India worst regional offender of press freedom in Asia Pacific: Report

How safe is the profession of the fourth estate in India? Not much, says Transparency International (TI) in its latest report on Corruption Perceptions Index. It clubbed India with the Philippines and the Maldives as the worst nations in the Asia Pacific so far as press freedom is concerned. "Philippines, India and the Maldives are among the worst regional offenders in this respect (press freedom). These countries score high for corruption and have fewer press freedoms and higher numbers of journalist deaths," said the report by TI. The report gave a link to the Committee to Protect Journalists, which gives a list of journalists killed in various countries since 1992. The list contains the name of Gauri Lankesh, killed in 2017. However, all other journos killed were in the previous regimes, according to the list. India's rank has fallen two notches to 81 in 2017 from 79 in 2016 in the Corruption Perception Index, released by TI. Its score remained intact at 40 points.

It had 38 points in 2015. TI finds crackdowns on NGOs and media are associated with higher levels of corruption in the world. The index in 2017 reveals some disturbing information — despite attempts to combat corruption around the world, the majority of countries are moving too slowly in their efforts. While stemming the tide against corruption takes time, in the last six years many countries have still made little to no progress, the global civil society organisation said. Even more alarming, further analysis of the index results indicates that countries with the lowest protections for press and non-governmental organisations (NGOs) also tend to have the worst rates of corruption. Transparency International said every week a journalist is killed in a highly corrupt country. It found that almost all journalists killed since 2012 were killed in corrupt countries. “No activist or reporter should have to fear for their lives when speaking out against corruption,” said Patricia Moreira, managing director of Transparency International. “Given current crackdowns on both civil society and the media worldwide, we need to do more to protect those who speak up.” The analysis by Transparency International showed that in the last six years, more than 9 out of 10 journalists were killed in countries that score 45 or less on the Corruption Perceptions Index. This means that, on average, every week at least one journalist is killed in a country that is highly corrupt. In addition, one in five journalists that died were covering a story about corruption. Sadly, justice was never served in the majority of these cases, the civil society organisation observed.