{"id":30928,"date":"2019-01-28T16:22:32","date_gmt":"2019-01-28T16:22:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=30928"},"modified":"2019-01-28T16:22:32","modified_gmt":"2019-01-28T16:22:32","slug":"indian-politician-jailed-for-facebook-post-on-pm-narendra-modi","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=30928","title":{"rendered":"Indian politician jailed for Facebook post on PM Narendra Modi"},"content":{"rendered":"
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An Indian politician who posted a picture of Prime Minister Narendra Modi<\/a> with a begging bowl on Facebook<\/a> has been arrested in the latest example of what critics say is a clampdown on free speech.
\u00a0
It follows more than a dozen similar arrests last year in a clampdown on those attacking the Hindu nationalist prime minister’s policies or ideology.
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Sathiyaraj Balu, a member of a local pro-Tamil party, was arrested on Saturday after he posted a morphed picture of Modi with a begging bowl a day before the prime minister’s visit to the southern state of Tamil Nadu.<\/p>\n

He has been charged with intent to disrupt the peace and to create ill-will between classes, after an official complaint was made by local members of Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP<\/a>).<\/p>\n

“We received a complaint against him (Balu) and took action as per the law,” a senior police officer in the district told AFP on Monday on condition of anonymity.
\u00a0
Balu is being remanded in custody pending a police investigation.<\/p>\n

‘A worrying crackdown on free speech’<\/h2>\n

A television reporter is in jail in the northeastern state of Manipur for alleged posts that also criticised Modi and the state’s Chief Minister Biren Singh.<\/p>\n

Kishorechandra Wangkhem was arrested in December under a draconian law that allows authorities to detain anyone for up to a year without trial.<\/p>\n

He had accused Singh of promoting right-wing Hindu ideology in the region and called him a “puppet” of Modi and of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), a Hindu supremacist group.
\u00a0
Police in September charged the main opposition Congress party’s social media<\/a> chief Divya Spandana with sedition, after she tweeted a meme that showed an altered image of Modi’s statue with a placard emblazoned with “thief”.
\u00a0
Critics say such arrests are alarming in the world’s largest democracy.
\u00a0
“There has been a worrying crackdown on free speech and dissent in India<\/a>, whether slogans, social media commentary against ruling leaders, or arrests of journalists and activists who criticise the government,” Meenakshi Ganguly, South Asia director at Human Rights Watch<\/a>, told AFP.
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“People are being accused under a range of laws including sedition and threats to national security.”\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

An Indian politician who posted a picture of Prime Minister Narendra Modi with a begging bowl on Facebook has been arrested in the latest example of what critics say is a clampdown on free speech.\u00a0It follows more than a dozen similar arrests last year in a clampdown on those attacking the Hindu nationalist prime minister’s…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":30929,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-30928","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-middle_east_news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30928","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=30928"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30928\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/30929"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=30928"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=30928"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=30928"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}