[Congressional Record Volume 149, Number 23 (Friday, February 7, 2003)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E175-E176]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




       INDIAN GOVERNMENT HARASSES WEBSITE THAT EXPOSED CORRUPTION

                                 ______
                                 

                          HON. EDOLPHUS TOWNS

                              of new york

                    in the house of representatives

                        Friday, February 7, 2003

  Mr. TOWNS. Mr. Speaker, in 2000, the website www.tehelka.com exposed 
the fundamental corruption of the Indian government. They did a video 
expose showing high-ranking government officials, including the Defense 
Minister, as well as the President of the ruling BJP, taking bribes. At 
that time, it was recording 30 million hits a week. It was quite 
embarrassing for the Indian government.
  On January 6, The Guardian reported that the Indian government has 
struck back at tehelka.com. It has harassed their contributors. It sent 
its agents to investigate tehelka, searching its offices and harassing 
its workers. The website has had to reduce the staff from 120 people to 
four. All the office furniture has been sold and the site is scraping 
for money. Clearly the government has set out to destroy tehelka.com, 
and it appears to be succeeding. Meanwhile, the corrupt officials they 
exposed are still in their posts.
  This shows that India is intolerant of free speech and free 
journalism. It reminds me of the old joke; ``You have every right to 
your own opinion as long as it agrees with mine.'' That's the state of 
free speech and the free press in India. Freedom of speech and freedom 
of the press are cornerstones of a democracy, along with the right to 
self-determination. The government campaign to shut down tehelka.com is 
another piece of evidence that India, despite its claims, is not a 
democracy but an authoritarian police state.
  Mr. Speaker, why are U.S. taxpayers--your constituents and mine--
being asked to pay taxes to support this kind of radical, 
fundamentalist tyranny? We should stop our aid to India until real 
freedom exists there, including the right of a free press, the right to 
freely practice any religion a person chooses without the threat of 
being killed by the government and without anti-conversion laws, and 
the right of all the peoples of the subcontinent to decide their 
futures in a free and fair vote. We should work for self-determination, 
which is a basic right, by promoting a plebiscite on the question of 
independence in Christian Nagaland, Muslim Kashmir, the Sikh homeland 
of Punjab, Khalistan, and wherever else it is sought. And we should 
demand the release of all political prisoners in India and an end to 
its sponsorship of cross-border terrorism. America is a free country. 
We seek freedom not just for ourselves, but for all people of the 
world. These measures will help secure the blessings of liberty to all 
the people of the world's most troubled region and allow them to enjoy 
the glow of freedom.
  Mr. Speaker, I am inserting the Guardian article on the tehelka 
situation into the Record at this time.

                   [From the Guardian, Jan. 6, 2003]

              Website Pays Price for Indian Bribery Expose

                           (By Luke Harding)

       Tarun Tejpal is sitting amid the ruins of his office. There 
     is not much left--a few dusty chairs, three computers and a 
     forlorn air-conditioning unit. ``We have sold virtually every 
     thing. I've even flogged the air conditioner,'' he says 
     dolefully.
       Twenty months ago Tejpal, editor in chief of tehelka.com, 
     an investigative website, was the most feted journalist in 
     India. He had just broken one of the biggest stories in the 
     country's history--an expose of corruption at the highest 
     levels of government.
       His reporters, posing as arms salesmen, had bribed their 
     way into the home of the defence minister, George Fernandes, 
     and handed over K3,000 to one of the minister's colleagues. 
     The journalists found many other people prepared to take 
     money--senior army officers, bureaucrats, even the president 
     of the ruling Bharatiya Janata party, who was filmed 
     shovelling the cash into his desk.
       The scandal was deeply embarrassing for the BJP prime 
     minister, Atal Bihari Vajpayee. Mr. Vajpayee sacked Mr. 
     Fernandes and ordered a commission of inquiry.
       The scandal promoted a mood of national catharsis, and 
     congratulations poured in

