 Welcome, everybody. Thank you for joining USIP today for an event entitled Vanishing Media Freedoms Across South Asia. USIP, or the US Institute of Peace, is a national nonpartisan independent institute founded by Congress and dedicated to the proposition that a world without violent conflict is possible, practical, and essential for US and global security. My name is Thamanna Salikuddin. I am the director for South Asia Programs at USIP. It is my great pleasure to welcome you here today and we're joined by a panel of distinguished journalists from across South Asia who today will shed the light on challenges of the past year, share personal insights from the ground and discuss what we can expect from South Asian governments and media outlets going forward. This year has been particularly challenging for many reasons, but in terms of media and press freedom, it is seen that the World Press Freedom Index has basically all the rankings across South Asia, India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka have slipped with all four South Asian countries in the bottom third worldwide. And, you know, this is an already challenging climate for free media where you've seen threats to journalist safety, repressive actions and overt censorship by governments on top of unraveling business and economic models for the media industry. Now, this is nothing new in South Asia, but our panelists today will be discussing the evolution of media in our four South Asian democracies today. And we are the conversation will be led by Cyril Almeida, who is a visiting senior expert with the Asia Center at USIP. He's a Pakistani journalist who's quite well known, was a columnist and assistant editor at dawn, which is Pakistan's oldest and most widely read English language newspaper. He is a phenomenal journalist has lots of experience and I really look forward to Cyril helming the conversation. He will introduce the rest of our speakers, but just very quickly, we have Shai Dolalem from Bangladesh, Dil Rukshi Dutniti from Sri Lanka and Sirdharth Vardarajan from India. And with that, I'd like to turn it over to Cyril. Just a reminder, you can join the conversation on Twitter at the hashtag South Asia media. But also if you have questions for our panelists and we want to make this interactive, please use the chat function on the USIP event page. With that, thank you very much and over to Cyril. Thanks. Good morning, everyone. Good evening, depending on where you are. Hello to all our panelists. As you said, it's been a tough year for journalism in South Asia, across South Asia and all the four countries we're going to discuss. And as you said, it's nothing new. The world press freedom rankings that you mentioned based Sri Lanka 127 out of 180 countries. Bangladesh brings up the bottom at 151 between them is India and Pakistan at 142 and 145. And so that gives a sense of, you know, sort of being in the bottom third of global press freedom rankings. It's about 1.75 billion people in this part of the world. And the media that is serving them, the mainstream media, at least they're serving them is under immense strain and pressure. And this is before even Corona happened this year, which has impacted further business models. This is before some of the political changes in the region, etc. So to discuss all of that, we have a very distinguished group of journalists here with us as you briefly introduced them. I think we have Shahidul Alam from Bangladesh, who just a few weeks ago, maybe a couple of weeks ago was an awardee of the Committee for the Protection of Journalists, one of the press freedom awardees. Shahidul Alam will be telling us a little bit about his own experiences in Bangladesh, which have been quite grim in recent years. And after that we have Siddharth Ratharajan, who is the founding editor of an online news portal called The Wire in India, well known to many of us. I think we log into that to get our news from India nowadays sometimes. And of course, before that Siddharth was the editor of the Hindu and I believe he was the first non-family member of the Hindu newspaper editor, sorry, in 150 years of that newspaper. So a very distinguished journalist from India joining us. And finally, but no less, we have the Rukshi Handuneti from Sri Lanka. The Rukshi is the executive director of the Center for Investigative Reporting. And more importantly, for our current discussion, she has been involved in the recent report in the last week of the International Federation of Journalists, which has released a global white paper in journalism. So, you know, lots to discuss today. Not going to spend too much time trying to sort of lead in. I'll just turn it over to Shahidul Alam to first tell us a little bit about what he's experienced himself. I think many of us have read about some of his travails and the context of the Indian, I'm sorry, the Bangladeshi media, you know, sort of where it stands today, whether the mainstream media stand and what's happening. Are there any sort of bright spots perhaps even in the abyss as it looks. So over to you, Shahidul. Thanks, Cheryl. I'm delighted to be part of this very illustrious company. Of course, you're looking at a background screen. But in reality, where I'm sitting now is where I was sitting on the night of 5th of August, 2018. What had happened was on the 29th of July, 2018, there was a runaway bus which killed two students and injured 11 others. In itself, while any death is sad, it's not such a big deal because accidents happen all the time, road accidents in particular in Bangladesh. I think the situation really was that there was just so much discontent across the country as a result of the corruption, as a result of the nepotism, as a result of the violence, the disappearances, all of that going on. That this basically just sparked a fire and students came out into the streets, they protested. They also did something very, very interesting. They began to regulate the streets in a manner in which the government had never been able to do. Ambulances ran, VIP cars stopped, police cars were stopped to check to see if they had licensed and usually they didn't and all sorts of things. So this became a major embarrassment for the government and eventually they turned their thugs on them and backed by the police. That's when I started documenting this. So on the 4th of August, I got beaten up by my equipment with smash by continued reporting. And on the 5th I was out there again, mostly giving live feed on Facebook, which is the most popular social media in Bangladesh. And then in the afternoon, I gave an interview to Al Jazeera again sitting on this very chair at night. I was learning the flat uploading my pictures when the doorbell rang. I got to went to the door and to cut a long story short, essentially got picked up. I was blindfolded, handcuffed, taken away, tortured that night. And eventually I spent 107 days in prison. I still have the cases ongoing, though the court has actually said, the judge in court actually said that the prosecution has not been able to provide any evidence for any of the accusations made against me. But the case continues and if convicted, I face 14 years in prison. So that in a sense gives you an idea of the situation we're in. But I would like to take you back a little bit. I mean, some of you will know of this, but it's worthwhile giving you a little bit of context. Firstly, what happened to me while it was extreme is not unusual justice this government during the Shah regime. I've had a loaded gun pointed at my face during the BNB regime. I received eight knife wounds and I got arrested by the army league. So I think they are all pretty fair when it comes to that. But the problems this country's had in terms of the media is really began, I suppose, in June 1975 when the regime shut down all but four newspapers for an executive order. Then there were a series of successful military junta's and of course, democracy and independent journalism was just not being practiced. The media began in relative terms doing better after the restoration democracy in 1991, but we've never really had proper democracy. We've had elected governments, whatever the elections, the qualitative elections might be. But the authoritarian environment that has continued and media gagging has been fairly common, but it's really escalated to such a level. So on the 25th of October 2000, the State Minister for Social Welfare, Muslim al-Hussain, he issued an order to his party members and local admin, the police and whatever. And the very state, it was in Bangladesh, but the basic statement was wherever you find journalists break their books. Five days earlier, the Jubilee activists had attacks around Hussain and there were multiple threats. Most journalists left their homes, their family members. But that was roughly how it was progressing. That was the approach that the government had towards media, towards journalists, at least independent journalists. But let's fast forward because we can't take up so much time. So in 2020, I mean, I got arrested in 2018. We had the rigged election on the effectively 29th of December 2018, officially on the 28th. And, you know, it was a complete full spectral control by the current government since then. And the problem, of course, is that, you know, all the state institutions have essentially been turned into psych-events in, you know, serving the government, the ruling party. But in 2018, now just fast forward again, Sherif Al-Ailat showed that he was nearly killed by 10,000s who arrived in his home. He was reporting on corruption in Kumilla. And, you know, he was very, very seriously injured and almost died. Last month, Gulam Sarbaran in Chittagong, he was picked up, he was tortured. Eventually