US government funded human rights ‘watchdog’ Freedom House, that had downgraded India from ‘Free’ to ‘Partly Free’ and had cited The Wire’s Tek Fog ‘secret app’ has not yet removed references to the same. This, even after The Wire itself withdrew those stories pending internal review after allegations came up that their story on Meta, by The Wire associate, was based on fabricated documents. After allegations of forgery surfaced, The Wire, withdrew the story and are claiming they are carrying out an investigation. The Wire has filed a police complaint against their associate, Devesh Kumar, who was one of the authors for Meta stories, as well as Tek Fog stories, and have claimed he was mentally unwell.
Upon publishing of Tek Fog stories earlier this year in January by The Wire, the same were picked up by various international publications and ‘advocacy groups’, mostly to claim how democracy is in danger in India. In fact, as answered by Tek Fog team consisting of Devesh Kumar, Ayushman Kaul and The Wire Founding Editor Siddharth Varadarajan, they wanted international press to pick up the stories and were disheartened that Indian media was not picking them up as much. You can read more about their thoughts on the ‘secret app’ here.
Amongst other ‘advocacy groups’ that had picked up the Tek Fog fiction was Freedom House. The US government funded dubious Human Rights ‘watchdog’ that supported violent protests against a law that gave citizenship rights to persecuted minorities like Hindus, Parsis, Sikhs, Buddhists and Christians from Islamic states neighbouring India, dropped the country from ‘free’ to ‘partly free’ in 2021. In 2022, too, the organisation maintained India as ‘partly free’, leaning on prejudiced reports and unfounded allegations, including The Wire’s story on Tek Fog, to claim that members of the BJP used it to shape public narratives and manipulate social media opinions.
Now that The Wire has withdrawn the stories, few other portals, too, have retracted their stories and opinions on them. US-based Bloomberg has been one of the few to do so. However, the other portals that used its syndicated feed for the said opinion piece, like Washington Post, ThePrint India, Times of India, have not yet withdrawn their stories. Neither has Freedom House removed reference from their report and apologised to the readers as well as Indians at large for not carrying out due diligence as a self appointed ‘watchdog’ themselves.
Essentially, the Freedom House has downgraded India based on facts that they did not find convenient and a fallacious narrative woven by left and Islamist elements in India who wanted to either shield the perpetrators or were an intrinsic part of the violence that erupted in India.
It is also pertinent to note that Freedom House has downgraded India based on the Supreme Court verdict that they did not approve of, based on their preconceived notions of the case. For example, the “activists” and “students” that they talk of are still in custody because the court of law, after reviewing the evidence filed, believed that there was enough material evidence for them to remain incarcerated in relevant cases. Even the case of BJP leaders being acquitted is a verdict that was delivered by the highest court of the land.
OpIndia has written to Freedom House for their comments on the same and have not yet heard back from them. We shall update the report if we hear back from them.