[[Page E176]]

     from ordinary Indians tired of official corruption. Tehelka, 
     which had only been launched in June 2000, was receiving 30 
     million hits a week. But the glory did not last.
       ``I had expected a battle. But we had not anticipated its 
     scale,'' Tejpal said yesterday. ``The propaganda was started 
     the next day.''
       Nearly two years later, he has been forced to lay off all 
     but four of his 120 staff. He has got deeply into debt, sold 
     the office furniture and scrounged money from friends. ``They 
     drop by for dinner and leave a cheque behind.''
       The website,which once boasted sites on news, literature, 
     sport and erotica, is ``virtually defunct''. George 
     Fernandes, meanwhile, is again the defence minister.
       The saga is a depressing example of how the Kafkaesque 
     weight of government can be used to crush those who challenge 
     its methods.
       In the aftermath of the scandal, the Hindu nationalist-led 
     government ``unleashed'' the inland revenue, the enforcement 
     directorate and the intelligence bureau, India's answer to 
     M15, on Tehelka's office in suburban south Delhi.
       They did not find anything. Frustrated, the officials 
     started tearing apart the website's investors. Tehelka's 
     financial backer, Shanker Sharma, was thrown in jail without 
     charge. Detectives also held Aniruddha Bahal, the reporter 
     who carried out the expose, and a colleague, Kumar Badal. 
     Badal is still in prison.
       ``It got to the stage that I used to count the number of 
     booze bottles in my house to make sure there wasn't one more 
     than the legal quota,'' Tejpal recalls.
       The government commission set up to investigate Operation 
     West-End, Tehelka's sting, meanwhile, started behaving very 
     strangely. ``The commission didn't cross-examine a single 
     person found guilty of corruption. It was astonishing,'' said 
     Tejpal. Instead, it spent its days rubbishing Tehelka's 
     journalistic methods.
       The official campaign of vilification against the website 
     has attracted protests from a few of India's prominent 
     liberal commentators, such as the veteran diplomat Kuldip 
     Nayar and the respected columnist Tavleen Singh. Tehelka's 
     literary supporters, who include Salman Rushdie, Amitav Ghosh 
     and VS Naipaul, Tejpal: Kafkaesque situation have also 
     expressed their outrage. But in general, India's civil 
     society has reacted with awkwardness and embarrassment to the 
     website's plight.
       ``I read all of Franz Kafka when I was 19 and 20, but I 
     only understand him now,'' Tejpal wrote in a recent essay in 
     the magazine Seminar. ``He accurately intuited that all power 
     is essentially implacable and malign.''
       The treatment of the web-site's investors has scared away 
     anybody else from pumping money into Tehelka. The company 
     owes K620,000.
       Mr. Vajpayee's rightwing government has bounced back from 
     the scandal and is expected to win the next general election 
     in 2004. Last month, it won a landslide victory in elections 
     in the riot-hit western state of Gujarat after campaigning on 
     a virtually fascist anti-Muslim platform.
       The murky world of arms dealing goes on. Tony Blair and his 
     ministers are still trying to persuade the Indian government 
     to buy 77 British-made Hawk jet trainers, but the billion-
     pound deal remains mysteriously stuck over the price.
       Tehelka's expose was not about ``individuals'', but about 
     ``systemic corruption'', Tejpal insists. He admits that his 
     sting operation would have gone down badly with any 
     government, but says that the BJP's response was venomous.
       ``The degree of pettiness has been extraordinary. They have 
     a crude understanding of power and a lot of that stems from 
     the fact they are in power for the first time. Our struggle 
     is emblematic of a wider issue: can media organizations be 
     killed off when they criticize governments.''
       The gloomy answer appears to be yes.
       Last night Balbir Punj, a leading BJP member of parliament, 
     claimed the government had nothing to do with the website's 
     collapse. ``Just because you do a story exposing the 
     government doesn't mean the gods make you immortal,'' he 
     said. ``Many other [internet] portals have closed down. The 
     boom is over.''