Urgent Statement: Rejaz M Sheeba Sydeek

Urgent Statement: Call on the Indian State to Release Independent Journalist Rejaz M Sheeba Sydeek Immediately 

June 2025.

Since we wrote this statement in May, Rejaz has been charged with the Unlawful Prevention Activities Act (UAPA) and his police custody extended upto 2nd June. We see this as a deliberate attempt to intimidate Rejaz and to weaponised UAPA against an independent journalist. We call upon the authorities to drop these unfounded charges, and release Rejaz, Hilal Mir and all journalists incarcerated wrongfully in India. 

We, the undersigned, recognise the extremely high levels of misinformation during the ongoing escalation between India and Pakistan to be directly harmful to people on the ground. We note that this is a direct result of suppression of press freedom in the two states. The Indian state has gone a step further and blocked social media accounts and websites of independent news-platforms such as Maktoob Media and The Wire. This has been supported by harassment of journalists critical of the state and imprisoning them for their journalistic work, all in the garb of national security. This is in continuation of an extremely worrying trend in India and represents a democratic backsliding that should concern the entire world. 

Since then, Rejaz M Sheeba Sydeek, an independent journalist and activist based in Kerala, has been imprisoned indefinitely. He reports on issues of caste, communal violence against minorities and human rights violations in the country. He has been previously harassed by the Indian state for covering issues faced by bonded labourers in plantations in Karnataka. However, Rejaz has never been silenced.  Despite multiple police complaints, Rejaz has continued reporting while centring lived experiences of people and amplifying the voices of those most-marginalised. Now he has been arrested for a social media post that condemned the violence of the Indian state in Jammu & Kashmir and the escalation of violence between India-Pakistan. Even calling for de-escalation has become unacceptable in the Indian state. 

The evidence against Rejaz is flimsy and despite the police attempts to build a case against him, by seizing his books and manuscripts as ‘evidence’ against waging a war against the Indian state. In his reporting, he has consistently prioritised the experiences of those directly impacted by state violence, and has often called for protection of civilians in highly militarised areas within the Indian state such as Kashmir and Bastar. It is precisely these social media posts that are weaponised against him and are claimed to be impacting the territory and integrity of the Indian state. Need we remind people that India is a nuclear state, we cannot understand how one journalists’ ‘manuscripts’ can wage a war against a massive entity that is a massive weapons buyer and supplier globally. 

In a similar case, Kashmiri journalist Hilal Mir has also been imprisoned by the Indian state for a social media post that had posted demolition of civilian houses in Kashmir. This has been labelled as an “attempt to spread disaffection against the Indian state and secessionist ideology”. We call upon the Indian state to reflect and interrogate its own actions, rather than clamping down on journalists like Hilal who work on exposing them and their impact on marginalised communities. However, yet again, we recognise there is no evidence provided to support this claim either. 

We note that the truth is in fact, that both of these journalists have worked to bring forth the reality on the ground, showcasing the violence of the state, and challenge the warmongering narratives that are dominant in India right now. A voice like Rejaz’s that does not seek to compromise but stand in steadfast solidarity with the most marginalised, must be protected. We demand the immediate release of Rejaz M. Sheeba Sydeek, Hilal Mir and all incarcerated journalists in India right now and call upon the Indian state to work towards ensuring a climate of press freedom in the country. 

Signatories:

India Labour Solidarity

Indian American Muslim Council

South Asia Solidarity Group