Five Kashmiri journalists resign after alleged militant threat

Five Kashmiri journalists associated with the daily Rising Kashmir have resigned after a suspected militant organisation purportedly put out a list of over a dozen mediapersons accusing them of being police informers, NDTV reported.

The Jammu and Kashmir police said it suspected The Resistance Front, an offshoot of the Lashkar-e-Taiba, to be behind the threats which were published on a blog called “Kashmir Fight”. An FIR has been filed under UAPA.

According to NDTV, three reporters published resignations on their social media pages to avoid being targeted. A young reporter on the civic beat said he stepped down after being accused of propagating the army narrative. “I have been reporting about civic issues, water, drains, and transport. I have never reported anything on army or covered any army function so far. Yet they have branded me as an army informer," the reporter told NDTV.

Police are questioning more than a dozen suspects over their alleged links with TRF, sources told NDTV.

Press freedom has seen substantial erosion in the valley over the years. 

Kashmiri photojournalist Sanna Irshad Mattoo was earlier stopped from flying to the US to receive a Pulitzer Prize, which she had won in May for her coverage of the Covid pandemic for Reuters.  

In 2020, the J&K administration implemented a new media policy which gave it the power to scrutinise news for content that’s “fake”, “plagiarised”, “unethical” or “anti-national”. Any “individual or group” responsible for such content would be “proceeded against under law”.  Journalists would only be accredited if they passed “robust background checks”. The policy, which is in force from 2020 for five years, was widely criticised for being “Orwellian” and “Goebbelsian”.

Shujat Bukhari, editor of Rising Kashmir, was killed in 2018 by terrorists.

Newslaundry had earlier reported on how the Kashmir Press Club was allegedly taken over and shut down.