Det siste tilfelle i Canada der en sikh-leder angis være drept av indiske agenter illustrerer hvordan noen regimer opptrer i et stadium av sin utvikling mot hemningsløs styresett:
Fra før av har vi nylig hatt Saudi-Arabia med mordet av Khashoggi i Tyrkia i 2018. Og vi har Russlands med flere giftdrap, som i London.
Og så har vi Iran med fatwaen som ble utsatt for her i Norge i 1993, med drapsforsøket på William Nygaard.
I lang tid har vi hatt Israel med slike operasjoner i flere land. I Norge så vi dette på nært hold på Lillehammer der Mossad drepte feil mann i 1973. Men Israel har gjort slike drap i flere land, spesielt i Midt-Østen.
Nå ser vi India følger etter. Modi fører en farlig politikk der grupper i India settes opp mot hverandre. Dette er skremmende i et land med 1,4 milliarder mennesker. Men det viser hvordan hemningsløselse styresett tar lærdom av hverandre. De følger samme kurs der disse holdingene også gjenspeiler seg i militær oppførsel.
Dette er en skremmende utvikling. Som verden må eksponere, analysere og forholde seg til mer prinsippielt.
Ny Info: 22. november 2023 "US thwarts plot to kill Sikh separatist and issues diplomatic warning to India"
Skudeneshavn 20. september 2023 / 22. november 2023
India har en antiterrorlov som i økende grad blir brukt til å arrestere journalister og forkjempere av menneskerettigher som er kritiske til statsminister Modi's styre:
"How a terrorism law in India is being used to silence Modi’s critics" "The BJP government is exploiting a terrorism prevention law to intimidate dissenters from lawyers, journalists, priests, poets to Kashmiri civilians." (The Guardian 10.des. 2021)
En påminnelse i disse dager ... ref. Nobelprisen. India må føyes til de land som bruker lovgivning til å undertrykke politisk kritikk. Og det må være internasjonal oppmerksomhet om dette.
EDIT: 6. februar 2022 "Editor arrested in Kashmir as press crackdown escalates" (The Guardian)
Det "eskaleres" i Indias knuging av Kashmir. Når fri presse blir beskyldt for "terrorisme" ... da er man kommet langt i undertrykkingen.
India under Modis ledelse beveger seg mer og mer mot det ekstrem-nasjonalisme. Det er en skremmende utvikling.
I Was Targeted by NSO Spyware. Here's How Israel Is Helping Modi Undermine India's Democracy
Swati Chaturvedi
July 25, 2021From
trolls to NSO: India's ruling party already uses troll farms to shut up
critics, to threaten rape and death, to incite against the Muslim
community. But for PM Modi, that clearly wasn't enough Adnan Abidi/
REUTERS
India loves to describe herself as the world’s largest democracy, and
Israel as the only democracy in the Middle East. Yet opaque officials
and executives in both countries have come together in a dark dance
against democracy.
Indian journalists, top political leaders, judges and civil servants sworn to protect our constitution were subjected
to an intrusive surveillance campaign, a "hijacking" of our phones, by
military grade surveillance spyware sold by the Israeli company NSO.
I am an investigative journalist, and for two years, I was one of the targets
of that invasive Pegasus spyware. In other words, for two years, aided
by Israeli technology, my own government was snooping on me.
The spyware called Pegasus is marketed for use against terrorists and
drug lords. It is so powerful and intrusive that it is sold only to
governments, according to NSO, and every sale requires a sign off from
the government of Israel itself. And according to Forbidden Stories,
the not-for-profit media organization that, in partnership with a
consortium of global publications, broke the story about the reach and
misuse of the spyware, once the spyware was deployed our phones were, in
effect, weaponized against us.
So why did the Modi government decide to treat me like the head of a crime syndicate, or a bloodthirsty terrorist?
Swati
Chaturvedi: I'm an independent journalist with no institutional
security. I put my my loved ones in danger each time I expose wrongdoing
in India’s elite. And the Modi government is unforgivingSwati
Chaturvedi
Since Narendra Modi came to power in 2014 he, like many strongman
leaders around the world, has treated the free press with disdain
bordering on contempt. During the seven years Modi has been in power
(he’s now in his second term) he has never once held a press conference.
This is a first in the history of India's democracy: all prime ministers before him made themselves available for scrutiny by the free press.
In many ways, Modi was a trendsetter in using social media, bypassing
traditional media, to reach out to voters and control the political
narrative, first as the state of Gujarat’s Chief Minister and later as
candidate for the premiership. Yet the same pioneering spirit led to a
deeply problematic usage of Twitter which has outsize political
influence in India, with a user base and reach estimated at between 18 million and 100 million.
Starting in 2014, I and other journalists were savagely trolled for
asking question (our job) about the government’s policies and behavior.
Women journalists in particular were targeted: we were sent rape
threats, pornographic pictures and subjected to vile slander about
"affairs" with opposition leaders. Our "rates" as prostitutes were
discussed.
As an investigative journalist, the only way I could to retaliate
against this daily, horrific abuse was to investigate it. I delved into
the Bharatiya Janata Party’s social media operations for two years,
turned an abusive troll into a source, and discovered that the party in
power was paying to have dissenting citizens targeted for abusive and
concerted pile-ons.
Congress
workers in Kolkata shout slogans during a protest against Indian Prime
Minister Narendra Modi and the Pegasus spyware scandal last
weekDIBYANGSHU SARKAR - AFP
The result of my work was a book, "I am a Troll: Inside the BJP’s
Secret Digital Army," which established incontrovertibly that
BJP-directed trolls, called yodhas (warriors) attacked all critics of Modi in a synchronized fashion, and that the ruling party used troll farms to shut up critics.
