The Diary Of A Kashmiri Journalist

Summoned. Raided. Interrogated. Jailed. Journalism critical of the Indian state has been a crime in Kashmir for a while (Aasif Sultan has been in jail since August 2018), but in recent months the picture has only gotten darker as security agencies compete with each other to intimidate journalists and their families. See this incomplete list, compiled by Caravan magazine, to know how the local police’s Crime Investigation Department harasses news reporters who continue to tell stories under siege, two and a half years after the Narendra Modi government abrogated Kashmir’s autonomy and claimed a new era would be ushered in.

Award-winning photojournalist Masrat Zahra, 28, who was charged under the anti-terror UAPA law and who left Kashmir to study abroad nearly a year ago is, like so many others, experiencing Modi’s ‘Naya Kashmir’. Zahra tweeted on Jan. 1 that she was “worried about the safety of her family” who was being “routinely harassed by the authorities”. Last year, she said, the police even assaulted her elderly parents.

Two weeks after Zahra’s tweet, the Kashmir Press Club was forcibly “taken over” by a group of journalists known to be close to the state and led by Times of India assistant editor Saleem Pandit. The takeover was condemned by many (see here, here and here).

On Feb. 4, Fahad Shah, the outspoken editor of the independent website The Kashmir Walla was arrested and continues to remain in prison. The previous month, his younger colleague Sajad Gul was arrested and charged with ‘criminal conspiracy’. The Editors’ Guild demanded Shah’s release and urged the state “to ensure that FIRs, intimidatory questioning, and wrongful detainment are not used as tools for suppressing press freedom”.

On Feb. 17, a Jammu & Kashmir court issued an arrest warrant against journalist Gowhar Geelani. “What will Jammu Kashmir authorities do once they have hunted down and locked up every journalist? #JournalismIsNotACrime,” The Hindu’s foreign editor Suhasini Haidar tweeted sharing a report on the arrest. The report was written by the newspaper’s Kashmir correspondent who has, himself, faced police intimidation.

One journalist, who is “taking a breather” from Kashmir spoke to me from another Indian city, on the condition of anonymity, about the trauma he faced in executing his basic professional duties. Edited excerpts of his story:

“One day the CID rep said let’s meet. We met on what used to be neutral ground, the Kashmir Press Club, a place that until recently offered journalists some security. He had a four- or five-page questionnaire with him. Over two and a half hours, he asked me 32 questions—he covered everything from my passport and bank account details to details about my family members. He told me to avoid writing for news outlets like Al Jazeera, TRT World, and newspapers in the Gulf and Iran. That would make the authorities come after me, he said. I’ve stopped writing for Al Jazeera.

“The CID has come to my home three or four times, they’ve summoned a member of my family too. We all know security agencies are profiling independent journalists. They are making lists. ‘Journalists are under threat so we are assessing the situation,’ they told a couple of my colleagues.

“After I wrote about a fake encounter where civilians were killed, the same CID man met me and told me, ‘They are not happy with you.’ I asked him who ‘they’ were and he said his bosses keep discussing names of ‘problematic’ journalists.

“Then the press club takeover happened. Many of us protested, spoke up in meetings held after the takeover and now we’ve been told that security agencies are likely to come after those journalists who called it a ‘state-sponsored coup’.

“In the last one year, I was fired/resigned from three organisations—for writing critical political stories, for tweeting, and because of police harassment. Please don't share more details as it might reveal who I am.

“I remember the moment I decided I wanted to be a journalist. It was 2010, I was at Hazratbal shrine on shab e qadr. The Kashmir agitation was at its peak. A national news anchor was standing in front of the shrine and I could hear her saying into camera, ‘Kashmir is normal’. Just 200 metres from the shrine, everything was under siege. Curfew had been imposed everywhere. That’s when I decided that I wanted to do my bit to see that the news on the ground was reflected accurately in media reports.

“These past years, I have been very critical of local media and how they manipulate the news. They are not ready to give jobs to journalists who criticise the policies of the state. Many of my colleagues are now reporting from other states. I also had plans to go cover the elections in Uttar Pradesh but some friends told me not to go.

“These days Kashmiri journalists don't want to write anything from Kashmir. The moment you write something you are called and if anyone in your family works in the government they go after them too. Last year the government said security clearances for passports and government jobs would not be given to those with ‘adverse police reports’. Being an independent journalist is very tricky in Kashmir.

“I spend the day reading and receiving calls from Srinagar giving me updates of what’s happening. The updates keep getting worse, it’s difficult to do anything other than think about home all the time.

This is a different kind of assault from competing security agencies, you don't know who’s behind which move. At times there’s an internal tussle between these agencies.

“The middle ground that existed before Article 370 was abrogated has disappeared. Before Aug. 5, 2019, there was a political structure that journalists could appeal to, state machinery that worked with the media. But now there’s nothing. Now security agencies are running the show.

“It’s getting worse every day. All of us are scared.”

Priya Ramani is a Bengaluru-based journalist and is on the editorial board of Article-14.com.

The views expressed here are those of the author, and do not necessarily represent the views of BloombergQuint or its editorial team.