he was found. And this was this virus, this video that went viral with this young man sort of cowering and saying, let me go, I will never practice journalism and I'll never do reporting again. I will, I give up news forever. Now, that's a pretty stark message for journalists. And Cyril, of course, mentioned 151, but let me take you back a little bit. We were never high up, but out of 180 countries in 2013, we were 144. In 2017, we were 146. In 2019, we were 150. Now we are 151. So we are certainly not going the right direction. Having said that, the government denies all of this. Of course, they say there is a lot of media with there is. There are people speaking and to an extent they do. What isn't mentioned is the fact that there is severe control in terms of what is said and how it is said. So you actually have the military intelligence dictating the headlines to some of the people. And it's pretty openly known that every media house is given instructions about what it can say, what it cannot. I must also admit that there are very few, but very important exceptions and some newspapers which have tried to speak out regardless. But of course, they've been much more circumspect in recent times. To again place things in context, I was arrested under Section 57B, which was the ICT Act. In September 2018, I was arrested in August. The government passed the Digital Security Act and there have been a lot of protest about it prior to that. The journalists in particular were up in arms. The government said they were going to fix it, but in fact they did exactly the opposite. And they've used the digital DSA. In the previous six years, they've arrested more than a thousand people. A large number of them journalists. And of course it allows the government to arrest anyone without a warrant whose activities they consider to be harmful or a threat. Or even on suspicions of a crime they might commit in the digital space. So that's roughly where we stand. But I will not merely speak about the government. I think the media also has a lot to answer for. So instead of acting as the fifth estate, we've now got a situation where a large part of mainstream media acts as an extension of the ruling parties. So the government propaganda. And of course, journalists get perks. It's a carrot and stick situation. And there are also some other things which while not directly related to freedom of media, but I think is relevant. There's very little adherence to labor laws within the media. So media professionals, they have the laws that give them. And they're pleased to have a second arrest. Sorry, I think we lost you for a minute or so, at least I did. How much do you lose? What did you hear last? You were talking about, you know, people within the media themselves acting as tools of political parties. Okay, yeah. So I mean, essentially, we have this situation where, you know, at the press club, there's never been any protest about Assajj or any journalist being attacked or whatever. But they were huge banners of the Prime Minister, Dangling, exalting her contribution to the media because she'd actually, when the protests were at their peak, they very astutely provided a donation or committed a donation of 20 crore to the journalist welfare fund. And pretty soon that took care of all the protests. And today, really, off the mainstream media, there are, except for a very few significant exceptions, a large number of them are extensions, a government propaganda. So that's there. But outside of that, and the situation is particularly bad for journalists in the remote areas, in the city. It's not so bad, but pretty much the board is not followed. The labor laws are not adhered to by the media itself. Maybe they don't consider themselves to be labor. But there's also almost a complete absence of sexual harassment policy, which is also meant to be in place. So I think the media itself has some hard questions to answer. But by and large, it's a very, very repressive space, the worst we've had ever since found the nation's bull. Well, thanks for that, Shadow. I mean, grim as we all expected, but perhaps it's a little more sobering to hear from you directly about the state of the media in one of these two days. I think as we go forward, we're going to circle back to some of the familiar schemes because across these countries, you mentioned the GSA and I'm going to ask you about that a little more, the Digital Security Act. But for now, we're going to turn over to Siddharth. Siddharth, I know that you yourself have had an experience this year, an unpleasant one. Perhaps you can update us on that. But just trying to get an idea. And I think for a lot of us who have followed the Indian media over the years and growing up, perhaps, you know, there's a sense of something fundamental seems to have changed in India. And I don't just mean in terms of, you know, the rise of broadcast TV media. But there were people that we'd look across, at least in Pakistan across the border and be like, oh yeah, these are wonderful, informed, speaking to power type of journalists. And a lot of that seems sort of dissipated. I know, you know, personally, including yourself, some people are still there fighting the good fight. But just, you know, sort of if you could lead us into trying to explain what's happened in India to this large democracy with a vibrant press over the last, perhaps, whatever number of years you choose to look at. Over to you, Siddharth. Siddharth, I think you might be muted still. Yeah. So I think the situation in India is a classic example of the media itself trimming its sales. If we look at the legal environment, if you look at the constitutional environment, freedom of the press is guaranteed. And through seven decades, through the seven decades since independence, by and large, the legal system, the courts at various levels have upheld media freedom in different aspects as and when governments have tried to trample on them. There have been well-known exceptions during the emergency, for example, when Indra Gandhi suspended civil liberties 75 to 77. But in the main, the media has operated in an environment where it's been pretty much free to do whatever it likes. Now, what we've seen over the last, I would say decade but accentuated over the last six years is the willful handing over of prerogative space rights by the media. This handing over is happening in the context of very aggressive media management by the government. And I should say a slight shift in the attitude of the courts, which today seem less amenable to taking a firm position when the rights of journalists and the rights of the media are trampled upon by the government, particularly the government of the center, then they have been in the past. So this, I would say, slightly more aggressive political environment. Now, every government in the past has obviously tried to manage the press. But and I have worked in media houses in India since 95. So I've seen maybe five or six prime ministers, four or five prime ministers. But under the current setup, the political effort is the, shall I say, the most aggressive that I've seen so far. And this is manifested in very strident rhetoric by my government ministers speaking out against media that they don't like or speaking disparagingly about the media, whatever things are carried or published, which they don't like. This is reflected in the government actively cultivating mouthpieces. And I'm using the phrase with a full sense of responsibility, because you have a large section of the media today, particularly electronic television media that has converted itself into becoming spokesperson of the ruling party and the government at the center. This is something that is very new in Indian journalism. You could say that journalism in India has never, you know, big, big media and India has never particularly been anti establishment. But they haven't gone out, they hadn't gone in the past out of their way to be serve as apologists for the establishment either. Today, that situation is really very different other than one or two channels, television channels, for example, the bulk of your TV channels have have turned into. You know, battering rams for the government when it comes to the opposition. And they really don't believe in asking any tough questions of those who are in power, even though they are the only ones who have access to them. So it's very rare for you to see a government minister agreeing to give an interview to, you know, newspapers or channels where they would be put through their faces. In the five years that the wire has been up and running. I think only two ministers or three ministers have ever agreed to be interviewed by us. And shortly after they gave those interviews, I guess they received word that they shouldn't have done this and they are unavailable for us since then. So this is the political landscape. The Prime Minister does not believe in holding press conferences. The Prime Minister gives a few interviews but these appear to be highly scripted interviews with no follow up questions. And I would say government communication other than the Ministry of External Affairs which has a regular press interface. It's very hard, you know, even if you're doing a story on the Prime Minister and Prime Minister's office. It's very hard to actually in a structured manner put up a question and try to get a response from them. And I mentioned this because by making it more and more difficult for reporters to get the government version for critical stories. That is then used as a lever to fling the charge of irresponsible journalism against reports that are critical. Well, you know, they'll say you never took our version. But you know your version, it's impossible