The G20 event in Srinagar concluded on Wednesday, hours after American author Noam Chomsky questioned the conscience of the grouping for holding such a meeting in Kashmir.
In a video released on Tuesday night, Chomsky said it was “unconscionable for the G20 to hold any kind of a meeting, let alone a tourism meeting” in Kashmir.
“Kashmir was one of the many victims (of the legacy of Partition), its travails took even harsher forms in later years, most recently in 2019, with India’s total demolition of the legal agreement under which Jammu Kashmir joined India in 1947,” he added. “(It is) probably the most highly militarised region on earth, with the population subjected to imprisonment, torture, disappearance, deprived of even the most elementary rights,” Chomsky said.
Earlier, US-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) issued a press statement saying that press freedom remains under attack in Kashmir, to which When lieutenant governor Manoj Sinha responded by saying that the media enjoyed “absolute freedom in Jammu Kashmir”. He said only three journalists had been arrested in Jammu Kashmir and anti-terror agencies were probing the cases.