New Delhi: Media rights organisation Reporters Without Borders (RSF) has demanded police protection for journalist Neha Dixit, saying the attempted break-in at her house should be seen as an ‘alarm signal’.
RSF said that the attempted break-in might have seemed relatively trivial, but since Dixit has also revealed that she has been getting threatening phone calls for the past five months from people who are clearly spying on her and know exactly where she is at any moment, it calls for the security forces to make effort to protect her.
Dixit told RSF, “Once I went out on the balcony and the caller said, ‘Oh, so you’re standing on the balcony. You think you’re a great reporter? I’ll throw acid in your face.’ Another time, they said, ‘Your husband isn’t home and you’re at your friends? I’ll rape you and throw your naked body on the road’.”
Dixit said she began getting as many as five or six calls a day since December. “There are two or three different voices, but they’re calling from hundreds of numbers,” she said. “The whole point of this exercise is to harass me to the point that it affects my work. I don’t know what the immediate trigger was. I don’t know if it’s related to a specific report I wrote. But the person at the other end of the line says, ‘reporter, reporter’ again and again.”
Dixit’s partner and documentary filmmaker Nakul Singh Sawhney has also been the target of threats. “Ever since the release of his documentary about religious riots in the northern city Muzaffarnagar in 2013 [Muzaffarnagar Baaqi Hai], Sawhney has been the target of threats orchestrated by members of Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP), the student wing of Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), the Hindu nationalist militia that is allied with India’s ruling party,” RSF said.
“Everything indicates that Neha Dixit and her partner are being targeted because of their work, and that the attempted break-in at their home should be seen as an alarm signal,” said Daniel Bastard, the head of RSF’s Asia-Pacific bureau.
“We urge the Indian police to do everything possible to protect this journalist and to find those responsible for these revolting threats. It would be terrible for press freedom in India and the country’s image abroad if there was another Gauri Lankesh,” he said, referring to the assassination of the Kannada journalist in 2017.
Dixit has long been the target of threats and harassment, both online and offline, due to the nature of her investigations – which have been crucial in revealing extrajudicial killings, illegal detention using draconian laws and trafficking of Assamese girls. She has contributed to The Wire.
RSF’s full statement is reproduced below.
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Reporters Without Borders (RSF) calls on the Indian security services to make every effort to protect Neha Dixit, a Delhi-based freelance journalist who – after an attempted break-in at her home on the evening of 25 January – revealed that she has been subjected to an extremely targeted campaign of threats for months.
Two days after the attempted break-in, which might otherwise have seemed relatively trivial, Neha Dixit revealed on Twitter that she has been getting threatening phone calls for the past five months from people who are clearly spying on her and know exactly where is at any moment.
Dixit told RSF: “Once I went out on the balcony and the caller said, ‘Oh, so you’re standing on the balcony. You think you’re a great reporter? I’ll throw acid in your face,’ Another time, they said, ‘Your husband isn’t home and you’re at your friends? I’ll rape you and throw your naked body on the road’.”
In December, Dixit began getting as many as five or six calls a day. “There are two or three different voices, but they’re calling from hundreds of numbers,” she said. “The whole point of this exercise is to harass me to the point that it affects my work. I don’t know what the immediate trigger was. I don’t know if it’s related to a specific report I wrote. But the
person at the other end of the line says, ‘reporter, reporter’ again and again.”
Alarm
The callers have also threatened Dixit’s partner, the documentary filmmaker Nakul Singh Sawhney. Ever since the release of his documentary about religious riots in the northern city Muzaffarnagar in 2013, Sawhney has been the target of threats orchestrated by members of Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP), the student wing of Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), the Hindu nationalist militia that is allied with India’s ruling party.
“Everything indicates that Neha Dixit and her partner are being targeted because of their work, and that the attempted break-in at their home should be seen as an alarm signal,” said Daniel Bastard, the head of RSF’s Asia-Pacific bureau. “We urge the Indian police to do everything possible to protect this journalist and to find those responsible for these revolting threats. It would be terrible for press freedom in India and the country’s image abroad if there was another Gauri Lankesh.”