to get but that somehow never figures in the conversation, right? So there's the political pressure and then the legal. As I said, the Indian Constitution guarantees press freedom subject to certain what are called reasonable restrictions and these restrictions have been interpreted in a reasonable fashion over the last 60 or 70 years. But what we've seen over the last five or six years is the growing use of defamation, civil and criminal. India is one of the few democracies to still have criminal defamation on its statute books and large corporate houses, politicians with influence, invariably resort to defamation cases or the threat of defamation cases in order to ensure that media doesn't cover certain kinds of stories. So the five years that we've been around at the wire. We've collected something like 10 or 12 defamation cases, including one from the Home Minister's son, Amit Shah's son. And of course, from some of the largest business houses, the Adhanis, the Abhanis and so on. And these are all, you know, I regard them as highly frivolous cases. But as you know, in any legal system, there's a procedure and a process and in India that process tends to be particularly torturous. So you can spend years. I think the first case was filed against us and maybe 2017. It's been three years and there's no resolution in sight. So there is this legal issue and what we've seen is that rather selective use of appeals to liberty and press freedom by the judiciary whenever journalists find themselves at the wrong end of the law. So when in certain state governments like in Maharashtra, where the Shiv Sena and the Congress are in alliance, and when they filed a criminal case against Arnab Goswami, who's editor of Republic TV, the Supreme Court, which normally does not entertain, you know, petitions, it encourages people to go to lower courts first. But it not only allowed his application but granted swift relief with a ringing declaration that even one day of imprisonment is too much. But then we've seen examples of other journalists. Most recently, Kerala, a Malayalam journalist, Siddique Kappan, who was going from Delhi to Hatras in Uttar Pradesh to report on this horrendous case, a gang rape and murder of a young Dalit woman. And this is a case that got highly politicized because the state government tried to cover things up. It's a BJP government. They tried to cover things up. And then as details emerged in the public domain, it became very hard for them to put a lid on it. So obviously they were anxious about media coverage and they got hold of this journalist and have charged him under the anti-terror law. And he's now been in prison for, I think, a little bit more than a month. And he moved the Supreme Court in the hope that the court would be as receptive to his claim for quick bail as it was in the case of Annab Goswami. And his case keeps getting deferred. And now the next hearing in his matter is going to take place in the third week of January. So that's a month from now. And this from a court that in the case of Mr. Goswami had said even one day's imprisonment is one day too many. So the selective approach by the courts has, I think, added a fresh layer of uncertainty. It's increased the risk quotient for every journalist, every editor, every media platform. And when you factor in the hostility of the government towards critical reporting and the fact that the BJP in particular, but this is true of any state government. I would say even the West Bengal government or the Tamil Nadu government, which are run by non-BJP parties, can be equally pigheaded and thin-skinned and hostile towards critical reporting. And during the COVID pandemic, we had a record number of cases against reporters, media platforms and editors in virtually every state in India, which were the result of critical coverage of the way in which governments were handling the pandemic, handling the lockdown. In some cases reports pointed to the shortage of PPE equipment or the fact that you had social discrimination because there was a lot of propaganda in the initial stages of the pandemic that Muslims are spreading COVID. And so the BJP activists and in some cases legislators organized a call for boycotts, social boycotts of Muslim vendors and so on. And so when there were reports of some of these things, the police went and filed cases, not against the people calling for the boycott, but against media for highlighting some of these issues. In Coimbatore and Tamil Nadu, there was a report on shortages, this is charges of very vague charges. The charge against me, for example, when I wrote about the violation of social distancing norms by the Uttar Pradesh chief minister, one day after the Prime Minister announced a lockdown. This gentleman appears at a public event in Nayodhya with dozens of people, no masks, no social distancing. And it was the religious event that was tied into his political agenda. So we wrote about that and of course a case was filed against me personally and the police came to my house in the middle of the lockdown to summon me to a police station 800 kilometers away in the midst of the lockdown. So I wasn't at home at the time otherwise they would have probably taken me there and that I was able to move the high court and get what's called anticipatory bail. But the charges that were filed were disobeying a public servant. Charges that were filed were violations of the Epidemic Diseases Act, ridiculous kind of charges. And these are the kinds of charges that we've seen. A very senior journalist Dino Dua recorded a video, kind of a video blog on YouTube where he was very critical of the Modi government's handling of the lockdown. And a state government police in Himachal Pradesh filed a case against him for sedition, which is completely outrageous and an abuse of the law. And even though the Supreme Court agreed that he didn't have to go to the police station to testify and he could testify through video conferencing. But it's been several months now and this ridiculous charge has still not been quashed. So I can give many, many examples that I think this has added a new layer of, in a way, the anti-press freedom attitude of the government has gotten more rigid and they've used the pandemic as an excuse in a way to clamp down. There are also economic factors that have gotten accentuated. The slowdown in the economy, the impact of the lockdown on businesses have hit media industry hard. And we've seen a few newspaper, high profile newspaper additions close down. The Times of India Group, which is the most, which is the biggest media group in India has announced a shutdown of some of its papers, the Bombay Mirror as a daily, the Ahmedabad Mirror. And so we're looking at layoffs of dozens if not hundreds of journalists, which is another issue. And the last point I'll make, because I began by saying that a large section of the media has gotten compromised. They have jumped into bed with the government and do not believe in, you know, to use the old cliché speaking truths to power. So that job of speaking truths to power has fallen upon the shoulders of digital media and those newspapers and TV channels which are still willing to fight the good fight. And the government, which is quite mindful of the fact that digital news is a freewheeling space which is not really amenable to the kind of threats that they can bring to bear on conventional media houses through the denial of licenses or various other pressure tactics. They are now discussing quite openly the need to have some kind of regulatory framework for digital media. Now, this is again something that you don't have in any democratic country. This is reminiscent of what Putin may do or Erdogan might do. Perhaps even Erdogan hasn't attempted that, but Putin has. But creating regulations for digital media is simply a way of trying to make life difficult for people like us. I don't know what regulations they have in mind. And the irony is that these regulations would obviously apply to those of us who are in India, but they wouldn't apply to websites and newspapers that function abroad and whose output can still be accessed by readers in India unless they eventually used to block access Chinese style to news that the government of India doesn't approve of. I mean, this is the slippery slope. If you think through what regulation of digital media will involve, and if they're serious about it, that's the direction that they will go in, which is really quite alarming in the near to medium term if that's really what they plan to do. Final point I'll end on. Social media is another feisty space where people, and we saw this during the pandemic where the media was trying to paint a rosy picture of how everything is under control and then you would have fairly detailed bits of information coming out on Twitter or Facebook painting a rather different picture, which those of us in the media who were so inclined could then look at fact check cross verify and then do stories so the government has also taken a rather dim view of the use of social media by ordinary citizens. Now a lot of social media posting can be quite irresponsible, of course, so it's a double X sort, but there's a lot of good that comes out of social media too. So the government and the ruling party have tried to game. I've tried to curb social media by, first of all, weaponizing their own use of it. The creation of IT or information technology departments or cells, employing hundreds if not thousands of people that try to trend a certain topics or spread misinformation in a rather active manner. The use of bots for example, ceaselessly or relentlessly trolling individuals who are critical of the government particularly women journalists who would be subjected