WATCH THE STATE: documenting state violence in india - THE POLIS PROJECT, INDIA
Watch the State: Documenting State Violence in India is a collaborative initiative by researchers at The Polis Project, Inc. and their second project for Arctivism. Working with a designer and artist, they will document the human rights violations perpetrated by the Indian State and its enforcement agencies against journalists in the context of the COVID-19 lockdown.
Watch the State was set up in December 2019 when State actors unleashed unprecedented violence against protestors protesting the unconstitutional implementation of the new Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) across India . Since then, the project has expanded to document the violence during the Delhi Pogrom, the COVID-19 lockdown and the Farmers' Protest in India.
The Polis Project, Inc. is a not-for-profit - hybrid research and journalism collective producing knowledge about critical human rights and political issues that have a direct impact on public discourse.
Mapping Patterns of Violence Against Journalists in India
Violence against journalists takes various forms. @watchthestate documented various categories of violence from May 2019 to August 2021. The documentation includes names of individual journalists along with news organisations who have faced either a defamation case, a police complaint or have been physically assaulted. The aim of the documentation is to highlight the various forms and patterns of violence that journalists face in India.
India ranks 145th out of 180 countries on the Reporters Without Borders (RSF) Press Freedom Index and Modi appears in RSF’s list of ‘Predators of Press Freedom’. In Mapping Patterns of Violence Against Journalists in India @watchthestate explores why.