Nilambur: The freedom of press has come under severe threat in Kerala. A few days back the offices of an online news portal ‘Marunadan Malayali’ were raided and computers and laptops confiscated by state police. Also the houses of the employees and the relatives of the owner of the news portal, Shajan Skariah, were also raided.
To add to the threats a CPI(M) MLA, PV Anvar, has publically threatened media houses and journalists in the state through his social media page. He has uploaded five threatening posts in the last twenty-four hours on his FB page with under his profile name. The headline of his post reads “Operation Clean Kerala”.
In one of his FB post he has given a picture of a headless person and says not to put your head in its place in a veiled threat to other journalists meaning that the fate of Shajan Skariah will befall them too.
Till the other day PV Anvar’s threat was only against online news portals. But now he has trained his guns against mainstream media houses and journalists. He is threatening to silence the media houses by launching several legal cases against them.
To one comment under his FB post saying that his action is intimidation, the MLA directly responded commenting that it is surely intimidation.
The other day, the Kerala Union of Working Journalists (KUWJ) had condemned the police raids on the houses of employees of Marunadan Malayali news portal. Anvar has not spared the KUWJ for this and insulted the organization through his FB profile.
The MLA alleged that there are journalists working in prominent media houses who are also writing news under pseudo names. It is believed that he is trying to blackmail the journalists into silence.
PV Anvar’s FB posts are filled with comments from those with fundamental Islamist and communist backgrounds. CPI(M) cyber comrades and online Islamists have given their full support to Anvar.
This clearly shows that PV Anvar MLA is threatening the journalists with the total support from Kerala Chief Minister, Pinarayi Vijayan, and the CPI(M).
PV Anvar’s threat is that a string of legal cases will be filed against media houses and journalists, which will ultimately wear them off. Using this tool of intimidation he thinks that he can silence the press from reporting against the government and his party.
Anvar is a businessman politician and MLA from Nilambur constituency. He was earlier with the Congress party before joining the CPI(M). He has been accused in land encroachment and illegal construction.
It is believed that he has business interests in African countries. In 2021 there was social media uproar against the MLAs African visit. He was in some African country for a long period of time that the netizens made fun of him with sarcastic memes hinting that he is languishing in a jail in Ghana.
Many political commentators say that Anvar has the money power and political clout to go after media houses and journalists with string of legal cases to wear them off and ultimately force them to toe the line of the party.
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