India is one of the few countries that still uses sedition laws against journalists –Peter Noorlander, Media Legal Defence Initiative

The Media Legal Defence Initiative is a UK-based organisation that has been constituted to provide legal assistance to journalists around the world. Established in 2009, the organisation is currently involved in more than forty countries across the world.

. Recently, the MLDI announced the establishment of an Indian initiative , calling for proposals from organisations willing to provide legal assistance to Indian journalists. Peter Noorlander, one of MLDI’s co-founders, recently spoke to Bar & Bench on the challenges that journalists face, the establishment of MLDI and the particular challenges faced by smaller media outlets.

. Bar & Bench Can you tell us a bit about the MLDI team? What are some of the charges/cases that you have seen in the last five years?

. Peter Noorlander: We have three lawyers on staff and our main job is to coordinate legal assistance for journalists. Our mandate is to ensure that journalists who are under legal threat for doing their job get the best possible legal representation. We obviously cannot fly out and personally represent every journalist who needs legal assistance, and so we typically contact lawyers in the country where the journalist needs them and then work with that lawyer to make sure the best possible defence is provided. In countries where there is a lot of need, we sometimes fund a local journalists association or human rights group to hire a lawyer on to their staff to provide legal defence to journalists who need it.

. We were established in 2009 and since then, we’ve worked in more than forty countries, predominantly in Asia, Africa and Central and Eastern Europe. The majority of cases that we have seen have concerned allegations of libel. Often its local politicians who file claims or businessmen, but in the last few months we’ve seen cases in Malaysia and Singapore where the prime ministers and top politicians have taken out libel cases against bloggers and online media. Another category of cases that’s on the increase concerns national security and public order cases, including allegations of sedition.

. Our experience defending these cases is that if you put in the resources, you can win the majority of cases or get them dismissed or settled on favourable terms. Many cases are brought solely as a way of harassment and there’s little merit to the claims. Even when a journalist loses a defence at first instance, we can often get a win on appeal – overall, our success rate runs at over 70%.

. B&B: When did you start getting requests for assistance from Indian journalists? Can you give us a couple of examples of the cases that these journalists were fighting?

. PN: We started getting requests in 2010. All of the cases are still ongoing and we can’t get too much into specifics, but one example is of a libel claim against a medical magazine that was sued by a global pharmaceutical company for reporting that a drug marketed by them in India was not licensed in Denmark (see this for a fuller report). It’s a typical example of a large corporation using bullying tactics to silence critical reporting.

. B&B: With respect to the India initiative, you are looking for lawyers and law firms who have an expertise in media law? Once selected, how will the funding work?

. PN: We work either with lawyers, or with human rights or journalists groups who have their own in-house lawyers. With the increase in both civil and criminal cases against the media or against individual journalists and bloggers, we are looking for lawyers who can stand up against these threats and who have a track record of seeing off sometimes powerful opponents. It’s about a combination of good legal skills, a good sense of strategy and a pragmatic attitude.

. B&B: You said that it is the smaller outfits that really require adequate legal representation. Is that a global trend?

. PN: The financial crisis has meant that smaller media outlets who still engage in critical and independent journalism are left fighting for survival. They often struggle to make ends meet and lack the funds to hire good lawyers. This renders them vulnerable to legal threats, and as a result many of them will steer clear of controversial stories or they simply struggle to defend. Unfortunately this is the trend in many countries. We aim to support the independent media in their journalism by helping them fend off legal threats.

. B&B: You have noted that, “The way India uses it seditious laws is unlike anywhere else”.

. PN: India is among a very small group of countries that still actively use sedition laws against journalists. These laws were left by colonial powers who used them as a tool of repression. Whereas other countries that have retained these laws on their statute books use them relatively sparingly, in India the threat of sedition laws is almost daily. This is out of step with fundamental concepts of democracy – the offence of sedition is essentially to criticise and incite disaffection with the government, and the ability to criticise and incite disaffection with the government is what democracy is all about. One of the best known examples of recent abuse of sedition laws is the legal action taken out against the cartoonist Aseem Trivedi by Mumbai police.

. Images taken from here.

India is one of the few countries that still uses sedition laws against journalists –Peter Noorlander, Media Legal Defence Initiative

Anuj Agrawal

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