Tamil Nadu Finance Minister PTR Palanivel Thiagarajan yet again resorted to cyber-bullying a woman journalist after she called out the DMK for its hate speeches made against north Indian workers working in the state.
The has been a furore over the safety of north Indian migrant labourers in Tamil Nadu. Rumours through social media along with misreporting by a few Hindi media outlets led to subsequent amplification of these reports by BJP Bihar which had unleashed a political slugfest with migrant workers in Tamil Nadu facing the brunt.
On 3 March 2024, independent journalist and chief editor of The Lede had posted a Twitter thread on the north Indian migrant workers controversy in which she mentioned that the ruling party in Tamil Nadu which indulged in toxic violent rhetoric against North Indian labourers earlier was assuaging the situation putting out communiques in Hindi.
She also shared a link which had the list of instances when hate was peddled by DMK, NTK and Tamil YouTube channels against north Indian workers.
Problem will be created by ruling party & administration has to step in to control the damage. Migrant workers in Coimbatore & Tirupur are in fear & leaving for home. Unnecessary toxic violent rhetoric against North Indian labourers & now this appeal in Hindi! Wah! (1/n) pic.twitter.com/BJznelZGuV
— Sandhya Ravishankar (@sandhyaravishan) March 3, 2023
After the tweet gained significant traction, the hashtag #ArrestSandhyaRavishankar was seen trending on Twitter with many DMK cadres and sympathizers calling for the journalist’s arrest.
Following this threat, the Committee to Protect Journalists Asia (CPJ Asia) put a tweet in which the body condemned the coordinated attack on the journalist.
#India: CPJ is monitoring the ongoing coordinated attack on journalist #SandhyaRavishankar on Twitter and calls on the authorities in Tamil Nadu to immediately take action against those threatening @sandhyaravishan@mkstalin @CMOTamilnadu #PressFreedom #JournalismIsNotACrime
— CPJ Asia (@CPJAsia) March 4, 2023
Responsding to this tweet, DMK Finance Minister PTR Palanivel Thiagarajan who has a history of making personal remarks against anyone who doesn’t share his views, took to abusing the woman journalist calling her ‘immoral’, ‘compunction-less’, ‘defender-of-rapists’, and ‘propagator-of-fake-news’.
When your ill-informed (at best) local staff start using your official handle @CPJAsia to defend an immoral, compunction-less, defender-of-rapists, propagator-of-fake-news, you damage your credibility immeasurably
Fight for the persecuted. Not the bigoted agents sowing hate… https://t.co/41tvUR8jmD
— Dr P Thiaga Rajan (PTR) (@ptrmadurai) March 5, 2023
This is not the first time PTR Palanivel Thiagarajan had hounded woman journalists.
Recently, he had made personal remarks against The Hindu Publishing Group’s Chairperson Malini Parthasarathy who had tweeted about Tamil Nadu Governor RN Ravi’s clarification on the Tamil Nadu versus Thamizhagam debate. Prior to that, he had attacked Malini Parthasarathy for sharing Isha Foundation’s response to the DMK minister’s diatribe which The Hindu had carried in the form of an article.
Palanivel Thiagarajan when he was the DMK IT Wing had indulged in denigrating Sandhya Ravishankar who had exposed some of the false rhetoric of the Pollachi Sexual Abuse case. The ‘defender-of-rapists’ comment in his recent tweet was in response to this.
He had also abused business news journalist Chandra R Srikanth by invoking her caste identity.
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