Eminent Sri Lankan filmmaker Prasanna Vithanage will attend the ‘Guest of the Month’ program of Guwahati Press Club on Tuesday (11 April 2017). The interactive session will start at 11 am and continue till 12.30 pm.
Born at Panadura, an outskirt locality of Colombo in 1962, Vithanage emerged as an acclaimed visual translator of inner conflicts carried by ordinary people along with their journey for individual freedom.
He has received international acclaim for ‘Sisila Gini Gani’ (Ice of Fire), ‘Anantha Rathriya’ (The Dark Night of Soul), ‘Akasa Kusum’ (Flowers of the Sky), ‘Pura Handa Kaluwara’ (The Death on a Full Moon Day), ‘Ira Madiyama’ (August Sun), ‘Oba Nathuwa Oba Ekka’ (With You, Without You), ‘Usawiya Nihandai’ (Silence in the Courts) etc.
When hundreds of media workers died of Covid-19 complications across India, a few people thought the corona disaster would also devastate the print media with sharply declined circulation figures resulting in shrinking advertisement revenues. Many established newspaper-publishing groups either closed many of their editions in the post-corona period or drastically reduced the number of employees to cope up with the hard situation. Some newspapers were shut down forever and many owners were compelled to sell their publications. The troubles are now brewing for the oldest media house in north-eastern region after a Dimapur-based English daily recently ceased its publications. The...
Guwahati: Amid stained bilateral relations between India and Bangladesh, Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the head of Dhaka-based interim government Dr Muhammad Yunus exchanged warm greetings on the occasion of Eid-ul-Azha. In an official letter (dated on 4 June 2025), PM Modi on behalf of the people and government of Bharat conveyed good wishes to Dr Yunus and the people of Bangladesh on the auspicious occasion of the Islamic festival.
This holy festival is an integral part of the rich and diverse cultural heritage of India and is celebrated with immense joy and fervour by millions of people of Islamic faith across the country. It reminds us of the timeless values of sacrifice,...
In the decisive war against Pakistan in 1971, India won and a new nation was born, but a small State in eastern part of Bharat had to pay a heavy price with millions of East Pakistan refugees, for which Assam still cries but nobody cares. With an absorbent border with Bangladesh and unconvincing political will from the government, augmented by continued callous attitude of majority Asomiya people, the situation remains grim even today. New Delhi supported the Mukti Bahini (the freedom aspiring Bengalis of East Pakistan) in their movement against West Pakistan and finally the atrocious Pakistan forces had to surrender on 16 December 1971. But the newly born sovereign country was not...
The current interim government of Bangladesh, led by Nobel laureate Professor Muhammad Yunus, remains busy pursuing the final reports by a number of reform commissions with their proposals and subsequent discussions with the political party representatives. Even after nine months of its formation in Dhaka, the situation across the south Asian nation continues to be murky. Needless to mention that a sense of joy and expectation surfaced among nearly 170 million Bangladeshi nationals, when the caretaker government was constituted following a massive student-led uprising compelled sitting Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina to resign and flee (to India) on 5 August last year. Enjoying the...
A recent controversy erupted following a social media post by a television journalist, associated with Gauhati Press Club (earlier Guwahati Press Club) in northeast India, brought many questions for the media body, which invited a minister in Assam chief minister Himanta Biswa Sarma’s cabinet for a cultural program, but shockingly ‘faced derogatory comments’. The particular post was generated by the journalist working for a satellite news channel owned by the CM’s family, and his outburst that the State health & family welfare minister Ashok Singhal disrespected a delegation from GPC, was taken seriously. According to the journalist, the GPC delegation went to invite Singhal for a...
The recently concluded by-polls for 48 legislative assembly constituencies in 14 States (along with two Parliamentary constituencies in Kerala and Maharashtra) divulged an important fact that no less than 41 assembly seats needed the special elections as those were vacated by the respective legislators after they were elected to the lower house of Indian Parliament. The representatives of different political parties (irrespective of their ideologies or position in the governments) participated in the last general elections and succeeded to be lawmakers in the 18th Lok Sabha.
One may wonder how all these members of State legislative assemblies turned Parliamentarians...
Geneva based the Press Emblem Campaign (PEC), a global organization advocating for media safety and rights, has expressed deep concern over the ongoing violence against journalists in Pakistan. The latest victim, Janan Hussain (40), was killed in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa near the Afghan border on November 20, during an ambush in the Kurram area that claimed the lives of 42 Shiite Muslims. Hussain, a journalist with Channel 365 and a member of the Parachinar Press Club, is the 11th media worker killed in Pakistan this year.
"Janan Hussain's murder marks the 129th journalist killed globally since January 1, highlighting the grim reality of impunity in such cases," said Blaise Lempen, President...
The Press Emblem Campaign (PEC) awarded its annual prize for the protection of journalists to Palestinian journalist Iyad Alasttal. This recognition comes amidst the unprecedented loss of over 150 Palestinian and Lebanese journalists since October 7, 2023, marking one of the highest tolls in such a short period in a conflict. The PEC dedicated the prize to the memory of these journalists who risk their lives daily.
Iyad Alasttal, a journalist from Gaza, was forced to flee due to Israeli reprisals following the Hamas attack on October 7, 2023. Alasttal, who launched the Gaza Stories project in 2019, has been chronicling life in Gaza and reporting for French and Western media outlets....
On the midnight of August 31, 2019, an extraordinary bureaucrat unveiled the contentious National Register of Citizens (NRC) in Assam, amidst a large gathering of eager media personnel in Guwahati. Prateek Hajela, the then State NRC coordinator, not only explained various features of the NRC to the assembled reporters but also declared the supplementary list as the definitive one. Some television journalists, excited by the so-called "extraordinary work" of the technocrat-turned-IAS officer, went as far as to applaud Hajela as a superhero.
However, the ground reality paints a different picture. The Assam NRC has never been endorsed—nor is it today—by the Registrar General of India (RGI...
It’s shocking to report that a number of Guwahati-based scribes and RTI (right to information) activists have been facing interrogation and even arrest by Assam chief minister’s special vigilance cell following the allegations of Sewali Devi Sharma, the prime accused in Rs 105 crore State council of educational research and training (SCERT) scam, as being blackmailers to her in different occasions. The arrestees include a female reporter (identified as Pujamoni Das alias Honey Kashyap, who reportedly took a large volume of money from Ms Sharma) along with a satellite news channel reporter named Bhaskarjoti Hazarika. RTI activists namely Rabijit Gogoi (who pretended to be a...
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