India’s War on Journalism in Kashmir

On 5 August 2019, the Indian government revoked Article 370 of the Indian Constitution, paving the way for the complete annexation of Jammu & Kashmir. Days prior, the Indian government deployed tens of thousands of additional troops to the region; it imposed curfews as well as a near-total communication blackout, including the suspension of internet services and mobile phone networks. The revocation of Article 370 (and Article 35A) would have major implications for the people of Kashmir as India began to change residency and land laws, well as build settlements in pursuit of changing the population demographics in the state. India has simultaneously looked to decimate journalism and civil society in Kashmir by creating an atmosphere of fear and intimidation. How, then, has journalism in Kashmir changed since 2019? And what do these attacks on the free press mean for the future of journalism in Kashmir? Maryam Iqbal reports.

The internet went dark. Mobile networks fell silent.

And in a flash, the Indian government arrested thousands of people as it went on to abrogate Article 370.

Kashmir lost its semi-autonomous status that had theoretically allowed it to have its own constitution, and control over all matters besides foreign affairs, defense and communications.

The shocking move also came with a media blackout that cut Kashmir off from the rest of the world.

For journalists, the curfews and severe restrictions on movement further crippled their ability to cover stories, to conduct interviews, and report on the aftermath of the decree from Delhi.

Journalists were made to apply for special passes to leave their homes; check points were set up, and Indian forces harassed and intimidated reporters as they sought to move through different neighbourhoods. Their own neighbourhoods.

Without phones, reporters were at the mercy of Indian troops in the most militarized zone on earth.

They could disappear and no one would know.

The challenges for journalists however went beyond just gathering news on the ground—they also faced the nearly impossible task of verifying information in real-time.

Take the experience of one editor, Yash Raj Sharma, The Kashmir Walla.

In order to continue reporting factual and verified news during the 18-month internet blockade, his team had to find novel ways to fact check.

“Every week, a team member would fly to Delhi and fill in the blanks.”

In other words, Sharma would leave gaps in articles where details couldn’t be verified, waiting until a team member could access the internet and complete the story.

This desperate strategy, born out of necessity, speaks volumes about the conditions that Kashmiri journalists were and continue to be subjected to.

To say Kashmir was thrust into the dark ages in 2019 is no exaggeration.

Incidentally, The Kashmir Walla, an independent Kashmiri news outlet, would become one of the most targeted media outlets after 2019.

And even though the Indian Supreme Court would rule in January 2020 that access to the internet was a fundamental right and declared the indefinite shutdown in Kashmir illegal, authorities continued the blockade.

When slow-speed internet finally returned in March 2020—right in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic—it was still severely restricted.

At 213 days, it became the longest internet blockade in recorded history.

Livelihoods were shattered, incomes slashed, schooling and higher education thrown into chaos, healthcare crippled.

4G mobile data services were only reinstated on February 5, 2021.

By then, the damage was done.

Killing the archive

In the sweeping crackdown of 2019, the Indian government tightened its grip on Kashmir by restricting foreign media from entering the region.

From that point on, international journalists needed special permission to travel to the valley, a move designed to control the colonial narrative.

But the assault on press freedom didn’t stop there. In 2020, amid the ongoing communication blockade, the Indian government introduced a draconian media policy, granting authorities even greater power to censor news in the region.

As the Associated Press reported, the new policy was designed “to control the press more effectively to censure independent reporting.”

“Strict censorship has been a historical reality in Kashmir, only now it is fully institutionalized with the military coupled with bureaucracy fully empowered to crack down on free expression – press and civilians alike.” US-based Kashmiri scholar Ather Zia, told me.

The crackdown escalated further with direct attacks on Kashmiri newspapers who dared to defy the state’s narrative.

In October 2020, the Jammu and Kashmir government sealed the Srinagar office of the newspaper Kashmir Times. The move was widely seen as a reprisal against its executive editor, Anuradha Bhasin, who had filed a Supreme Court petition challenging the government’s telecommunications shutdown.

That same month, the Jammu and Kashmir authorities also shuttered Kashmir News Service, a local news agency.

But the repression didn’t stop at physical closures.

Journalists soon discovered that their stories in Rising Kashmir, Greater Kashmir, Kashmir Reader, and the pre-2019 digital archives of many other Urdu and English-language papers were vanishing from the internet—erased from the digital landscape as if they had never existed.

They were being deliberately removed from the internet.

So not only was there an attempt to silence the present, the Indian government was trying to scrub the record of the past.

Physical assault & arrest

The attacks on press freedom in Kashmir over the past five years has been accompanied by a sustained assault on journalists themselves.

Not only have journalists faced police interrogations raids, threats, physical assault, or fabricated criminal cases for their reporting; others have either been arrested and booked under flimsy charges or have had their passports revoked.

“Journalists are increasingly incarcerated, beaten, humiliated, and harassed, booked under terror charges with arbitrary allegations pertaining to incitement, sympathizing with Tehreek, the resistance movement,” Zia added.

Many have been arbitrarily detained under harsh and severe laws like the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA), which allow the Indian government to detain individuals indefinitely under the guise of combating terrorism, often without trial.

In June 2021, the United Nations special rapporteur on freedom of expression and the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention raised concerns over the “arbitrary detention and intimidation of journalists covering the situation in Jammu and Kashmir.”

They warned that these violations might be part of a broader strategy to silence independent reporting in the region, potentially deterring other journalists and civil society from addressing issues of public interest and human rights.

