Prime Minister Narendra Modi is on the list of 37 heads of state or government that the global body Reporters Without Borders (RSF) has identified as ‘predators of press freedom’. Reporters Without Borders (RSF), an international non-profit for journalists, has published a gallery of portraits of 37 leaders who suppress press freedom called ‘predators of press freedom’ for the first time. Seventeen of the leaders listed are making their appearance on the list for the first time.
India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi also features on the list along with his Pakistan counterpart Imran Khan, North Korea supremo Kim Jong-un along with 34 others who “trample on press freedom by creating a censorship apparatus, jailing journalists arbitrarily or inciting violence against them when they don’t have blood on their hands because they have directly or indirectly pushed for journalists to be murdered.”
India is ranked 142nd out of 180 countries in RSF’s 2021 World Press Freedom Index. This is the first time since 2016 that RSF is publishing such a list. Seven of the list’s world leaders have been a part of it since it was first published in 2001 and include Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad, Iran’s Ali Khamenei, Russia’s Vladimir Putin, and Belarus’s Alexander Lukashenko.