to all kinds of harassment including threats. And, and then of course, threatening ordinary users of social media with all kinds of draconian legal cases. So we've seen, I'll just end on this case case from Madhya Pradesh, which I read about only recently but it dates back to earlier this year. A gentleman tweeted in response to an incident which happened in Delhi in January, when a right wing government opened fire on protesters who were opposing the government's new Citizenship Amendment Act in Delhi. So this right wing government's fire that happens in January and he, he posts a tweet in January, saying in Hindi or Urdu, but I'll give it an English that no matter how much you fire upon us, we will create more protest sites. So a very democratic kind of response to an absurd violent provocation. The police sometime in March or April registered a case against this guy claiming that he was inflaming religious sentiment. And he got locked up. He was denied bail for all these months and got bail only this month. In other words, after being in prison for nearly six months from the High Court, which should have thrown the case out actually. But the court gives him bail on condition that when he's released, he will not say anything provocative or anti-national, as if he had already done that, and urged him to get and said he must get counseling from somebody in the name the counselor. And they said if the counselor gives an adverse report, then you're going to go back in jail. So this kind of ridiculous, you know, cases being filed against, you know, lay citizens posting on social media obviously has a chilling effect. And I think the BJP and different state governments and the Modi government have hit upon this method of how to bell the cat of social media. Because when you put the fear of God or the fear of law into people making critical comments or putting out a naughty or a centerical meme or making fun of the prime minister or a chief minister. If you reckon that a case can be filed against you and you can be cooling your heels in jail for months before you get bail, you will obviously think once, twice, a thousand times before you make those kinds of posts. So I think putting everything together, it's clear that press freedom in India is under strain, no doubt about it. And there are people like us who are doing what we are free to do what we want and by doing that, we feel the pressure and we carry on. But there are many media platforms that that feel the pressure and choose to take an easy path. And I think the government is counting on more and more sections of the media, essentially giving up the fight and choosing the path of least resistance. I'll stop there. Thanks for that, Siddharth. Another grim exposition of what's happening in our countries. And I think what's striking about it, you know, looking at it from the Pakistani perspective is this this evolution that you're talking about sort of with the broadcast media and private news channels erupting and then subsequently social media. There's been these two revolutions or phenomenon that have come up in the 21st century and really sort of how governments have either manipulated that or tried to use it to their own advantage in an environment where individual organizations perhaps no longer are trying to hew to sort of the tenets or the principles of good journalism as you're describing. But with that, I'm going to circle back to you, Siddharth, and ask you some, particularly about the India Pakistan context and some of the disinformation and the social media wars and Balwama and Balakot. But for now, I think I'm first I'm going to tell people who are tuning MPs do write your questions on the website or on the YouTube chat and we are looking at them and as soon as we get some interesting questions, we're going to put them to our panelists. But for now, over to you, the Rukshi. The Rukshi, I know that you've had any, you know, with your editor and personal experiences also in Sri Lanka. And frankly, you know, post civil war, as bad as things may be in India or Bangladesh or Pakistan, they're especially grim and can be quite scary out there. So I thought, you know, sort of tell us about what's going on across in Sri Lanka, particularly this year in the year of Corona. And as I'm aware that, you know, the government is trying to weaponize some sort of this rules against social media in your country. So please, over to you, the Rukshi. Thank you, sir. And thank you for having me. I just want to talk about the time when we were growing up also and then fast forward to today and to the time of the pandemic, because we're a generation race continuing one story and that was the boss story. And I know Bangladesh, India and all other countries in South Asia, they're very familiar with conflict that they're familiar with multiple conflicts and the kind of and and a variety of those. But Sri Lanka has seen it for nearly three decades. And this also meant that someone else sitting somewhere in the north of Sri Lanka was determining our headlines for a long, long time. So that's the kind of backdrop in which I walked into a newsroom. And we kind of shaped our careers. The legacy of our was so powerful and we saw how the media got polarized along ethnic and linguistic clients. There is the dominant singular narrative and then there is the Tamil alternate narrative. You know, they can never meet these two can never meet. And entire careers were shaped in such a backdrop of war and conflict. And that's something we have really taken for granted that I think we've got so conditioned to that. And if you ever looked at Sri Lanka's media coverage of the pandemic, so I'll fast forward it now to see. I think probably except for this great success story that we have been putting out as propaganda. We really saw real hard go reporting taking place in our country. And for all the troubles that other South Asian countries seem to be experiencing the media and the jurors absolutely stressed out economic pressures being exerted on on the media houses and individual journalists. The media is cold and quiet. And that's really appalling to me as someone who watches the media pretty closely because we're cold and quiet because this is the conditioning of the war because this is how journalists have grown. This is how they've condition they have practiced the craft not everyone they've always been the strident alternate voices very powerful important people institutions that have been you know paying the price. And individuals who have been paying the price in this country. And my former digital asset become of course being one of them because counter narrative builders are never really popular in any part of the world I think and more so in South Asia for the democracy we speak about we're not very tolerant of those who are able to promote a counter narrative to the to what is generally out there. So I've seen that and I've also seen how it kind of plays out in the media landscape it has it has had a huge impact and one of the things is I think Sri Lanka is quite a case study and I wouldn't want to take take it away from Afghanistan and other South Asian country but we're really a case study if you were to look at how the media industry was controlled brought you know various types of pressure was exerted and at a point we used to we used to call it the kept press the state state run media was called the kept press I'm sure that's you know generally used but now everyone is kept mainstream is generally kept so it's such a sad situation because not you do find the alternate voices again I see that said that you'd find them mostly in the digital space. People who understand that the mainstream does not give you the backdrop to operate to do real impactful storytelling so that's the navigation that shift from mainstream which was you know five years ago it was seen as if you know if you left your mainstream mainstream job what would you do but people are creative people are finding new parts and they're really getting digital they're really getting literate in that in that sense so we do we do see that shift that is taking place and we also see a lot of younger people you know try experimenting and having their own startups. Three things that I would like to restart as as a real key noteworthy things and one is that we have had lots of killing the messenger like nobody's business Sri Lanka has been killing the message for a long long time. Through you know various mechanisms my newspaper I work for you know you've suffered us and attacks at the end we have had our editor killed we have seen multiple all kinds of other attacks than a host of you know legal suits and you just basically forced to wind up as a business so it's only one it's only one it's only one example I can give you but this is been the case with Sri Lanka if you had an alternate view to push forward so we've been killing the messenger a long time and then the boys come to an end in 2009. You do hope there is something called post war journalism that is possible not post conflict but post war journalism that we might actually want to experience and and it's also a huge challenge for people who have been reporting journalism have been reporting the both for 30 years. And so then the shift becomes really hard. There is impunity that can continues now Sri Lanka's because we were talking about the global indices and how South Asian countries are placed and where is Sri Lanka place Sri Lanka is not at a point Sri Lanka was known as one of the worst places was only to leave and came so that was the legacy we shared with the very few countries at that point. So never to underestimate the power of the war and its impact that has really really left a huge that impact cannot