“We Are the New Enemies of the State,” Says Rana Ayyub

SARA SIDNER, HOST: Now, press freedom in decline in the world’s largest democracy, India slipping to 150th of 180 countries on this year’s World Press Freedom Index. Journalist Rana Ayyub has often come under fire for her reporting with the U.N. calling on Indian authorities to end the judicial harassment against her. She joins Hari Sreenivasan to discuss the threats she receives and the issue plaguing journalism in her country.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

HARI SREENIVASAN, CORRESPONDENT: Rana Ayyub, thanks so much for joining us. Rana, just at the end of June, you were awarded the highest honor from the National Press Club, the Aubuchon Award. But when you look at the list of people who’ve received this award, Maria Ressa right now in the Philippines, who is fighting for her ability to continue to do journalism, Jason Rezaian, who was imprisoned by Iran for 544 days, Jamal Khashoggi, who was murdered, when you look at this list, and people from the outside looking at your work, what are the challenges that you are facing in committing your acts of journalism on a daily basis?

RANA AYYUB, “THE WASHINGTON POST”: Well, thank you so much for having me in this interview, Hari. Within half-an-hour of the National Press Club informing me that I’m receiving this award, I got news that a journalist friend, Mohammed Zubair, has been arrested by Delhi police for fact-checking fake news in India. And right as we talk, he has been sent into judicial custody for busting fake news of a news channel that routinely does dog whistle against Muslim communities. So, he has been sent behind bars for impacting communal harmony in a country, for stopping fake news, for busting fake news. So this award is a — while it is a shot in the arm, it is scary because we are living in a time when journalists are the new enemies of the state, more so in India, where the world’s largest democracy is descending in some kind of a police state. What we’re witnessing every day, it feels like — it feels Orwellian. It feels like I’m living in a dystopia where journalists are being arrested, intimidated for speaking truth to power to save the constitutional values. In the last one week, I have got the most disturbing death and rape threats. I’m speaking to you on this interview. I don’t even know if this interview will be held against me, and I could be booked for laws like sedition. I don’t know what my future in India looks like, because a lot of well-meaning friends are telling me to leave the country. But that’s not a choice that I have got right now, because this is the country of my birth. This is the country of my forefathers. And this is a country I choose to speak the truth about to celebrate its democracy ethos.

SREENIVASAN: You have been the target of so many different accusations and investigations by the government, which you say are unjustified. I mean, your bank account has been frozen twice as part of a — what the government says is a money laundering and tax evasion investigation into whether you mishandled funds that you raised for COVID relief. You have been charged with defamation in several states across India. And at points, you have been stopped by immigration and prevented from leaving. But how do you respond to this kind of scrutiny? I mean, what is it that — do they — have they provided any evidence to you to say this is our evidence of why you have mishandled funds?

AYYUB: I have responded to the Indian government’s summons by appearing before the agencies. And this is the question that I have been asking them. You have accused me of money laundering over relief work done that by — for COVID-19 victims, for slum dwellers who did not have access to basic health care. During all this, the government of India has taken 35 percent of the money raised on the funds as income tax. And on the same hand, they have accused me of misappropriating funds, when every single penny of the fund has been accounted for. I even gave a chunk of the money to a hospital for a pediatric COVID board. But the hospital had to return the money, because the government officials called them and said, you cannot take her money. So you do not want me to spend the money. And, when I do, you’re accusing me of misappropriating the funds. So, the government is basically desperate to try to build a case against me. Three weeks ago, I have got another notice that says you have to submit all your foreign remittances. So what started with money laundering has now gone on to submitting my foreign remittances. They have asked me for my contract with “Washington Post” and Substack. They have asked me for my contractual obligations with international publications, including “TIME” magazine, for whom I wrote a devastating cover last year. They have asked me a copy of the contract that I shared with “TIME” magazine to build this narrative that I am taking foreign money to discredit India, to destabilize India. My bank accounts are being discussed on live television. My earnings of the last 15 years have been termed as proceeds of crime. Me and my family, we have been made a free-for-all. I don’t have a personal life. Everything that I do in my life is being dissected for a lynch — virtual lynch mob out there, which is waiting for this government signal to come after me. So, this is what my daily life is. And this is what each one of us is facing right now.

SREENIVASAN: From the outside, if I look at India, I will say, look, that this is a country with more than 140,000 registered news publications. There’s 400 TV channels. How does she feel that she’s being picked on? Isn’t there a vibrant press in this country?

