RSF slams Modi govt for press freedom violations in IIOJK

Paris-based media watchdog, Reporters Without Borders (RSF) while maintaining that the working has been “hell” for journalists in Indian illegally occupied Jammu and Kashmir for the past year, has slammed the government of India over its press freedom violations in the territory.

“Working has been hell for journalists in Kashmir for the past year,” said Daniel Bastard, the head of RSF’s Asia-Pacific desk, in a press statement from the group’s Paris-based headquarters.

“Drastic controls on information, obstructing the dissemination of articles and videos, intimidation by the security forces in the field, every kind of judicial harassment and violation of the confidentiality of sources – the list of press freedom violations by the Indian authorities in Kashmir is unworthy of a democracy. If Narendra Modi’s government maintains these policies, it will go down in history as the one that deprived 8 million citizens of reliable news and information in mid-pandemic,” he added.

Bastard said on the first anniversary of revocation of special status of Kashmir, RSF has examined the current state of press freedom in the territory with the help of its journalists.

“In the light of their alarming accounts, RSF calls on the Indian government to immediately change its policy or go down in history as a regime that deprived the region’s 8 million inhabitants of reliable news and information at the height of a pandemic,” he said.

The head of RSF’s Asia-Pacific desk also said that the streets of Srinagar were completely deserted on the morning of August 05 and that the only human presence were the paramilitaries who were occupying the city and patrolling all of Jammu and Kashmir.

“For Kashmir’s citizens, this is a sad reminder of what happened a year ago, on 5th August 2019, when it became one of the world’s biggest news and information black holes, with all forms of communication – Internet, mobile data, TV and fixed-line telephone – suddenly suspended. The Kashmir Valley, from which foreign reporters had already been barred for several months, was cut off from the world. As RSF pointed out in February, New Delhi has succeeded in imposing the longest e-curfew in history,” the RSF said.