Excelsior Correspondent
SRINAGAR, Sept 27: President of Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Mehbooba Mufti, today raised the issue of “intimidation, snooping and harassment” of journalists in Kashmir with the Press Council of India and Editors Guild of India.
Mehbooba Mufti, in a letter addressed to secretary of the Press Council of India, stated that several raids were conducted by Jammu and Kashmir police at homes of several journalists in Kashmir earlier this month.
“Personal items such as electronic gadgets including phones & laptops were illegally seized along with ATM cards and passports of their spouses. This comes close on the heels of the harrowing experiences that the journalist community in Jammu and Kashmir has been subject to post the abrogation of Article 370 by the Indian Government,” reads the letter.
It reads that in a democratic set up, a free and independent press is crucial and essential for Government institutions to function in a transparent manner with due accountability towards its citizens. “We have witnessed the manner in which fundamental rights such as freedom of speech and expression enshrined in the Indian constitution have increasingly come under attack especially in the last two years by a hostile & insecure dispensation.”
Highlighting the harassment of journalists’ fraternity in Kashmir, Mehbooba in the letter said that unwarranted harassment of journalists has become a norm and this policy has 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.
Besides the letter throws light upon the fact that 23 journalists have been put on ECL. (Exit control list). “Even students who bag scholarships in prestigious colleges in top universities of world not allowed to go study there. Recently a student was deboarded from a plane, arrested and subsequently released.”
It reads 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.”
Mehbooba Mufti said that the journalists working and reporting in J&K are amongst “the bravest in the world especially at a time when a large section of the Indian media has become a propaganda extension of the Central Government.
PDP president has asked the Press Council of India to take a suo moto note of these widely reported incidents, but stated that it seems that no established watchdog forum, including the Courts, has taken any interest in the painful circumstances created in J&K, 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,” reads the letter.
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