‘Reporting too difficult under Modi’s govt’: Australian journalist forced to leave India
New Delhi: Avani Dias, the South Asia correspondent of Australia’s national broadcaster, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, has been forced out of India, in a sign of the growing pressure on journalists in the country under Narendra Modi.
According to Kashmir Media Service, Dias has returned to Australia after a campaign of intimidation and bureaucratic meddling by the Modi government, the Sydney Morning Herald said
Dias, who has been based in Delhi for the ABC since January 2022, said she felt the government had made it too difficult for her to continue to do her job, saying it blocked her from accessing events, issued takedown notices to YouTube for her news stories, and then refused her a standard visa renewal.
“Last week, I had to leave India abruptly. The Modi government told me my visa extension would be denied, saying my reporting crossed a line”, Dias wrote on X.
In the final episode of her podcast, Looking for Modi Dias, she says that she was told by the Indian government that her visa, which was due for renewal, would be blocked.
The decision came after the Indian government issued a takedown notice to YouTube for an episode of Foreign Correspondent, the ABC’s flagship international news program, that she reported. The episode explored the murder of Hardeep Singh Nijjar, a Sikh Khalistani leader, in Canada last year, which authorities there pinned on Indian state operatives.
Dias says a ministry official called to inform her of the decision regarding her visa. “He specifically said it was because of my Nijjar’s story, saying it had gone too far,” she said.
“It felt too difficult to do my job in India. I was struggling to get into public events run by Modi’s party, the government wouldn’t even give me the passes,” she said in her podcast. “It’s all by design. The Narendra Modi government has made me feel so uncomfortable that we decided to leave. There’s always a feeling of unease that this sort of backlash could come your way as a journalist in India, I’ve felt it the whole time I’ve been here, so have my colleagues from other publications.”
Since Modi came to power in 2014, foreign correspondents in India have faced increasing pressure from the government over their reporting. Foreign journalists have been given shorter visas after publishing stories critical of the Modi government and they have faced reprimands from government figures for coverage deemed negative.
