India's arrest of Kashmiri journalist amid widening media crackdown sparks outrage

The arrest of a prominent journalist based in Indian controlled Kashmir for allegedly “inciting the public” and “glorifying terrorist activities has drawn widespread condemnation.

Fahad Shah, editor of the news portal The Kashmir Walla, was arrested on Friday night by police in the contested Himalayan region on charges that free speech activists have termed preposterous.

The arrest, which comes amid growing crackdown on independent media in the region, has been denounced by media advocacy organizations in India and abroad as an assault on press freedom.

The charge-sheet against Fahad Shah accuses him of “provoking the public to disturb law and order” through his posts on his website and social media.

The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), an independent global organization that promotes press freedom, in a statement said the arrest of Shah shows “Jammu and Kashmir authorities’ utter disregard for press freedom and the fundamental right of journalists to report freely and safely”.

“Authorities must immediately release Shah, and all other journalists behind bars, and cease detaining and harassing journalists for simply doing their jobs,” said CPJ’s Asia program coordinator, Steven Butler.

#Kashmir: Authorities must immediately and unconditionally release journalist Fahad Shah (@pzfahad), drop any investigation into his work, and cease detaining members of the press.https://t.co/prC1jp3pgD

— CPJ Asia (@CPJAsia) February 4, 2022

According to police, Shah was identified among Facebook users and portals that had published “antinational content”, which it said was posted with “criminal intention” to create fear and “provoke the public to disturb law and order”.

The social media content, it further stated, was “tantamount to glorifying the terrorist activities.”

The case against the 34-year old Kashmiri journalist relates to a gunfight between militants and Indian troops in southern Pulwama district of Kashmir on January 30, which Shah’s news portal had covered.

According to the Indian law, if Shah is charged and convicted of sedition, he could face life imprisonment and an unspecified fine, and if he is charged and convicted of making statements causing public mischief, he could face up to three years in prison and an unspecified fine.

If the journalist is indicted and convicted of the offenses under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, he could face up to seven years imprisonment as well as an unspecified fine.

The Editors Guild of India in a statement demanded the "immediate release of Shah, and to ensure that FIRs under harsh penal laws, intimidatory questioning, and wrongful detainment are not used as tools for suppressing journalists’ rights."

The @IndEditorsGuild has demanded the "immediate release of Fahad Shah as well as Sajad Gul, and to ensure that FIRs under harsh penal laws, intimidatory questioning, and wrongful detainment are not used as tools for suppressing journalists’ rights." pic.twitter.com/HXCjon0UOW

— Seema Chishti (@seemay) February 6, 2022

New India Foundation, in a statement, said the practice of journalism has become a “crime in the Union territory, threatening not just the future of journalism there but Indian democracy itself."

Statement from DIGIPUB on the arrest of Fahad Shah.

"The practice of journalism has become a crime in the Union territory, threatening not just the future of journalism there but Indian democracy itself." pic.twitter.com/5DiWm1GK5j

— Ashutosh Bhardwaj (@ashubh) February 6, 2022

Senior Kashmiri journalist and author, Mirza Waheed, expressing his shock over the arrest of Shah in a tweet said the the Indian government was “on a brazen campaign to silence the media in Kashmir.”

I'm shocked to hear that Fahad Shah (@pzfahad ), journalist and editor of @tkwmag has been arrested by the police in Kashmir. Reports say one of the charges is sedition. The Indian government is on a brazen campaign to silence the media in Kashmir.

— Mirza Waheed (@MirzaWaheed) February 4, 2022

Since the Hindu nationalist BJP government in New Delhi revoked Indian controlled Kashmir’s special status in August 2019, the crackdown on local Kashmiri journalists and independent media groups has intensified.

Journalism in Kashmir in ‘dramatic state of repression:’ Media watchdog

A global media watchdog says journalism in the Indian-administered Kashmir region is “under a dramatic state of repression.”

According to the Editors Guild of India, the space for media freedom and civil society is fading in the region. It lists several cases of detention of journalists, including that of Fahad Shah, Sajad Gul, Kamran Yousuf, Peerzada Ashiq, Masrat Zahra, and the killing of senior journalist Shujaat Bukhari.

Journalists, who have reported critically about New Delhi’s controversial measures, including the attempts to change the Muslim- majority region’s demography, have faced harassment, intimidation and even imprisonment.

Dozens of journalists have been subjected to Indian police raids or interrogation or being put on no-fly lists in recent years. Some continue to languish behind the bars and many others face serious criminal charges.

The crackdown intensified after the government in June 2020 launched a new media policy that authorized the administration to prosecute those spreading fake news. This law has been used as a pretext to muzzle the voice of independent media in the disputed Himalayan region, believe experts.

Last month, one of Shah’s colleagues, Sajad Gul, was detained under the stringent Public Safety Act (PSA), which allows the detention of an individual without trial for six months. He was moved to a distant prison, according to his family.

Shah had in recent weeks persistently written about Gul. Despite being granted bail on January 15, police filed another dossier against him to keep him in their custody.

Gul’s arrest in mid-January was followed by the government takeover of the region’s only independent media club. What was widely described as “forcible and illegal takeover” of the Kashmir Press Club, with 300 journalists as members, the move evoked widespread condemnation.

The region’s former chief minister, Omar Abdulllah, called it a “state-sponsored coup”. The Editors Guild of India said it was “aghast at the manner in which the office and the management of Kashmir Press Club was forcibly taken over” and accused the state of being “brazenly complicit in this coup”.

Days after the takeover, the government declared that the media club had “ceased to exist”.

The arrest of Shah and Gul and the takeover of the Kashmir Press Club came nearly three months after Indian security forces arrested a prominent human rights campaigner in the restive region.

Global rights bodies call for Khurram Parvez's immediate release

The arrest of a prominent human rights activist in Indian-controlled Kashmir continues to draw condemnations inside and outside of the region.

Personnel from the National Investigation Agency (NIA), India's notorious counter-terrorism task force, arrested Khurram Parvez from his home in Srinagar in late November.

Parvez, the program coordinator for the Jammu Kashmir Coalition of Civil Society (JKCCS), was detained under the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA), the primary and much-maligned counter-terror law in India, and multiple other charges under the Indian Penal Code (IPC), the official criminal code of India dating back to the colonial era.

Parvez’s arrest drew widespread outrage and condemnation from human rights organizations and individuals across the globe.

At least 2,300 people have been arrested in Kashmir under the vaguely worded UAPA law, which effectively allows people to be held without trial indefinitely, and has been extensively used in the Indian-controlled territory since the government of India revoked the region’s special status in 2019.

Kashmir has been split between estranged neighbors India and Pakistan since the partition of British India in 1947. Both countries claim all of Kashmir and have fought three wars over the territory.

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