In 2022, Human Rights Watch said that at least 35 journalists in Kashmir had experienced these attacks.

Among the most prominent cases:

Aasif Sultan: A journalist with the Kashmir Narrator, Sultan was arrested in August 2018 and charged under the UAPA. His arrest has been widely criticized by press freedom organizations, which argue that he was targeted for his reporting on Kashmir. Sultan was featured in TIME magazine’s May 2019 edition as one of the ten most urgent cases threatening press freedom worldwide. In 2020, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), along with 400 journalists and civil society members, urged Prime Minister Narendra Modi to grant Sultan “immediate and unconditional release.” Despite the appeals, Sultan remains incarcerated.

Masrat Zahra: An independent photographer, Zahra was booked under the UAPA for her social media posts in April 2020. Zahra, known for her powerful images depicting the life and struggles of Kashmiris, was accused of “anti-national activities.” She is currently outside Kashmir and India.

Gowhar Geelani: A respected journalist and author, Geelani was accused of “indulging in unlawful activities” on social media, a charge rooted in his outspoken coverage of Kashmir’s political scene. Earlier, in 2019, he was barred from traveling abroad, a tactic used to stifle his voice beyond India’s borders.

Sajad Gul: A journalist at The Kashmir Walla, was arrested in January 2022 under the PSA for sharing a protest video on social media, which authorities deemed “disinformation.”

Irfan Mehraj: Another well known and talented journalist, was detained by India’s National Investigation Agency (NIA) under several charges, including the UAPA, on 20 March 2023. it is believed Mehraj is being targeted for “his civil society work and critical journalism on Indian government policies and rights abuses, which included reports on extrajudicial killings and surveillance in Kashmir.”

Fahad Shah: The editor of The Kashmir Walla, has borne the brunt of this crackdown. Since early 2022, he has been repeatedly arrested under draconian laws like the UAPA, accused of spreading “anti-national content.” In March, while still in custody, he was jailed under the Jammu and Kashmir Public Safety Act (PSA). Shah was released in October 2023.

Dr. Abdul Aala Fazili: Dr. Fazili, a senior research fellow in pharmaceutical science, was arrested under the UAPA in April 2020 for an article he wrote in 2011. His article, ‘The Shackles of Slavery Will Break’ was published in the online magazine, The Kashmiri Walla.

Reflecting on the state of media in Kashmir, Steven Butler, Asia program coordinator for the CPJ, commented, “Indian authorities appear determined to prevent journalists from doing their jobs.”

Impounding passports

Since 2019, the state has weaponized passport seizures against Kashmiri journalists, a tactic that is often overshadowed in discussions about India’s broader war on the press.

Over 40 individuals, including 22 journalists, have found themselves on lists barring them from traveling abroad.

This tactic has had a chilling affect on Kashmiris.

Journalists are effectively cut off from the world, unable to attend international events, speak on Kashmir’s plight, or even pursue higher education.

The prospect of being arbitrarily arrested or being slapped with a travel ban has forced many to abandon investigative journalism altogether.

A Kashmiri journalist, who asked to remain anonymous, told me that journalism in Kashmir today was dominated by reporters who showed no intent of holding power to account and instead just printed press releases.

“This intentional suppression has driven a wedge between the media and the people, as the public becomes skeptical of the media’s ability to report on their experiences and grievances, which further isolates journalists and sows distrust.

“There is no dissent; nobody is questioning anything the state does in public. Seeing that, it seems like things are going to be difficult,” the journalist added.

The once-vibrant journalistic community has been reduced to a chorus of sanctioned voices, with those who dare to defy the state doing so at great personal risk.

These journalists live in a constant state of fear. They are followed, monitored, and questioned about their work, facing the very real threat of physical assault or raids at any moment.

They also remain mostly forgotten by the rest of the world.

Despite the mounting evidence of India’s human rights violations within India itself and in occupied Kashmir, there is very little attempt by the international community to hold them accountable.

Mohamed Junaid, a US-based Kashmiri anthropologist, captures the frustration and resilience of the struggle for press freedom in Kashmir: “For years, organizations have issued reports and letters about press freedom, but they haven’t led to any substantial change. What’s crucial now is that Kashmir and its press are not forgotten—things can change.”

Junaid’s perspective highlights a grim reality: The Indian state’s control over Kashmir has always relied on a systematic silencing of dissent, where the media is tightly controlled, and any narrative that challenges the state has been swiftly suppressed. India’s suppression of Kashmiri journalists, then, should not be seen in isolation of the long litany of human rights violations faced by Kashmiris over the decades.

Kashmir’s history is marred by a series of human rights abuses—curfews, arrests, enforced disappearances, and extrajudicial killings since the 1990s. The abrogation of Article 370 in August 2019 marked a dark escalation of these tactics, plunging the region into even deeper repression.

Despite the difficulties for the press, Kashmir did have several media platforms – in print and online – much of which came to halt or were transformed into stenographers of the Indian government after 2019.

Whereas in the past the Indian government embarked on crimes against Kashmiris and were indifferent to the reportage that emerged from the valley, now it merely seeks to muzzle it all.

Still, amidst the oppression, there are journalists who refuse to surrender.

The journalist who spoke to me reflected on Kashmir’s history, expressing cautious hope:

“We always hear from our elders that Kashmir has in its long history of conflict of over 70 years seen these bouts of heightened censorship where things become extremely difficult, but then it has also seen the better times.

”I can say that as a journalist, I have hope that things will improve for us to be able to report in the future,” the journalist added.

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