On Monday, the former Chief Minister of the erstwhile state of Jammu Kashmir and the PDP President, Mehbooba Mufti, wrote to the Press Council of India urging them “to send a fact-finding team to J&K, to independently verify” the claims of “intimidation, snooping and harassment of journalists” in the erstwhile state and “take remedial action.”
In the letter, Mehbooba begins by mentioning the recent “raids that were conducted by police at homes of several journalists in Kashmir earlier this month.” She states that the personal items such as electronic gadgets including phones & laptops were illegally seized along with ATM cards & passports of their spouses.
Saying that this was the condition of the Journalist fraternity in Kashmir after the abrogation of Article 370 by the government of India, she added that in a democratic setup, “a free and independent press was crucial and essential for government institutions to function in a transparent manner with due accountability towards its citizens.”
Mehbooba calling the current dispensation “hostile and insecure,” adds that in the past two years especially, the fundamental rights such as “freedom of speech and expression have come under attack.”
“People at large & media especially in J&K has been at the receiving end of this policy,” the letter reads.
She, further, adds in the letter that unwarranted harassment of journalists had become a norm and that the policy had been “implemented by raiding their homes, summoning and interrogating them on frivolous grounds such as innocuous tweets, conducting background checks of journalists and their family members by CID, withdrawal of benefits including accommodation of some senior journalists, seizure of mobile phones, laptops, confiscating passports, ATM cards etc.”
Reportedly, the letter says, 23 journalists have been put on ECL (Exit Control List). “Even students who bag scholarships in prestigious colleges in top universities of the world are not allowed to go study there,” it adds.
It mentions how, a student was deboarded from a plane, arrested, and subsequently released, recently. She also notes, in the letter, that a “sizeable number of journalists are either threatened or charged with sections under UAPA or sedition law, simply because their reportage on J&K does not cater to the PR stunts of the ruling dispensation.”
Reporting truth to power is being criminalised with every passing day, she says. And that she strongly believed that the journalists working and reporting in J&K were amongst the bravest in the world, especially at a time when a large section of the Indian media had “become a propaganda extension of the Central Government.”
She also adds that the hostile environment that the journalists in Kashmir operate in, “with frequent curfews, encounters, hartals, and other adverse security situations” had not weakened their determination to ensure that truth doesn’t become a casualty.
Adding that there had always been issues and disagreements between the State and media, she states in the letter that “never before has the freedom of expression been virtually guillotined in any part of the country as it has been done in J&K for the past three years.”
Along with the letter, Mehbooba also enclosed a copy of a questionnaire that had been served to the journalists who were being currently investigated by the State.
She asks the Press Council of India to note how apart from asking very irrelevant and personal questions, the questionnaire was “based on the assumption that their personal ties and loyalties lie with anti-national networks.”
Ms. Mufti expresses that unfortunately, it was a “diabolical method to perpetuate the communal mindset throughout the country in order to gain political mileage and relevance by demeaning & marginalising an entire community.”
Towards the end, she also remarks that it was expected from the Press Council of India to “take a suo moto note of these widely reported incidents,” but it seemed that no established watchdog forum, including the Courts, had taken any interest in the painful circumstances created in the erstwhile state, not to speak of any interventions.
“It, therefore, becomes incumbent upon me to urge you to send a fact-finding team to J&K, to independently verify these claims and take remedial action,” she concludes.