After French journalist Vanessa Dougnac, it is now the turn of Indian-Australian scribe Avani Dias. The South Asia bureau chief for Australian broadcaster ABC News, who left India on 19 April, said in an X post on Tuesday that she had been denied a visa extension by the Indian government because her reports “crossed a line”.
While a two-month extension was eventually granted after “intervention from the Australian government”, it came a mere 24 hours before her flight out of India, Dias added in her post.
In February, Dougnac, the longest serving foreign correspondent in India, who lived in the country for more than two decades and served as South Asia correspondent for several French publications, left India asserting that she was compelled to do so by the Indian government.
In Dougnac’s own words, she was accused by the Modi government of engaging in “malicious” reporting and violating regulations, which she mentioned in her statement announcing her departure from the country.
The action against Dias was allegedly the result of her reporting on the killing of Sikh separatist leader Hardeep Singh Nijjar in Canada, which Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau accused the Indian government of orchestrating, leading to a sharp diplomatic standoff between the two nations.
Dias, who worked in India as the South Asia bureau chief for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) since January 2022, left the country last week.
However, an Indian government official who declined to be named described Dias’s contention that she wasn’t allowed to cover India’s general election and was compelled to leave the country as “not correct”. The official added, “She left because she had to meet the timeline for another job offer in Australia. The reason for her leaving was not delay in issuance of visa but personal reasons.”
In a post on X, Dias said, “After Australian Government intervention, I got a mere two-month extension…less than 24 hours before my flight.” She added, “We were also told my election accreditation would not come through because of an Indian Ministry directive. We left on day one of voting in the national election in what Modi calls ‘the mother of democracy’.”
The denial of a visa extension to Dias comes weeks after YouTube blocked access in India to an episode of the ABC’s news series Foreign Correspondent and a news package on the killing of Nijjar.
But she isn’t the only one. An open letter shared online by John Reed, the South Asia bureau chief of the Financial Times, lists 30 signatures of foreign correspondents based in India, registering “our strong protest at the treatment by Indian authorities of our colleague, Avani Dias, South Asia bureau chief for Australian broadcaster ABC”.
The letter makes the point that “though not technically expelling her, Indian authorities have effectively pushed out a foreign correspondent on the eve of an election that the government describes as the largest democratic exercise in the world”.
