While covering a protest march called by the Left front in Kolkata on Monday, over 50 journalists were assaulted by the city police. Many of them were badly injured and required hospitalisation, as freelance journalist Tanmoy Bhaduri’s photographs reveal.
Tear-gas shells and canons were unleashed on agitators marching to ‘Nabanna’ (Secretariat), to protest the alleged corruption in the Mamata Banerjee-led government. Most of the protestors were members of CPI(M)’s farmers’ wing, the All India Kisan Sabha.
The pro-farmer march was supported by farmer wings of other Left parties too, and saw the participation of various Left Front units. The police also resorted to lathi-charge, and assaulted not only the protesters but also members of the press who were present at the rally.
The brutalised journalists responded by rallying against the injustice meted out. This is the shape the protest took on Kolkata’s Mayo Road at approximately 4 pm on Monday:
Sukanta Mukherjee, a reporter with the ETV news, told the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) that around 1pm the police started manhandling people near the Kolkata Press Club. Mukherjee said that the policemen assaulted people at random, without so much as distinguishing between the protesters and journalists.
As per Mukherjee’s statement, when the journalists decided to stage a peaceful protest around 2:30 pm on Monday, a senior officer directed his troop to take out their batons.
The CPJ issued a statement declaring that the police ought to identify and ‘deal firmly’ with the officers who committed the brutalities.
Beating journalists protesting their earlier unprovoked beating at the hands of police takes disregard for press freedom to new levels.Steven Butler, CPJ Asia Program Coordinator, Washington, DC
Supratim Sarkar, a joint commissioner of the Kolkata Police, told the CPJ that an attack of this nature was ‘condemnable and undesirable’ and that investigations would be conducted to identify the policemen who had attacked the journalists.
This is the second attack on journalists in Kolkata this month. On 16 May, a group of photojournalists were brutalised while attempting to report a fire in the city's Park Street area.
(With inputs from the Committee to Protect Journalists, The Hindu Business Line)
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