AYYUB: India has a vibrant press on paper, but look at the Reporters Sans Frontieres’ own reports on world press freedom. India is much worse than countries which do not even have a democracy. Let me give you a few examples. Sidhique Kappan, a journalist, a Muslim journalist, has been behind bars for the last three years. He was on his way to Hathras to report the gang rape of a lower-class girl. He was apprehended on the way while he was on going to report a story. He had not even reported the story. For the last three years, he has been behind bars. When his mother died, and she was troubled by her son’s incarceration, he was not even allowed to go for her last rites. Another journalist Zubair Ahmed, is from the Andamans. He put out a tweet about misgovernance due to COVID. He was arrested for the tweet. Three days ago, the journalist died by suicide. His psychiatrist said that he was taking antidepressants since the case. In Kashmir (INAUDIBLE) a Kashmiri journalist was stopped a week ago. She was awarded the Pulitzer Prize. She was stopped a week ago at the airport when she was on her way to France to display her work. Kashmiri journalists are being picked up randomly from their homes for their alleged seditious work. I have — I have Kashmiri journalist friends who are literally in hiding in Delhi right now as we talk. So this vibrant press that you’re talking about is only on paper. And I can say this as a Muslim journalist also. I mean, I would have never thought that I would call myself a Muslim journalist when such are the times that most of the journalists who are being arrested of late are also being arrested because the government wants to set an example. These are Muslim journalists who the government is trying to create a narrative that these are anti-nationals who are reporting against Hindu sentiments. Hindu sentiments — the latest is hurting Hindu sentiments, hurting the sentiment of the largest majority right now. So that is what we are being accused of.

SREENIVASAN: Is there anything specific that you have heard back, perhaps in writing, from the government that — as to why you are under such scrutiny? I mean, you have certainly written unflattering pieces. There was a piece in “TIME” last year that — I think it was titled “This is how Prime Minister Modi’s failure to lead is deepening India’s COVID-19 crisis.” There were a lot of people critical of India’s COVID response. But you have been covering Prime Minister Modi for 20-plus years now. So is it because of what you reported out of the Gujarat riots? Is it because of what you said during the COVID pandemic? Why you? Why now?

AYYUB: I think I have been a consistent target of Mr. Modi’s government, whether he was the chief — when he was the chief minister of Gujarat, when I went to Gujarat to talk about his role in the Gujarat genocide of Muslims, or the extrajudicial murder of Muslims, because I have consistently been calling out the bigotry and dog whistle. I have consistently maintained that Narendra Modi was complicit during the 2022 Gujarat riots, when 1,000 Muslims were killed, because he was silent throughout it all. I have been to relief camps and I have met families and women who are being gang raped and children who have lost their families and who have witnessed the worst possible horrors. I was 19 then. I have documented that, because I’m a child of the Bombay riots in ’92-’93, when a mob came to my house to pick me and my sister for a gang rape. So I know what this feels like, the trauma feels like. And I have been consistently reporting. My truth has not changed. In 2014, a lot of well-meaning journalists in India said, Modi is now the prime minister. We should probably look at him with a different lens. And I said, one cannot develop amnesia over a leader’s past just because he’s become the prime minister of the country. And it was not my observation. The Supreme Court of India in an open court in 2004 called the Modi government modern-day Neros who looked the other way as innocent women and children were burning. My job, as a journalist, is to be a witness. Irrespective of the clout that Mr. Modi builds in the country, that truth is not going to change. My truth will not change. What I witnessed on the ground is — will not change. I maintain, even today, what Mr. Moody didn’t put out (ph) at that point of time, he’s repeating the same formula today as the worst crimes happened in the name of religion, Mr. Moody remains silent. He’s a Twitter savvy prime, who likes to tweet and Facebook about everything. Why not a single tweet saying that India should maintain its democratize character, its plural character, its sick look (ph) character? I think Mr. Moody is enabling what we are witnessing in India through science (ph), and that’s the truth I cannot look away from.

SREENIVASAN: You know, just recently, India joined several G7 nations in trying to, at least on paper, value of free press, right? And the prime minister himself set up a committee to try to improve India’s ranking in the World Press Freedom Index, which has India near the bottom. When you see the government trying to improve itself, what’s your reaction to this? I mean, is it for our consumption, the rest of the world, so to speak?

AYYUB: On the day that he signed — he was at the G7 Summit on the day he signed the agreement for — the press freedom and of free speech, that’s the already day that Mohammed Zubair was arrested. A couple of days ago, I got a note from Twitter that they had decided to withhold my account in India. And then, later, they showed a clarification that they had decided to withhold some of my tweets critical of the Indian government in 2021 that was related to COVID-19 carnage in India. The Indian government has also withheld tweets of freedom house that’s — that downgraded India’s democratic, you know, status. So, what is Mr. Moody trying to suggest when he’s trying to create this internal bodies to monitor press freedom? I mean, if Mr. Moody is really so concerned about the press freedom ratings, how about taking a press conference The man has not taking a press conference in the last eight years.You were speaking about my “Times” magazine coverage in which I spoke about the COVID-19 devastation. It was absolutely important for me to do that “Times” magazine cover story because at the time when COVID was ravaging then, dead bodies were flowing on the Ganga. The prime minister and his whole minister were taking political rallies with tens of thousands of people leading to the call with 19 carnage. And as soon as I did the “Times” magazine cover, within seven days, I got a notice from the Income Tax Department asking for nonpayment of advanced tax. So, this is very hard. Mr. Moody, if he really means that he wants to be committed to press freedom, he needs to speak to each one of us. He needs to answer critical questions instead of doing scripted interviews with just one news agency, which he has been doing for the last seven to eight years. The first interview that he did with the news agency in 2014, keep calling critical news journalists as newsreaders. That’s how we came to power as well as the prime minister of the country. So, I’m not expecting any better standards from the prime minister.

