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Media In The Kashmir
The Press in the valley is at the mercy of the militants. Correspondents of national dailies who tried to be objective have been beaten up.and driven out of Kashmir. Any journalist who does not faithfully report the utterances of the leaders of the various militant outfits, almost all of it propaganda, has to face their wrath.
One of the popular Urdu dailies published from Srinagar, the Aftab, decided to close down on September 10, 1993, following a directive from Jamait-Ul- Mujahideen, a pro-Pakistan outfit, asking the editor of the paper to appear before it within one week.
Earlier, on August 31, 1993 the house of the founder editor of the paper, Sanaullah Butt, was gutted. The surmise is that the fire which destroyed the one-storeyed house of the editor in Soura was the handiwork of the militant group which had summoned him.
During recent times, other papers have come under militant attack, the common allegation being that they have been writing anti-movement reports. The problem is that different groups perceive anti-movement in different ways. For instance, there was a spate of incidents after one group, the Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front, was credited with having issued a statement substituting self rule for independence as the goal of the movement in the Valley.
When the report was published, the chief of Mahaz-e-Islami, Inayatullah Andrabi, issued a statement condemning it in strong terms. The statement was published in the Srinagar Times which earned the wrath of the Jammu and Kashmir Students Liberation Front which imposed a ban on the paper; the Srinagar Times suspended publication forthwith (August 28 1993). The coordination committee of working journalists met in Srinagar and decided not to publish controversial statements issued by rival militant organizations. Following the decision the Urdu daily Al Safa did not publish the statement sent to it by Andrabi. The result was that the office of Al Safa was attacked on August 30. The militants ransacked the press and broke the furniture the television and telephone.
Earlier in August the militant organizations had also banned Greater Kashmir the only English daily published from the Valley for writing an anti- movement report. The paper resumed publication after 12 days. The Srinagar Times resumed publication on September 11, 1993.
One or the early victims in the print media was the editor of the Urdu daily Al Safa. A highly respected person the editor Mohammed Shaban Vakil, was shot dead in his office on April 23, 1991. A powerful explosion damaged the printing press of the daily Aftab on November 4, 1990. The other victim of militant anger was Srinagar Times edited by Sofi Ghulam Mohammed. An explosion took place at the Dal Gate residence of the editor on October 2, 1990.
Al safa voiced the problems faced by the media in Srinagar when it said: "During the last four years militancy has affected all shades of public life in the Valley. The Press had also to see ups and downs during these years. At times journalists had to hear unbecoming treatment at the hands of the government and at times militant outfits burnt copies of newspapers broke the furniture and humiliated journalists... Local newspapers and correspondents have had to suffer more at the hands of those other than the government. Publication of newspapers has been banned at will and their copies burnt by militants... statements about clashes between different militant outfits have been a source of great anxiety for local journalists. If the length of the statement of one organization exceeded that of the other outfit the paper had to hear the onslaught. The profession of journalism has been tied in chains and anybody who tries to break the chains could be sentenced to death."
Author:M.L.Kotru
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