Press freedom chilled in Kashmir as reporting is ‘criminalized’
Nusrat Sidiq | NBC News
Journalists in the disputed Indian territory say they face an atmosphere of intimidation that is hampering their work or driving them out of the profession altogether.
SRINAGAR, India — Working as a journalist in Kashmir, a disputed mountainous region split mainly between nuclear-armed India and Pakistan, has never been easy.
As a photojournalist, Muneeb-ul-Islam says, he has been beaten by demonstrators and security forces alike while covering protests in Indian-administered Kashmir, the site of a decadeslong insurgency against New Delhi’s rule. But he was not deterred from the work that he considered his calling.
That changed in 2019, when India’s Hindu nationalist government revoked the limited autonomy that Kashmir had enjoyed for 70 years and began a harsh crackdown. Since then, Islam and others say, journalists in Kashmir, India’s only Muslim-majority region, have faced an atmosphere of intimidation that is driving many of them out of the profession and keeping others from freely reporting what’s happening there to the world.
“You cannot think of doing journalism here, it appears all criminalized now,” said Islam, 31, who now runs a tailor shop in a village about 40 miles south of Kashmir’s capital, Srinagar.
When they changed Kashmir’s status, Indian officials argued it could bring an end to the insurgency. But the highly militarized region of 12.5 million people has continued to experience waves of violence, with hundreds of suspected militants, Indian security forces and civilians killed in recent years.
The government’s move in August 2019 was followed by more than six months of a communications blackout during which Kashmir had no internet access, hampering journalistic work as well as education and businesses.
“It was very hard during that time period to pursue a story and submit it because you didn’t have any lines of communication or internet — it was really hard to pursue any other job as well,” Islam said.
In the meantime, he found work at a construction site in his hometown, hoping to go back to his former job once the situation improved. But instead it has only worsened, he said, leading him to conclude he can no longer work as a journalist at all.
“I cannot think of getting arrested or summoned to the police station by way of my reporting now, as I have a family responsibility to shoulder including a young child,” Islam said.
According to Human Rights Watch, since 2019 at least 35 journalists in Kashmir have faced “police interrogation, raids, threats, physical assault or criminal cases” in relation to their work.
Among the highest-profile cases is that of Fahad Shah, founder and editor in chief of the weekly magazine Kashmir Walla, who was arrested in February under anti-terror and sedition laws.
The case related to the magazine’s coverage of a gunfight the previous month between separatist rebels and Indian troops in which a teenage boy was killed; the magazine quoted family members challenging police claims that the boy was a militant.
Shah, 32, was released on bail and then rearrested over other reporting several times before being charged in March under the Public Safety Act, which allows detention without trial for up to two years. He was the second Kashmir Walla journalist to be charged under the law after Sajad Gul, 26, a trainee reporter who was detained over a social media post about the same gunfight.
In April, Kashmiri journalist Aasif Sultan, 35, was also rearrested under the Public Safety Act after a court released him on bail in a 2018 case, saying the government had failed to provide evidence to support its claim that he had harbored militants. Police dossiers accuse the three men of threatening national security under the pretext of journalism.
Geeta Seshu, co-founder of Free Speech Collective, which promotes press freedom in India, said authorities in Kashmir were using such legal maneuvers to prevent journalists from doing their work.
