NEW DELHI: Indian police on Monday arrested the co-founder of a top fact-checking website who has been a vocal critic of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government, his colleague said.
Mohammed Zubair was arrested in Delhi after being called in for questioning in an earlier case, said Pratik Sinha, who runs the Alt-News website together with Zubair.
Sinha said in a post on Twitter that his colleague was arrested illegally and without warning and was being held by police in Delhi.
Zubair has been one of the fiercest critics of Modi’s ruling Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party and has frequently called out hate speech by Hindu fringe groups on the Internet.
He has faced several legal cases over the years which his supporters dismiss as politically motivated attempts to silence a critic.
Some local media reports linked Zubair’s arrest Monday to the recent controversy over incendiary remarks about Prophet Muhammad made by a BJP spokesperson, which sparked widespread global protests and outrage from the Islamic world.
Many Hindu nationalists in the last few weeks have drawn attention to past comments on social media made by Zubair and other Modi critics and demanded that he be prosecuted for hurting their religious feelings.
Most government critics however see Zubair’s arrest as part of a crackdown on free-speech and rights activists that India has seen since Modi’s ascent to power in May 2014.
On Saturday, police detained activist Teesta Setalvad who hails from Modi’s western home state of Gujarat. Setalvad has been campaigning to have Modi declared complicit in deadly sectarian riots 20 years ago.
Protests were held in several Indian cities on Monday with rights activists and free-speech organizations demanding Setalvad’s release and describing her detention as “politics of vengeance.”
Delhi police arrest Muslim journalist over Twitter post
https://arab.news/rj3kk
Delhi police arrest Muslim journalist over Twitter post
- Mohammed Zubair, co-founder of top fact-checking website, is a vocal critic of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government
- He has faced several legal cases over the years which his supporters dismiss as politically motivated attempts to silence a critic
French publisher recalls dictionary over ‘Jewish settler’ reference
- The entry in French reads: “In October 2023, following the death of more than 1,200 Jewish settlers in a series of Hamas attacks”
- The four books are subject to a recall procedure and will be destroyed, Hachette said
PARSI: French publisher Hachette on Friday said it had recalled a dictionary that described the Israeli victims of the October 7, 2023 attacks as “Jewish settlers” and promised to review all its textbooks and educational materials.
The Larousse dictionary for 11- to 15-year-old students contained the same phrase as that discovered by an anti-racism body in three revision books, the company told AFP.
The entry in French reads: “In October 2023, following the death of more than 1,200 Jewish settlers in a series of Hamas attacks, Israel decided to tighten its economic blockade and invade a large part of the Gaza Strip, triggering a major humanitarian crisis in the region.”
The worst attack in Israeli history saw militants from the Palestinian Islamist group kill around 1,200 people in settlements close to the Gaza Strip and at a music festival.
“Jewish settlers” is a term used to describe Israelis living on illegally occupied Palestinian land.
The four books, which were immediately withdrawn from sale, are subject to a recall procedure and will be destroyed, Hachette said, promising a “thorough review of its textbooks, educational materials and dictionaries.”
France’s leading publishing group, which came under the control of the ultra-conservative Vincent Bollore at the end of 2023, has begun an internal inquiry “to determine how such an error was made.”
It promised to put in place “a new, strengthened verification process for all its future publications” in these series.
President Emmanuel Macron on Wednesday said that it was “intolerable” that the revision books for the French school leavers’ exam, the baccalaureat, “falsify the facts” about the “terrorist and antisemitic attacks by Hamas.”
“Revisionism has no place in the Republic,” he wrote on X.
Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack on Israel resulted in the deaths of 1,221 people, with 251 people taken hostage, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures.
Authorities in Gaza estimate that more than 70,000 people have been killed by Israeli forces during their bombardment of the territory since, while nearly 80 percent of buildings have been destroyed or damaged, according to UN data.
Israeli forces have killed at least 447 Palestinians in Gaza since a ceasefire took effect in October, according to the Hamas-run health ministry.
