Author: Binoy P. Jacob/Kozhikode
Publication: The Week
Date: August 8, 2004
URL: http://www.the-week.com/24aug08/currentevents_article4.htm
Introduction: Left activists in
Kerala targetMalayala Manorama yet again
As the skies opened up over Kerala,
the last week of July saw the state's political weather turn stormy. The
Left student and youth organisations took to the streets to protest the
government's education policy that allegedly forced engineering student
Rajani S. Anand to commit suicide on July 22. Arrests and police action
led to violence and arson. And not just against government property.
On July 28, members of the Left's
Democratic Youth Federation of India (DYFI) attacked the Kozhikode office
of the Malayala Manorama, the leading Malayalam newspaper. The attack started
soon after Pinarayi Vijayan, CPI(M) state secretary, inaugurated a DYFI
march in front of the office of the Inspector General of Police less than
half a kilometre from the Manorama office. The march was to protest the
alleged excesses of City Police Commissioner T.K. Vinodkumar against DYFI
demonstrators during their recent agitation.
Around noon, a group of DYFI activists
started throwing stones at the policemen, numbering over 30, in front of
the Manorama building. When the attack continued, the police moved forward
to disperse the mob. A few minutes later, around 100 agitators rushed to
the Manorama office-some entered the adjacent St Mary's Church compound-and
started throwing stones at the police, who were soon chased away by a section
of the mob. Constable P. Govindan fell down and was seriously hurt.
The others, meanwhile, smashed the
glass front and windows of the Manorama office with stones; the telephone
and files in the front office were scattered in the impact. Halogen lamps
and potted plants too were destroyed. Even a visitor's motorbike was not
spared. Six policemen and a Manorama staff were injured in the attack.
Only the polycarbonate windows and the wire mesh, installed after an attack
last year, survived. The activists also attacked the office of another
Malayalam daily, Chandrika.
This is the fourth attack on the
Manorama's Kozhikode office; the first was in December 2002. In March last
year, Left activists targeted Manorama and other media offices during a
protest march to the police commissioner's office. In Palakkad, they attacked
a journalist and photographer of the newspaper and torched their van. The
daily's delivery van was attacked and bundles of newspaper burnt at Kadalundy
near Kozhikode. On August 9, Left activists hurled a petrol bomb at the
Manorama's editorial desk in Kozhikode.
The Indian Newspaper Society and
the Editors Guild of India condemned the attacks on the two newspapers.
The Guild Secretary General Alok Mehta said that DYFI's intolerance of
media organisations in Kerala, especially Malayala Manorama, was highly
deplorable and asked the Centre and state government to take immediate
action against the culprits.