be underestimated ever so we've been killing the messenger for a long long time or silencing them using different methods and is very hostile to people who have and then it continues to be hostile to those who actually have an alternative point and we also have a significant exile media community. This is really one of the most unpopular topics discussed about discuss anywhere in the world because exile media is generally seen as okay you just had a tip with the government and all you wanted to go somewhere else and free some you know not everyone does that people actually want to leave and do that you know practice their craft. So this has been this has been one of the key things that I've been noticing about Sri Lanka we never really talk about them. We have never really created the system a situation conditions for them to come back and join mainstream or whatever you know come back to the industry that once was theirs. And also the long term impacts of a city of war and conflict on a community of people, the community of journalists. People still do not want to talk about these aspects, besides being exiled having to live in exile. You also have people who are impacted who are impacted by the fact that they saw the war story they cover the war story for such a such a long time. And, and you do have a psychological impact you actually have reactions you actually have difficulties in relating to some of these recruiting situations. And I had this young reporter is as a young reporter used to cover the final couple of years of the war, and then he was covering the pandemic suddenly. And when he saw he was he is a television journalist he went to a village and he was trying to get some footage, and he saw kids. And suddenly this memory that he was he was triggered this image is triggered in his mind he just said that I kept remembering the little kids that I used to cover and the ones who were soft in blood. And he said I was young, but I'm seeing it again so many years later like 11 years later. I'm still doing this bloody story. And, and when I see children. This is how I remember, of course, in the in the pandemic you don't see blood, but when you see children. I'm reminded of what I was covering at that point and the fact that it's something that I wish to forget. So you were because you were talking about personal experiences I just want to share and we take it for granted that we have overcome the condition by what we see and and and our own backdrop. A couple of years ago I was paying tribute to Shadad Bukhari in Singapore. I was, I should say I was fortunate that I was chosen one to read out something in recognition of his work, and his life of committed journalism but the day before the tribute, the day before the ceremony, I was just feeling nauseous and I had migraine and then I had to speak to a colleague. And then he said do you realize because you are reminded of your own editor who died almost in similar circumstances. We never seem to stop and think that whether we have as an industry as practitioners, whether we have taken time to be with the we have healed, but kind of help we need because all the time we are chasing the chasing the story we are chasing ambulances. We never stop to think, but it has done to us what it may be doing to us again. So we come from this very time for this narrative may a narrative building backdrop, and, and we do the same with the pandemic. And how we cover that story is, is that triumphalist propaganda story that we put out from Sri Lanka, saying that everything is under control. We are really good. Yes, we were good. And how it happens and what are the mechanisms at play, and how does that kind of control becomes possible. Again, a very unpopular, very unpopular thing to say because for a country that's continually, you know, survived in war conditions, and we also know how, how power speaks to people and our relationship with power and the military. So that's why it's that quiet call story that is coming out of Colombo, coming out of Sri Lanka, whichever part of Sri Lanka, this is the story and we pack it, we package it in that way, not different to what Shaidu said, certainly not very different to what Sidharth said, except that it won't be so blatant. You wouldn't see that outright violation so much so in your face right now. That's not happening. We have a new government elected just one year ago. This is also, you know, it's it consists of people who are who also successfully waged a war against the liberation. We're back in 2009. So the guys I have, they have the capacity to control and a lot of information management that's happening. Quick example, if you want to do a pandemic story we have approved sources and you have clearly the health authorities it needs to be. And then you also have the approving authorities so if you actually do dig out dig out staff, whether you want to do some data data driven story, and you do your own own own legwork to do pull that story. You really have a very little space to do that story with without the approved course. So there will be the countering that comes rather swift and so in your face. But for the rest of the world to see we are not too bad, except we are not too bad compared to what what was just shared by the two senior colleagues before me. So that's it. There is, there is there are no great stories coming out of the on being done on the pandemic. And instead we had a reaction we were mooting legislation that could possibly control our ability to build counter narratives using the new media platforms. This is one of the most serious discussions that are taking place. Of course that much of it is is shrouded in secrecy so you wouldn't necessarily get to know exactly what's going on but we have heard that the government is very keen on introducing regulations so that the so so that not just the social media but the websites can be controlled because alternate voices are available in a different domain because the mainstream has largely failed the country and also the journalism as a business and as an industry. So the alternate voices are found in the alternate spaces and and the tech platforms that are coming up. So that's probably that's where they seem to be going at a point they mooted almost a Malaysian style law to curb fake news in Sri Lanka and I and I really do not like the term fake news because that kind of negates the value of information and takes away the value of information and news becomes fake. So but this has been nicely mainstreamed and we all know how it all began and how it will play out. So, besides that, during the pandemic we also saw the creative use of the international governance of civil and political rights ICCPI. Now this is a human rights, you know, it's a human rights instrument and expected to protect the liberties of citizens. But we have a situation where it's been actively used against people who share the information across social media platforms and possibly unwittingly not knowing exactly what they were sharing. Never to underestimate that we really should be careful about how we manage the information landscape and what kind of information we should be sharing today and how because information can save lives during a pandemic and your social responsibility in the sharing of information can never be underestimated but this has been used consistently and I know even a colleague who was taken by the criminal investigations department and was questioned as to why certain stories were done and why certain posts were shared. And so it's, you know, nobody actually gets to know because for the research you mentioned that I was engaged in, we actually try to get the numbers. And I know the number that made to the report is not the actual number and there are more people who are impacted by that and how the ICCPI was used to take people in for questioning. And instead of using the long arm of the law to control and curb, probably what we should be talking about will be a culture of, you know, responsible culture of handling the media, handling information and to be media literate. And fighting this information has been difficult in our country, also because like the rest of South Asia, the disinformation comes generally from the state. And they are the biggest promoters of hate, the biggest promoters of disinformation, malinformation, because it's ultimately seriously done. And then you also, so then they go after those who actually probably double in disinformation, which is, you know, largely mistakenly shared information, but the malinformation is maliciously shared. So there are new theories that are being promoted, created and supported and played out. And in this, we also have from these 5G scant, 5G theory to Bill Gates theory to, you know, Wuhan theory to you name it. We all believe in all of this, but we also have great success story theory from Sri Lanka and then to, you know, all of that gets so much play out in the mainstream. You can never find the alternate story, the real story as to how many infections do we have enough beds? Do we have enough capacity enough people to treat enough doctors? But there's a difference between the PCR and the antigen test. We wouldn't know because we are not talking with all due respect to all the good journalists, a few of them were actually pushing the story out there. But we're not seeing that story as we should be seeing. I mean, it's global pandemic. We should be seeing the story properly. But in Sri Lanka, you wouldn't, you except for the rather rosy story and the few alternate stories. You wouldn't see too much of them. I'd like to stop there. Okay, thanks for that, Dil Rukshin. I'm glad that you spent a fair chunk of your time talking about the coronavirus pandemic and sort