“The State Made A Mistake In Banning the Internet”: Editors Guild Releases Report on Media Coverage of Manipur

Even if Internet bans are necessary, states should exempt news platforms from the restrictions, the Editors Guild of India argued in a recent fact-finding report on the media’s reportage of Manipur’s prolonged communal violence.

In response to the clashes between the Meitei and Kuki-Zo communities, the state government gradually snapped access to the Internet across Manipur to control the spiralling “public order” situation. Internet services were only partially restored in the state in July.

However, the Guild argued that the Internet ban was a “mistake”. Instead of controlling the conflict, it blocked alternative points of view while feeding rumours. This led to one-sided media narratives developing in favour of the majority, i.e. Meiteis, the Guild claimed.

As Jade Lyngdoh noted in The Wire, the shutdown impacted most aspects of everyday life in Manipur as well:

“The shutdown violates their rights and has had a significant impact on their lives. It has resulted in communities being unable to receive and impart informed and verified information about their families’ well-being and safety, it has denied citizens their right to peacefully dissent against the government, and has resulted in journalists facing challenges while reporting on the situation in the state. In other, more serious instances, the shutdown prevented people from hearing about cases of brutal murder and sexual assault.”

Compiled by Seema Guha, Bharat Bhushan, and Sanjay Kapoor, the Guild’s report recommended that a committee of media, civil society, and government representatives should also monitor Internet bans and their durations. State governments shouldn’t be allowed to violate the Supreme Court’s guidelines on time-bound Internet suspensions, laid down in 2020’s Anuradha Bhasin verdict.

The Bhasin case, a response to prolonged Internet bans in Kashmir, held that Internet suspensions cannot be indefinite.

The Guild added that during curfews, governments should allow for “credible news” to be distributed through TV channels, newspapers, and online publications.

What sparked this conflict? As the Guild recalled, conflicts between the majority Meities (who largely reside in the Imphal valley) and the minority Kuki-Zo tribals (who largely reside in the Hill areas) had been on the rise for months. “The state government seems to have facilitated the majority’s anger against the Kukis through several seemingly partisan statements and policy measures,” the Guild claimed. These included branding the Kuki-Zo groups as “illegal immigrants” and “narco-terrorists” dominating illegal poppy cultivation and evicting them from their homes in the Hills by declaring these lands as “protected areas”.

The tipping point was in April, though—when reports emerged that the Manipur High Court recommended that the state government pitch the Centre to include Meiteis in the Scheduled Tribes list. Naga and Kuki-Zo tribals saw this as a ‘land grab’. If declared tribals, Meities would be able to buy land in the Hills, which was otherwise forbidden. Clashes shortly erupted full-fold, after which Internet shutdowns were imposed in late April onwards.

The violence didn’t stop, though. The Guild found that at least 180 people died during the clashes, while 54,000 were displaced.

Article continues below ⬇, you might also want to read:

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• MediaNama Statement On Manipur

The Internet ban blurred the lines between fact and fiction in the state:

After intense violence on May 4th and 5th, Internet services were increasingly snapped across the state. The Guild found that this ‘devastated’ journalism in the state as it became impossible to “cross-check narratives and distinguish rumours from facts, by journalists on both sides of the ethnic divide”. Point to note: The Guild claims that the Imphal Valley’s media ecosystem is significantly better developed than the Hill districts.

These communication blockades also meant that outlets didn’t have sufficient information to provide a “balanced” perspective of the conflict. The Guild found that The Sangai Express, a daily based in Manipur’s capital Imphal, had repeatedly asked the state government to restore the Internet, as it couldn’t receive reports from Kuki areas. The Imphal Free Press and Frontier Express experienced similar issues. Correspondents in Kuki areas could neither send in reports nor respond to editorial directions.

However, reporters based in the Kuki-dominated areas found that even the reports that made their way to the Imphal newspapers were “used selectively”. There was distrust in the reports coming in from the Hill districts—to the extent that when “major” stories broke, “reinforcements” (presumably of security forces) were sent from the Imphal Valley.

This limited communication and perspective left the media almost dependent on the state government’s narrative of the violence. The Guild argues that the BJP state ruled by Chief Minister N. Biren Singh painted the violence as an ethnic clash, while sympathising with the majority Meiteis.

The Guild cites various examples of the allegedly pro-Meitei coverage that emerged in Manipur. For example, in July, The Sangai Express carried reports stoking the belief that security forces like the Assam Rifles were opposed to Meiteis. A few days later, the same paper carried a detailed op-ed by the Chief Minister alleging that the violence was part of the Kuki-Zo’s plans to “create a separate homeland”. In a separate instance from June, a Kuki child being transported to a hospital by his Meitei mother and relative, were attacked by a Meitei mob. As the child’s father was Kuki, the whole family was branded Kuki, and the ambulance was torched. This was “blacked out” by the Manipur media “as it showed the Meitei community in poor light”, the Guild claimed.

Or, as a Kuki-Zo source informed the Guild, “most of the newspapers and news channels in the Valley took ‘dictation’ from Chief Minister Biren Singh’s Office. The blame for the violence was always on us, the Kuki-Zos.”

An editor of a local digital platform speaking to the Guild added that without editorial filters, rumours peddled by “interested quarters held sway”.

The ban led to the construction of majoritarian media narratives: Without perspective from Kuki districts (or alternate perspectives in general), the narrative of the conflict set by media outlets in Imphal began to dominate Manipur, the Guild argued.

Soon enough, newspapers claimed that the culprits in the conflict were Kuki militants. These were militant groups who’d given up their arms under the “Suspension of Operations” agreement, signed with the Centre and the state government. The ‘militants’ were accused of ‘taking’ their weapons back from security camps, and firing at the Manipur police and Meitei militia groups.

Claims like these inadvertently discredited “facts on the ground” as well as the efforts of security forces, like the Assam Rifles. For example, the Rifles claimed that the weapons of all surrendered militants were greased, in order to render them unusable. They were also stored in a triple-locked armoury with three keys—one for the militants, another for the Assam Rifles, and another for the civilian administration.

What events did the shutdown hide? Outside of media reporting, the ban also curbed civilian accounts of the violence unfolding in the state. The Guild quoted Nikkei Asia’s report on the violence to illustrate the kinds of issues citizens were able to capture before the Internet was switched off. For example, in early May, Imphal resident Mark Sonjalen reportedly recorded footage of uniformed police officers “standing by” while houses and a church were set ablaze. This was reported as early evidence of “state-sponsored violence” in the conflict, and the footage went viral.