As per the recently released Freedom House Freedom Report, India has now been demoted to ‘Partly Free’ from the ‘Free’ category. Civil liberties and free expression have seen a slow but steady breakdown in India over the last few years. A particularly disturbing trend is the silencing of voices through targeted prosecutions of activists, students, academics, protestors, and journalists. Recently, the arrest of a 22-year-old climate activist for editing a Google document that contained links and resources to support the ongoing farmers’ protests sparked global outrage. There has also been a systematic targeting of media houses and news organisations, including prosecuting journalists under colonial-era seditionlaws, filing criminal defamation cases, and in worst cases, attacks on journalists by non-state actors.
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