On barely escaping arrest in Kashmir
Press freedom in the formerly autonomous region has always been spotty; now it is nonexistent
The free press in India is a myth. India ranks 142nd in press freedom, according Reporters San Frontiers. When our news outlets do not self-censor or work directly with the government to publish phony, rehearsed interviews, they are raided, their journalists are incarcerated, and sometimes they are even charged with sedition. Nowhere is this impunity more acute than in Jammu and Kashmir, where, in 2019, the Indian government revoked the region’s semi-autonomous status. In Kashmir, journalism has suffered under an authoritarianism that sees its Muslim population—the largest in India—through the prism of skewed, religious nationalism. Journalists are routinely arrested, harassed, and their notes and photos are destroyed; they are incarcerated without charge or absurdly accused of treason. One such journalist is Aakash Hassan, who has been reporting from Srinagar at great personal risk to his life and continues to bring us vital, if devastating, stories. Today, Aakash writes eloquently about the need to defend the press.
—Rana Ayyub
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AROUND A MONTH HAD PASSED since authorities in Jammu and Kashmir detained a colleague of mine, a journalist we can’t name here. The Indian government had stripped the region of its autonomy and locked it down, and few knew his whereabouts. I was one of them. It was September, 2019.
Accompanied by two colleagues, I went to the police station in Bandipora where the journalist was held. Inside the fortified complex, we were asked to wait for a police officer busy with his lunch. We saw three young boys, between 12 and 14 years old, there in the small police compound under armed guard. One cop said they had been detained because they were ‘stone pelters’.
The three kids and our colleague had been detained, like thousands of others in the region, in the wake of the end of Kashmir’s limited autonomy, unceremoniously revoked on August 5, 2019 by the Indian government (which is currently led by right-wing Bharatiya Janata Party) over opposition from the Kashmiri people. Protesters had taken to the streets in the days leading up to the decision, but on August 5, the Indian government blacked out all communications and restricted public movement. As a result, they were able to arrest thousands—including lawyers, activists, businessmen, trade leaders, and even former chief ministers—and enforce silence.
On the journey to Bandipora, 60 kilometers north of main city Srinagar, I saw empty highways that had been packed with traffic just days before. Coils of concertina wire lay across roads lined with poplar trees, and the few cars on the road zigzagged into checkpoints manned by military and paramilitary personnel.
Armoured army trucks were parked on the roadsides near Hajin, looming over sleepy hamlets surrounded by golden paddy fields. Soldiers stood vigil in residences, their guns poking through hatches in the roofs.
The worst was yet to come.
Out of journalistic curiosity, I tried furtively to talk to the three boys, but a cop saw me. He signaled his colleagues and several of them rushed towards me, grabbed me by the collar of my shirt and dragged me away to his office.
The police took my phone—which wasn’t working anyway because of the blackout—ID card, and wallet while the Station House Officer (SHO) directed his juniors to prepare the paperwork he needed to detain me under the Public Safety Act (PSA), a broad law under which a person can be jailed for up to six months without a trial. The cops who had taken my phone deleted several weeks’ worth of notes and quite a few pictures.
When my colleagues tried to plea my case with the SHO, he rebuked them. “If we can detain Farooq Abdullah”—the 84-year-old former three-time chief minister of the region and incumbent member of the Indian parliament—“who the hell are you people?” the police officer yelled. Then he threatened to arrest me for spying on the police station and have me charged with espionage.
My companions apologized profusely on my behalf and swore that none of us would tell the public that he had detained children. One of my colleagues managed to slip in that he was from New Delhi, which seemed to convince another senior officer (also from India proper) that we could be trusted. Finally, they let me go.
The experience left me with serious doubts about my security, my work and my life, and two years later the situation has only worsened. Journalism in Kashmir was never easy, but for our profession, the repression, enforced silence, and outright persecution have reached unprecedented levels since the Bandipora incident. The police officer’s threats were a good indication of what was in store for journalists like me.
The buildings in Kashmir where most newspapers and bureaus are headquartered is named after a journalist Mushtaq Ali, who was killed in 1995 by a package bomb meant for a colleague, the BBC’s Yousuf Jameel. In 2018, another senior journalist, Shujaat Bukhari, was assassinated in broad daylight outside the same building along with his police escorts, just as he was leaving for home to celebrate Eid the next day. Since the 1990’s, 19 journalists have been killed in Kashmir.
On August 5, 2019, Jammu and Kashmir, the Himalayan region claimed by both India and Pakistan, was brought under the direct control of New Delhi. The decision had far-reaching implications for the region’s lives, politics, and economy, and yet again, Kashmiris faced another onslaught of human rights violations with few ways to express themselves. The local press shied away from the little journalism they had been able to do in the last three decades of war and violence. Editorials, news reports, and criticism that could have expressed concern over the decision were stifled. Only a select few Delhi-based and international media organisations covered Kashmir from inside its borders. Since 2019, no Western journalist has been allowed to visit Kashmir, save for a single state-guided tour of three journalists (one each from The New York Times, the Financial Times and Dutch newspaper NRC Handelsblad) in December 2020.
The police frequently detain journalists; sometimes they ask them to reveal their sources or give up their work. Police have beaten reporters in broad daylight, their equipment—phones, cameras—either confiscated or damaged. Officials have used stringent anti-terror laws like Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA) to harass journalists, including award-winning photographer Masrat Zahra and NewsClick’s Kamran Yousuf. Yousuf is finally out on bail after six months, while award-winning Kashmiri reporter Asif Sultan remains incarcerated for nearly three years on reporting about insurgency in the region. The National Investigation Agency (NIA), which has been accused of working directly for the BJP government, intimidates journalists by raiding their homes. Many have felt frightened for their lives; others fear for the lives of their families, too.
At dawn on September 8, the Jammu and Kashmir police simultaneously raided residences of four independent journalists: Hilal Mir, Azhar Qadri, Shah Abbas and Showkat Motta—all of them widely respected in their field. The police confiscated not only their electronics, but those of their spouses and other family members. Then they took away piles of documents including a masters thesis (belonging to one journalist’s spouse), intimate photographs, and pictures of birthday celebrations of their children. “I am not worried about my phone or laptop or even my SIM or ATM card. I fear losing my memories,” said Mir. In this new phase of repression, journalistic work endangers reporters’ families—old parents, spouses and young children.
That evening, I left my laptop with a non-journalist friend and my diary—which contained notes of the story I was working on—with another friend. I did not go home. Instead, I decided to stay with a colleague so that in case of a raid, my colleagues and family could remain informed. I now keep a small “go bag” filled with some of my clothes by my bedside. Who knows who will be next?
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Yea aayea aanday yeha pai b pata nahee ku aysa huwa
u arepak agent bitch