of the state's response and the information that's flowing because we've got a bunch of questions on that. With a fortunately, unfortunately, it's fallen to me to try and contextualize what's happening in Pakistan. Because I'd like to press you guys with a bunch of questions. I'm going to try and be brief. And I think people are, anyone who's looking at Pakistan is aware of what's happened in the last few years, ten or years in the country. I just thought, because many of the strands are very similar in the ones that Shaila discussed, what Siddharth has discussed and what you've discussed. One of the questions that comes time and again, especially when people are looking in from the outside, like why is this happening? And I understand that it was a straightforward or an easy response as well because all governments or authoritarian governments or military governments or whatever they are don't like the free flow of information and they want to have a client press or client media. But there are also specifics within those contexts and I think in the Pakistani context, sort of what's really happened in the 21st century is the tale of two halves. In the first decade, the knots and the 2010s, I think what we're seeing now is in response to perhaps what played out during the Musharraf era. I go back to when growing up in Pakistan, we just had one state broadcast or PTV and then through the mid 90s, we had a maybe a semi-private, semi-public news channel or a TV channel rather. So all our information was coming from that one source if it was on TV. And then I think in response to a first General Musharraf gets or is publicly credited with allowing a TV media boom in Pakistan. But in fact, I believe that it was in response to what the Pakistan military was seeing happening across in India. Because the Indian media had liberalized perhaps four or five years before Pakistan. We were about five or six years behind them. And the surge of privately owned TV news channels was not only proving very effective, at least from Pakistani perspective, very effective in sort of a national sentiment across in India. But it was also being beamed directly into Pakistani homes through what we're known as different tenets back then. I'm sure anyone who's a child of the 90s or the early 2000s had these little sort of sack-like dishes on your roof and they were able to capture star news or z-news or whatever the channels were. I think that sort of caused a rethink in Pakistan and at that time Pakistan was being run by the military directly by General Musharraf. They said, okay, this seems both a good idea and if we don't allow this to happen in our own country, Indian propaganda is going to be beamed into Pakistan. So fast forward a few years and suddenly the biggest TV anchors in Pakistan were in terms of name recognition probably just below General Musharraf. I mean, I'm sure at some point Hamid Meir was more well known in Pakistan than the Prime Minister of Pakistan was in the mid-2000s. Now this eventually created a problem as far as the state was concerned. And the problem was this. You had the lawyers movement, of course, that people may have heard of, which led to the eventual ouster of General Musharraf and the reinstatement of a chief justice. And you had the Red Mosque incident, the Lal Masjid incident where a group of vigilantes had sort of caused trouble in Islamabad and it's causing global negative headlines, etc. Eventually there was a lot of pressure on the government at the time, the regime at the time to act against the Lal Masjid, the miscreants as they were called in Pakistan. And that ended in a conflagration where still not the exact facts are not known and they're heartily disputed. But there was a shootout and there was a siege in the heart of Islamabad and there was bloodshed and children and women died. And I think sort of the reaction that what the military saw at that point was, oh, we've allowed this beast to be created. It's phenomenally successful. It is amazingly good instead of marshalling nationalist sentiment, but right now this one's gotten out of control. Because there was a sense that the Lal Masjid, the pressure to act against the militants was intense and was created by the TV media, images being broadcast direct into everyone's home. Same thing goes with the lawyer's movement that perhaps had it not been for Pakistan having a private media that broadcasts TV channels, news channels. Perhaps the outcome would have been different. And so I think sort of the rapid rise of TV news in Pakistan, but at the moment I think nobody actually knows on any given day how many channels you're getting on your cable news channel in terms of news. But there's a few dozen of them. And you can contrast that with the U.S. where you look at these three networks and three cable channels across the country. In Pakistan you have dozens of full-time professional news channels. And so there was a sense that this needs to be reined in. I think sort of post the exit of Mushaf, it took a little while, et cetera, but sort of starting with the assassination attempt on Hamid Meir in 2014, the GEO anchor, and sort of the subsequent pressure that was put on GEO, which was the largest privately held news channel. And Pakistan was watched by virtually everyone in the country. There was a sense that, you know, sort of we need to act against this. This has become too powerful. And so ever since you've seen this trajectory of downward sort of media freedoms in the country, because there was a surge first and then that led to a reaction on part of the state of the state thinking they need to do something about it. Unfortunately, I think Siddharth mentioned this earlier, but journalists themselves trimming their sales or new entrants to the media. A lot of these new TV channels are owned by businessmen, essentially in Pakistan. And they've earned into the news business, not because they're interested in public service, but maybe because having a new channel allows them access to the state. But having access to the state also makes them vulnerable to the state and state pressure. So unfortunately, that's been the trajectory. And now, I think it'd be safe to say, and perhaps, you know, very few of my friends in the TV land in Pakistan would disagree with me. That TV news in Pakistan, which is the preeminent source to which Pakistanis get their news until recently, until the rise of social media. And I think even now has largely been tamed. And now the state has moved on to its attempts to sort of tame the frontier, the unruly frontier of social media. As you mentioned, the Rukhshila is, you know, in Pakistan too, there are new rules and regulations that have been voted, which essentially have bad faith rules to try and control sort of the social media sphere. That's what is said and what can be said on those platforms. And so sort of how that weather journalist can respond to that is their way to it's because the media so fractured right now. So you'll have this thing that virtually most of the top anchors in Pakistan also have their private YouTube channel. So they do the 8pm or 10pm show or the 7pm show. And then they say whatever they actually want to say on the YouTube channels, etc. But that a lot that fracturing itself makes it difficult for the public at large to be able to get a coherent sort of, you know, idea but like it's not like opening a newspaper and you get a front page and opinion page and business page. So it's sort of the struggle is there is very real right now in terms of the state right to sort of clamp down further. But I think one of the other things I like to flag is that the weaponization of norms of journalism against journalists itself and journalism. So by that I mean I think, you know, sort of you mentioned the literature that you don't like to use fake news, but fake news is often peddled, and it's particularly under the current government advice on the BTI government, you know, their official Twitter handle will tag a journalist and say you wrote this and this is fake news and this is whatever. And sometimes there are mistakes that they are catching but it is a bad faith example they're not trying to catch fake news. What they're trying to do is label all critical news as fake. And therefore sort of, you know, in this polarized environment or politically polarized environment. What are the responses that a journalist or journalism can have I think it's a real struggle because when you have an powerful entity, the state or the sitting government itself, trying to discredit all news or news that all critical news. I think in the end, even as an average viewer as an average reader, there's concern about like okay what's real what's not you know is this is this just partisan stuff well this guy belongs to this party and that person belongs to that party etc. So that was mentioning earlier. So I don't know it's unfortunate. But many of the trends that you individually were talking about in your countries are all there and by the sudden I feel, you know, sort of the trajectory is not good and I can't anticipate it improving anytime soon. And just one more thing I'd like to say, because perhaps a lot of the focus is on what's happening right now and sort of the current evolution of the media in our countries and what's happened with the mainstream press. But I believe the institution Institute for the Federation of journalists put out a report this week, the global white paper and journalism, in which Pakistan and India were sort of labeled as the top five most dangerous countries in the world for journalists in terms of that 138 people, journalists who have been killed in Pakistan between 1990 and 2020. And in India, I believe the number is 116. So, in addition