Indian journalists top global list of 10 'most urgent' cases of journalists under attack

Three Indian journalists are at the top of a list of 10 "most urgent" cases of journalists under attack for "pursuing the truth".

The list for July, published monthly by One Free Press Coalition, is ranked in order of urgency. One Free Press Coalition is a group of eminent editors and publishers, including Al Jazeera Media Network, Associated Press, Bloomberg News, Boston Globe, Forbes, Huffington Post, Reuters, Straits Times, Washington Post, and Deutsche Welle.

At number one is Alt News' Mohammed Zubair and independent journalists Rana Ayyub and Saba Naqvi, who were named in an FIR in June for "provoking communal sentiments" for their tweets on the assault of a Muslim man in Ghaziabad. News platform the Wire was also named in the FIR.

The other Indian journalist on the list is Siddique Kappan, who was arrested last October while on his way to Hathras to report on the gangrape and subsequent death of a Dalit woman. Kappan was charged under the UAPA and sedition, among others, and has been in jail ever since.

Others in the list include Azimzhan Askarov from Kyrgyzstan who died in jail last July, Turkmenistan's Nurgeldi Halykov who has been in jail since September, and Shahram Safari, a freelance Kurdish journalist who "was sentenced to three months in prison over his COVID-19 reporting".