Hear Their Stories

Hear Their Stories: Journalist Rana Ayyub’s Story as Told by Agnès Callamard

Rana Ayyub is an
Indian journalist who undertook an
in-depth investigation into the massive killings of
Muslims during riots in 2002.

Her investigation
led her to conclude that the then-person in
charge of the region where the killing took place was
responsible for the failure to protect the
Muslims, and possibly for the killings himself.

That person is now the
elected prime minister of India– Prime Minister Modi. After she published and
reported on her findings, she became the victim of heavy
online harassment threats. There were call for
her to be gang raped,

call for her to be murdered. It rose to such a level
that, as a special reporter on the protection of
the right to life, I felt that the
situation was one where we needed to act
very quickly to ensure

that she was not
going to be killed, as it had happened in India.

In the lead-up to the one-year anniversary of journalist Jamal Khashoggi’s murder, Agnès Callamard, director of Columbia’s Global Freedom of Expression initiative and a United Nations Special Rapporteur, spoke to Columbia News about the threats journalists face around the world.

Rana Ayyub, an Indian journalist, was working on an in-depth investigation into the mass killings of Muslims during the 2002 Gujarat riots. In 2016, after she published and reported on her findings she became the victim of heavy online harassment. UN Special Rapporteur on Extrajudicial Killings, Agnes Callamard, and UN Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Expression, David Kaye, issued a call to the Indian government to take all necessary measures to protect Ayyub against possible attacks and to investigate the threats. #HearTheirStories