Journalism in Kashmir going through tough times

The news business in Kashmir has been going through a rough patch with journalists being summoned, jailed and bullied into submission. It has now become a dicey affair to tell the truthful stories. Although the COVID-19 cases in the Valley, like other parts of the country, are ballooning with every passing day and the world is fighting an unprecedented crisis, the scribes in Kashmir are grappling with a procession of questions concerning their reportage. While some are forced to exercise self-censorship, others are seriously thinking about packing in the job.

On Monday, the journalist community in the Valley woke up to awful news: police invoking Unlawful Activities(Prevention) Act against a woman journalist.

Masarat Zehra, 26, a photojournalist was booked under the stringent law for posting "anti-national posts" on social media.

A police statement said that the journalist was uploading anti-social posts with criminal intentions.

The Kashmir Press Club in a statement condemned the charges against her.

"It is very unfortunate that when the world is in a grip of pandemic and when we need to stand together to combat the COVID-19, police have started filing cases against journalists and harassing them,"  said the statement.

"This is unacceptable for journalists of Kashmir who are well within their rights to seek freedom of expression and speech as guaranteed under the constitution like other parts of the country."

In 2017, Zahra decided to carve a niche for herself in a male-dominated work-world of photojournalism.  Four years down the line, her works published in various national and international publications including the Washington Post.

However, the tryst of Zahra with miseries is not new. In 2018, Zahara was billed as an "informer of the army " after she posted her picture from a gun battle site in Shopian.

Many youths on social media hurled streams of invectives at her, spurring a widespread condemnation from the journalistic fraternity.

"The conflict zones make women journalists more vulnerable and state always tries to  muzzle their voice", said a woman journalist, who declined to be named in this report.

Last year, after Modi led the BJP government scrapped to the special status of Jammu and Kashmir, the erosion of press freedom in the region reached  its peak. For several months, the newspapers in the Valley went to press with out editorials and op-edits. Many newspapers slashed their number of pages as they had been deprived of government advertisement. And the harrying of journalists began more vigorously than ever. Eversince, the journalists are consistently being summoned to police stations and questioned about their work.

Last week, according to the Kashmir Press Club, Peerzada Ashiq, a journalist with The Hindu was verbally summoned by police in connection with his recent story.

"While Peerzada explained his case to police in Srinagar, he was asked to travel to south Kashmir, some 40 kilometers away in evening, and present himself before a police officer in Anantnag district, the Press Club said in a statement.

As many as 13 journalists, who had the temerity to report the truth, were pumped full of lead since the militancy broke out in Kashmir in early nineties.  Shujaat Bukhari's is the recent case who was shot dead along with his two security guards outside his office in 2018.

Senior journalist's in Jammu and Kashmir see the recent move of booking of Zahra as an attempt to kill the media.

Anuradha Bhasin, executive editor of Kashmir Times condemned the move and said that it was extremely shocking to book a journalist under a stringent and draconian law for merely sharing her published work.

She said that it was aimed at killing the media "Instead of curbing the media, the government should have focussed on the COVID -19 pandemic", she added.