SREENIVASAN: Let’s talk a little bit about Twitter. On the one hand, it is a platform where you have a million and a half followers. You’re able to share, in this case, most of your thoughts on lots of topics, right? And on the other hand, what you’re saying is, if I’m understanding correctly, that the Indian government is able to ask Twitter to selectively delete some of your free expressions, right?

AYYUB: Yes. Well, that’s — Indian government has reached out to Twitter asking to delete my account, remove my tweets that are critical of the government under the ID Act. Now, Twitter has approached the (INAUDIBLE) with a lawsuit that says that any such action is detrimental to the ideals of a democracy and the fundamentals of free press. Now, fortunately or unfortunately, Twitter has become a space for so many of us independent journalists where we can express ourselves in — without gatekeepers monitoring or censoring us. Many of us are independent journalists. I might be a global opinions writer with “The Washington Post,” but the truth is that part of domestic audience where Indian audience, I do not have any platform to express myself. In absence of any — because most domestic obligations do not want to publish me because there are so many cases against me. I do have a platform internationally. But Twitters has — is the space, Facebook, Instagram, these are spaces that allow me to speak my mind and that allows me to have an audience in India. But of the last couple of weeks, there’s not a single day that I do not get a mail from Twitter that, we have got an e-mail from agencies asking to move your tweet. In the interest of prosperous, we are telling this to you, every day. But at the same time, almost every day there is a Twitter trends that says, arrest Rana Ayyub. The day before yesterday, there were 30,000 tweets, some of them asking for a gang rape — to enter my house and gang me and my five-year-old niece. The Deli place which is very proactive in arresting journalists. the day place just very. I keep that in them in these tweets, they don’t listen to me. The kind of explicit death and rape tweets I have received, I would not wish on my worst enemy. But I don’t know, this is what this is the free space that we — free space that we have been accorded, Hari.

SREENIVASAN: So, how, how do you keep going? How do you not let kind of pessimism get the best of you here?

AYYUB: Trust me, there are days that just — it does get to me. There are days when I have called my psychiatrist and said, I cannot deal with it. It does get to you when you’re monitored. Even in a foreign country, when your actions are being monitored, when your movements are being monitored. I know what a fact that I — when I step out of the house, there is somebody monitoring me. I know that I’m being monitored. I know that my phone calls are being monitored. But this is exactly where I’m campaigning against, a civilian state and undemocratic state. And none of us — a lot of being a (ph) journalist say, oh, you’re being very brave. No, I don’t think I’m brave. I’m — I don’t even have the luxury of being brave. I’m just speaking a truth which might be unbelievable but has to be spoken.

SREENIVASAN: You know, you wrote once that, we should stop calling journalist brave. That there is something more structural that’s a problem when we do that.

AYYUB: I think by calling us brave, we are normalizing the hate and the intimidation that is directed at us. None of us need to go through this for doing our fundamental job of speaking true to public (ph), for doing something as basic as building witness (ph). So, I don’t think why anyone of us should be brave. I don’t think why Sadiq Kopan (ph) should be brave. I don’t think why Mohammed Zubair should be brave. I don’t think why Asif Sultan (ph) should be brace. This is a (INAUDIBLE) when they have not celebrated, eat with their families. When you say brave, you’re literally shooting (ph) from my shoulders, saying, oh, let he speak because she’s brave. No, I don’t want to be brave. I don’t want to be monitored because, oh, she was brave and she chose this. No. My friends have been messaging me saying, listen, just lie low for a while. Don’t read. Don’t write. Is that what is being normalized? Why should lying no read normalized in a country which calls itself the world’s largest democracy? I thought criticism was the most saliant creatures (ph) of the Indian democracy? What we do not realize is, I love my country more than all these people who label me an anti-national (ph). And I’m not able to prove my love for this country. And it is my love for India, it is my love for this country that I have chosen to stay here. It is my love of the country that I continue to speak, to defend essentially both into the country. Of course, to me, (INAUDIBLE) this country.

SREENIVASAN: Journalist Rana Ayyub, thanks so much for joining us.

AYYUB: Thank you so much.