The trolls pushed rape and death threats, as well as communal
incitement against India’s Muslim community to incite riots. From
inflaming rioters using fake news to organizing boycott campaigns
against Bollywood movie actors like Aamir Khan (who, together with his
wife, Kiran Rao, had expressed alarm at rising intolerance in India, and was then accused by the BJP of participating in a "political conspiracy to defame India"), the trolls did it all.
Modi even outplayed Donald Trump’s worst Twitter excesses: he openly
followed the trolls responsible for threatening violence and rape and
participated in incitement too. One troll followed by Modi celebrated
the cold-blooded murder of journalist Gauri Lankesh in September 2107 by
tweeting: "A bitch has died and her puppies are crying." Despite the
justified outrage, Modi has yet to unfollow a single abusive Twitter
account.
Perhaps it was my book, which won a Reporters without Borders prize
for courage, triggered the Modi government’s decision to hack my phone.
Perhaps it was the investigative stories about disturbing conflicts of
interests in his party and government, or the reporting on allegations of corruption relating to the multibillion dollar deal for French Rafale fighter jets, which made the government decide I should be treated like a terrorist.
I would love to say that, having won a prize for courageous
reporting, I indeed have indomitable courage in my everyday life. But I
am an independent journalist, without any institutional security. I put
my family, my loved ones, even my dogs at risk every time I expose a
wrong doing connected to India’s power centers.
The Modi government is unforgiving. I have had job offers dry up, my
government accreditation withdrawn, a talk I was to give in a foreign
embassy canceled, repeated ad unfounded harassment by the tax
authorities, and a social media profile contaminated by slander and
defamation.
Bharatiya
Janata Party (BJP) supporters wear masks depicting Prime Minister
Narendra Modi at a rally addressed by Modi ahead of West Bengal state
elections in Kolkata, India earlier this yearBikas Das,AP
I am passionate about my job but I did not sign up for this kind of
intimidation – or this kind of intrusive surveillance. When my phone’s
microphone and camera could be remotely controlled to invade my own
privacy and that of my loved ones; where I have to consider the
grotesque idea that even the privacy of my own bedroom could have become
gratuitous viewing for those spying on me.
I still get chills thinking about the independent forensic analysis
which revealed that an earlier phone of mine was infected with Pegasus,
and my current phone also showed infected logs. The outrage, the
incredible hurt, that your own country did this to you, hits you each
day afresh. I broke down and cried when I told my father about the
surveillance. I wanted to be comforted for what had been done to me.
I will never give up being an investigative journalist. And I think
only cowards, drunk on such absolute power, act in such paranoid ways. I
also wonder what on earth has happened to my own country’s national
security priorities. Surely China, which has intruded into our sovereign territory, would have been a worthy target for my government, not me.
The abuse of spyware has gone viral in the Indian government. It is
perpetrator, judge and jury. Forensic investigation has revealed that
malware was planted in activists’ computers, which then became the
evidence to hold them in jail without bail under draconian anti-terror
laws. I still get nightmares thinking the government could have used
Pegasus to plant such malware in my phone and put me in prison, and I
would have had no recourse.
A
man walks past the logo of Israeli cyber firm NSO Group at one of its
branches in the Arava desert, southern Israel AMIR COHEN/ REUTERS
And I am angry at the Israeli government for licensing
such a reckless sale of spyware that so obviously invites weaponization
and abuse by a government in India that can fairly be described as
embracing digital authoritarianism. Why is Israel’s NSO group allowed to
get away with, allegedly, offering its clients around the world the
possibility of targeting more than 50,000 phones, including 300 in
India?
The truth is very different from the high-minded talk coming from
NSO, that its advanced spyware is a path for progress against drastic
national security threats and crime.
The toxic cyberweapon they sell, and the shadowy, implausible process
they, and the Israeli government, follow to ensure it is not abused,
have created for authoritarian leaders a vector for surveillance, the
invasion of privacy, the intimidation and prosecution of the free press
and even, in the wrong hands, murder.
For the sake of its relations with the democracy camp in India and
around the world, Israel needs to shut down NSO and companies like it.
Swati Chaturvedi is an award-winning print and broadcast
journalist. She regularly contributes investigative stories and analysis
to NDTV.com and Gulf News, and is a frequent political commentator on television. She is the author of "I am a Troll: Inside the BJP’s Secret Digital Army" (2016). Twitter: @bainjal
USA:
- Gerrymandering ... kunstig grensedragning av stemmekretser
- Utnevnelse til Høyesterett
- Trump blokkerer det innsyn Kongressen har krav på
UK:
- Boris Johnson nærmest "avsetter" Parlamentet
India:
- Modi
Ungarn
Polen
Israel
Metodene er tydelige ... og går igjen:
Nasjonalisme, Populisme, Førsøk på å overta/politisere domstolene, Angrep på den frie presse ...
Det er ytrehøyre-kreftene som står for dette.
De har penger og ideologi i ryggen.
Og er skamløse i sin framferd ... jfr Trump i USA og Boris Johnson i UK.
Det som hjelper er EKSPONERING ... og diskusjon.
Så man kan ta valget ved neste valg.
Heldigvis har vi nettopp sett Boris Johnson i fri dressur ... helt uten hemninger i ord og handling.
Da vet vi hva vi må se opp for.
Også i Norge ... for der har vi sett noen av ordene ..
