday claimed that in India,media outlets critical of the government were allegedly pressured orharassed in 2017. “The Constitution (of India) provides for freedom ofspeech and expression, but it does not explicitly mention freedom of thepress.

The government (of India) generally respected these rights, but there wereinstances in which the government allegedly pressured or harassed mediaoutlets critical of the government,” US State Department said in its annualHuman Rights Report for the year 2017.

The State Department report chronicles major instances of incidentsperceived as an attack on the press freedom in India.

This comes at a time when the Trump administration itself is being accusedof launching an assault on the freedom of the press. President Donald Trumphimself has coined the word “fake media” for those news reports and mediaoutlets that are critical of him.

In its report, the State Department said individuals routinely criticisedthe government publicly and privately. According to Human Rights Watch,however, sedition and criminal defamation laws were sometimes used toprosecute citizens who criticised government officials or opposed statepolicies, it said.

According to media watchdog The Hoot’s India Freedom Report detailing casesbetween January 2016 and April 2017, “there was an overall sense ofshrinking liberty not experienced in recent years.” The report detailed 54alleged attacks on journalists, at least three cases of television newschannels being banned, 45 internet shutdowns, and 45 sedition cases againstindividuals and groups.

Noting that independent media generally expressed a wide variety of views,it said the law prohibits content that could harm religious sentiments orprovoke enmity among groups, and authorities invoked these provisions torestrict print media, broadcast media, and publication or distribution ofbooks.

The report mentioned the CBI raid on NDTV, exit of Bobby Ghosh as theeditor of The Hindustan Times and arrest of cartoonist G Bala.

The State Department said in 2017, some journalists and media personsreportedly experienced violence and harassment in response to theirreporting. During the year a subcommittee of the Press Council of Indiaissued a report to the government on the protection and preservation of thefreedom of the press and integrity of journalists; the report highlightedthat at least 80 journalists had been killed since 1990 and only oneconviction had been made.

“Online and mobile harassment, particularly of female journalists, wasprevalent, with some female activists and journalists reporting that theyreceive thousands of abusive tweets from ‘trolls’ every week,” it said.

The report noted the killing of senior journalist and activist GauriLankesh and attack on television journalist Shantanu Bhowmik.

According to the State Department, the most significant human rights issuesincluded police and security force abuses, such as extrajudicial killings,disappearances, torture, arbitrary arrest and detention, rape, harsh andlife-threatening prison conditions, and lengthy pretrial detention.

Widespread corruption; reports of political prisoners in certain states;and instances of censorship and harassment of media outlets, including somecritical of the government continued, it said. “There were governmentrestrictions on foreign funding of some nongovernmental organizations(NGOs), including on those with views the government stated were not in the”national interest,” thereby curtailing the work of these NGOs,” it said.

Legal restrictions on religious conversion in eight states; lack ofcriminal investigations or accountability for cases related to rape,domestic violence, dowry-related deaths, honour killings, sexualharassment; and discrimination against women and girls remained seriousproblems, it said.

“A lack of accountability for misconduct at all levels of governmentpersisted, contributing to widespread impunity. Investigations andprosecutions of individual cases took place, but lax enforcement, ashortage of trained police officers, and an overburdened and underresourcedcourt system contributed to a small number of convictions,” said the StateDepartment.