to this focus on what's happening in censorship self censorship online offline, these partisan wars that seem to be fought on the internet. There are those sort of long standing issues in our country, countries rather, which, which continue to sort of, I believe the ASHA report has documented five murders in Pakistan of journalists just in 2020 alone. So, while we focus on these issues are necessarily so about how governments and you know states are trying to curb media freedoms in their own countries. There are these other threats that have always been there and continue to be there. So, I think we have a bunch of questions here and we've got about 20 more minutes to go. I'd like to ask you something about sort of, you know, in the last week, there was this report that came out the EU disinfo report about networks, sorry, about how a group of, you know, sort of fake news websites as it were have been created and they're trying to influence the EU policy towards Pakistan or creating propaganda networks depends on, you know, however you want to describe it. I think that that's an example of something where between Pulwama and Balak or the two incidents that happened. It seemed to me initially that in, you know, this is the threat of war between in Pakistan and India is always there that when you have two medias and in the two sets of media and in respective countries essentially trying to peddle propaganda to their own populations. Initially, I thought that that was like okay this might be an off ramp for us to get off the ramp of war, you know, sort of an incident happens. The Indian media goes crazy and they're like, Oh, this is terrible and we must respond. And then India does something and Pakistan coups then like no no nothing really happened. So the domestic audience in Pakistan is like, Oh, we were perfectly fine. But India is thinking yeah, yeah, we went and got them and I just wonder sort of when these cycles keep playing out time and time again, Pulwama Balak would hopefully another incident won't happen. What is the danger there that the media itself is becoming an instrument of war. So it's not I think you're muted still the expose a done by the group in Europe, primarily was concerned with a disinformation campaign that was targeting, you know, European media, essentially through a complex network of NGOs of dubious provenance, making allegations at various human rights fora, particularly the UN Human Rights Commission or Council against Pakistan. And my sense is that this is a long standing disinformation or intelligence operation that probably goes back several decades. And, you know, it one one doesn't really get much of a reflection of that. In India because, you know, I think the government has its own means, assuming it's the government that's running that campaign in Europe. But the government has governments had their own means in our part of the world of influencing domestic public opinion and influencing the domestic media and as we've seen over decades and we've spoken about this in various track to meetings. Sometimes even the most feisty Pakistani or Indian media, which is happy to take potshots at its own government on a whole range of domestic issues, invariably tends to toe the line when it comes to foreign policy and national security. Perhaps this is true even of the US and other countries. I mean, we saw the way in which fake news to use the current term was was weaponized literally by the George W. Bush administration to launch the war on Iraq. So, so this is about the question that you're asking is the complex relationship between media coverage and, you know, the danger of conflict. Balakot and Pulwama. I think was an example. I mean the off ramp. You're right. There was an off ramp. And Pakistan's response helped to tamp down a situation that might otherwise have escalated but I don't think it was the media that did it. I think the Pakistani government decided that look, we don't want to escalate this. And they fed a certain narrative, which the Pakistani media was quite happy to to run with. There was very little effort made very, very few questions asked about why access wasn't given. I think the Indian side also exaggerated the extent to which it's bombing caused damage and destruction to so called terror infrastructure. But by, by, by suggesting that all that was hit for a few trees. The, you know, the Pakistani media was also kind of playing along with an official narrative. And in this instance, this helped us to dial back a little bit. But I think that there comes a time particularly when governments are a bit vulnerable. And I would say that the PTI government is rather vulnerable to public opinion. There is a tendency to use media jingoism to to up the ante. And, you know, as long as governments are in control of that narrative, you could say that they're still calling the shots right. The danger is what happens if the media narrative runs away from you. Right. And I have, I'm pretty sure that if I look at the last six years. There have been instances where certain initiatives taken by Prime Minister Modi. For example, the whole Pathan Court investigation, where he allowed Pakistani investigators to come into an Indian air base to collect evidence or his visit to Lahore for Nawaz Sharif's daughter's wedding or niece's wedding. Or even or other instances, I mean the media basically created such a cacophony that even if a powerful Prime Minister like Modi was thinking of taking some initiative, he decides to then pull back. So this is a fear of mine that that the media can get ahead of itself. I saw in the recent to move away from India Pakistan in the India China context. There was very definitely a push by by certain media channels to up the ante to try to push India into a corner and to, in other words, to lead first with the, with some kind of muscular military approach which would have been highly counterproductive. In this instance, the government is able to tap down. But there are going to be times when governments can't do that. And I think this is where the media then skirts, you know, the basically behaves quite irresponsibly. And I think this is not, you know, I think our obligation is to cover and report accurately and to ask questions. But if if journalists are going to become cheerleaders for conflict, or I'm going to go to the government into taking decisions, I think that could be problematic when it comes to dangerous of conflict. Yeah, exactly. I mean, that's that's why, you know, the fear is exactly this that once you have these repeated games that get the iterations of it, that is rather than acting as an off ramp. These individual media narratives might actually propel further action. Over to you Shaidu, sorry. You know, sort of you mentioned and we've seen this in Pakistan too. In recent times attempts to sort of, in order to control the control social media or control content online. You know, sort of successive governments of the state or the military continues to sort of seek avenues to sort of rain in those spaces. And I know that India, sorry Bangladesh has your reference to the Digital Security Act. Just give us a sense if you can about how that's playing out in Bangladesh. As you mentioned, they had there were protests against it. But what is the government's intention in sort of trying to enact legislation like that? I might have missed part of that conversation. I'll follow on the basis of what I did here. It's quite interesting that recently Facebook and Facebook is by far the most prevalent social media in Bangladesh. Facebook brought out a statement saying that in Bangladesh and in Vietnam that they found certain sites which were actually feeding this information and trolling and they stopped it. Maybe I can share share that image with you. Let me see if that works. I was going to try and do that. Let me see if it works now. That image. Can you can you see the highlighted image? It was going to be big, but it's not. Yeah, there it is. Can you see that image? Anyway, that's the gentleman in the gray hair is the telecommunication minister doing some sort of an inauguration of CRAF. And CRAF is this organization that Facebook identifies as the one creating this fake news. So in many of these situations, the biggest perpetrator of fake news is our government and they're the ones who are the best resourced. They're the ones who have far more, you know, support at many levels, resource, not just in money in many other ways. But some of the things which are very interesting, I mean Sid had mentioned this earlier, but the penalties for digital use is much higher for digital crimes, if you like, as they're called, is much higher than the same version in analog. So a crime in print media has a certain penalty, the penalty for the same thing in digital is far greater. And this is absolutely no logic for it, but that's the way it works. But really what has happened time and time again, I mean, we knew when we had the elections, for instance, or what was called elections, the fact that internet being cut down and that's happens in Kashmir. It happens in our place. It happens in many other places is a very clear way in which the government tries to control that narrative through whatever means it can and he can't. But it does get problematic. I mean, while I was in jail, I met several people who'd been arrested because they had liked or shared what I put up on Facebook. That was their crime. There have been juveniles who've been arrested because of statements they've made. They've been planted. And it's known that they're planted information that's been put out, which has led to massive government supported attack on minorities and things like that, which have been done for land grabbing purposes. So