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Journalist Burned Alive In India For Facebook Post Exposing Corruption
arnott writes: Journalist Jagendra Singh used a Facebook page to expose corruption in the state of Uttar Pradesh in India. Though he posted under a pseudonym, he was quickly found and burned alive by police, allegedly on the order of the minister accused. He died a week later from his injuries. This is not the first case of a journalist being attacked in this state. Amnesty International had urged the local government to launch an official investigation, and now five policemen and a politician have been brought up on murder charges. What can Facebook or other companies do to help these journalists report on corruption in a safe manner?
India actually has some reasonably peppy militia groups(naxalites being the most prominent; but hardly the only ones). Unfortunately, the response has been less "Oh gosh, we'd better start taking the people's concerns seriously!" and more "Per the powers granted under the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act, 1967; the Terrorist and Disruptive Activities Prevention Act, 1985, and the Prevention of Terrorism Act, 2002; if you happen to 'disappear' after a run-in with the cops, or your body shows up unannounced at the morgue with signs of torture and a bullet in its head, we can just say you were a terrorist and drop the issue with impunity".
It's not like all of India is run this way, any more than all US police forces spend all their time shooting blacks and seizing assets; but there are places(Uttar Pradesh is a good candidate to be one of them) where you are liable to get some really, really, bad news about how 'rule of law' actually works if you cross the wrong local strongman.
Exactly, for American readers, it's like the Wild West. Courts are literally packed smoked filled rooms filled with defendants, police, lawyers and a judge all shouting and screaming and the defendant is basically unable to decipher what or when the judge is handling his case except his lawyer comes up periodically and tells him something .
Cases take years and decades to go tot trial and in the meantime, anything goes usually, dependant on the connections and wealth of the defendant. IF yo're poor, you're fucked. If it's high profile, you have a right to a speedy kangaroo court. If you're rich with connections , you skate.
I know people who legally own homes and property that other just random people have taken up residency in and there's really nothing they can do about it. They can take them to court but it will take years and years for the case to be heard and in the meantime, those random people are just go non living there.
It's like that.
If it did, it wouldn't be crime, now would it? A state openly run by the Mafia would simply be your run-of-the-mill military dictatorship or warlord-ridden anarchy, depending on whether a single faction was supreme or not.
No, what we're seeing here is the difference between official and real culture. That is what corruption is, at its core: a culture tries to pretend it's something else - something better - than it actually is, a kind of "werewolf state" which mauls people by night and damns wolfs by day. Everyone goes along with the lie because when someone points out the hypocrisy, the mask of decency slips and the beast comes out.
But when the beast is out, it can be seen by all. That is its weakness. People can no longer pretend everything is fine; they must either openly submit to the wolf - and accept they're going to be devoured - or fight to rid themselves of it. And this beast has no claws of its own, only those lent to it by its slaves. Knowing that, it too must choose whether to strike back and risk breaking its spell entirely, or give up some of its malevolence and become less like a wolf and more like a human.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
I clearly need to be more detailed in my comments. My bad. See two comments aboe you for connection between encryption and anonymity.
Encryption -not of content (the story) but of internet connections- is what permits people to post and read online anonymously.
If people can find out what your IP address is or otherwise get at what computer you were using to author the story then they have an excellent chance at identifying you. To defeat this and remain anonymous, encryption is used by software like TOR to hopelessly obscure the actual source of the computer.
If you surf using some form of encryption to hide your actual IP address it makes it hard for low-level bad guys, even ones with govt. connections, to know who you are.
Of course very powerful goverments like the US can track you, absolutely using a VPN (we know this from Snowden) and probably even TOR can't protect you anymore - that is just my best guess given how TOR works and the what resources that government has at its disposal.
But it takes a nation-state level effort to do that. This guy was not killed by someone with access to that kind of power.
HTH
It's not like all of India is run this way
India is actually becoming much less corrupt, and for a reason that should make us nerds happy: technology. India runs vast welfare schemes, including subsidized rice and fuel, and guaranteed work programs. In the past, these were done on a cash basis, and hopelessly corrupted, with each layer of authorities skimming off their percentage, until only a fraction reached the poor. But the cash has been replaced with a combination ID and debit card that cuts out all the intermediaries. This has weakened corrupt networks, and raised people's expectations, so they are demanding cleaner government in other areas. The Internet, and especially social media, has made exposing corruption much easier. Sites like I Paid a Bribe are very popular in India.
It is sad that this journalist was killed, but it is actually a sign of progress, because at least the crooks saw him as a viable threat. A decade ago he would have just been ignored.