this thing out there is there for anyone to use and the biggest player in town is the government. So they're the ones who can use it. The good thing is that they're not while they're big, they're not necessarily either so clever or so agile or so skilled. So there are people outside of the government who know how to use this media and use it well. So while the government has been trying all these things, they've not been entirely successful, but it is, it is a concern. I will also talk a little bit about some of the other things I think that need to be brought out in terms of how media is cut. The fact that the judiciary and the administration law enforcement authorities behave very, very differently when it comes to pro-government decisions opposing the government. Mr Rooney is a very high profile couple, a mere couple who were murdered in February 2011. Now, the prosecution, there is a prosecution and at that time the Home Minister has said we will provide, we will bring the people we know who they are, we'll bring them to court justice within 24 hours. It's from 2011 till now, the prosecution has deferred submitting their deposition 71 times. And it's Kafkaist, but they can get away with it. 71 times they've deferred it and they will continue doing it. They've done something like that with Kalpana Chakma and the Chitagong Hill Tracks, which, you know, that disappearance was, it's not a media related thing, but similar in the sense that, you know, since January, June 12, 1996 when she was disappeared, up till now they haven't been able to close the case. So that is a problem that the media also does face because at the end of the day, the media does need to rely upon the court for many of the things it has to do and the court simply isn't prepared to play its role. Yeah, no, I mean, you know, I think you've seen that, of course, in Pakistan too, where the rights you have, the right to information, fundamental rights are often only as valuable as the court's willingness or the judiciary's willingness to enforce them. And, you know, in Pakistan, we see just maybe a few a handful of judges are willing to take up certain cases, but most are willing to look for more than happy to look the other way. Since we've got just a few more minutes to go, I'm going to like ask the Rukshi to first, but it's the same question for all three of you, and it's like a two part question that I have and that I'm interested. Number one, you know, sort of at the level of South Asia, is it possible for there to be some kind of better coordination amongst journalists or journalists, bodies, etc. To try and address many of the familiar and similar challenges that we have. Do you see that as a viable path, you know, sort of going forward. And I think, you know, obviously, because their policy makers sitting out here in DC and people are tuning in, would be interested, there's a new administration coming in here in the US. And is there a sense that there's something, you know, that this administration after the previous one, it's a break from what the last four years were seems to be, whether there is something that, you know, sitting in South Asia from our countries perspective, so media in our countries, that can be done to help or to assist and, you know, sort of understanding fully well that there are certain local dynamics that will continue regardless. So we do the Rukshi and then to Siddharth and finally to Shahidul, you know, just a couple of minutes each we've got just five minutes to go. Okay, I'll be really brief. Agree that collectively working as a collective seems to be the only way because as individuals, we do try and the institutions are really no support. There was a time when there was institutions for journalists and the cause of journalism and for rights of journalists and media workers, but that's the corner. And in that reality, while this is not the most successful, but the only way forward possibly is to understand our issues, understand the common threads, and also collectively. So if I may make one, one example, share one example, I think Shahidul, Shahidul's, you know, situation, what happened to Shahidul, and how the community of journalists across South Asia, with all of our divisions, with all of our patinas, with all possible problems, we still had one voice and a strong voice that was supportive of him and demanding his release. So it was quite heartening for me sitting in Colombo to see how people would still, despite what is being said, despite the bad press, despite the propaganda against him and what was happening. But still you can triumph over some of these things. So I think we actually within this group, we still have people we can look up to for their courage and also for the support that the community can extend to each other. I do believe in a South Asian possibility of at least taking up issues and standing by each other with our difficult systems, with our difficult governments, and our absolutely divided ways of handling things. Siddharth? Sorry, I think it's... There have been a few initiatives in the past. There was SAFMA, South Asia Free Media Association, and there is now, I think under the auspices of the Commonwealth Human Rights CHRI, there's something called SAMDON, South Asian Media Defenders Network, of which I'm a part. And we do issue statements of solidarity across the board. I think the Lukshi is also part of that. And I think that these statements do get reported. I can't but help that they do have a positive impact. So I think even though the trajectory of domestic politics in the four major South Asian countries that are represented here, but I would also, if I were to add Nepal, Maldives, and Bhutan, the trajectory of domestic politics is really very, very different. And much as we like to think of ourselves as South Asian, there is very little day-to-day interaction. Bangladesh speaks the same language as West Bengal, but no West Bengal-based newspaper has a correspondent in Bangladesh. And there's very little reporting of Bangladeshi politics and Bangladeshi internal affairs in the West Bengal press. So there is a certain insularity. Sri Lanka gets reported primarily from the dimension of the ethnic issue. And that too, there's a lot of interest in Tamil Nadu, but not elsewhere in India. But I think that as journalists, as editors, as media people in the media sector, we do recognize the common challenges and the common threats that we face. When I read the DSA, the Digital Security Act that Shahidul Bai spoke about, and particularly, I think section 25, nasty section, it sends a chill down my spine that if such a law were to come to pass in India, how this would be used against people like us. So I think that just as states learn from each other, I think we need to learn from each other. And I can't minimize the importance of this kind of solidarity. What the best forum or platform might be is a different matter. But what we've done in the past has been effective, and I think we need to revive that and strengthen that. Great. And Shahidul, last word to you. I'll repeat what Dilruksha said. I mean, in a sense, it is really incredible the solidarity we had at that time from journalists in India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Nepal, across the board, and very creative interventions, which is very heartening. And I think the first official letter we had was Raghuray writing an open letter to the Prime Minister, which he sent the day after my arrest. It was very prompt as well. It was followed up. Gurbiz Singh later invited me and I gave away the press awards at the Mumbai Press Club. So how is it the Bombay Press Club? I'm not sure. But since then, India has stopped giving visas. So they've obviously found their ways of dealing with it. And there are these official narratives that overrun. But I think there is another aspect to it. I mean, I will go along with what Siddharth said to an extent. When you consider the histories of Pakistan and India vis-à-vis Bangladesh, I mean, obviously the role that Pakistan and India played in 1971 were so extremely different. And one would assume that Bangladesh would have a far greater affinity for India than for Pakistan. But today, if there was a cricket match between India and Pakistan, the audience in Bangladesh would be evenly divided. And that is unbelievable to imagine that how within such a short time India has managed to lose so much goodwill. Because Indian media hasn't really taken up the role of recognizing what Bangladesh has felt about border killings, that continue to go on, about water sharing and other issues, which should be issues which we collectively, journalistically with rigor and analysis, deal with, try and unpack. But that has not happened. And I think, you know, the institutions that exist are there, but that needs to be strengthened. And we will all gain because of it. Yeah, thanks for that. Well, I mean, I agree. I think it's been my sense and also my experience across in Pakistan, that sort of a regional or international response to events happening to individuals within our countries really can have a positive impact. Unfortunately, we've come to an end. It's been a great hour and a half here. I think we could go on for another couple of hours. That's how journalists do things. But, you know, sort of, I'm just going to thank all of you for giving us your time and your insights into what's happening in each one of your countries. And I'm just going to close on the hope that, you know, sort of 1.75 billion people in the countries that we live in, they deserve a better media than they're getting today. And let's hope that 2021, if it doesn't bring drastic improvement, at least we'll arrest the slide. Thank you very much. Thank you.