NEW YORK – The Committee to Protect Journalists, a US-based independentwatchdog body, has called on the Indian authorities in occupied Kashmir toimmediately cease all legal proceedings against journalist Aasif Sultan andrelease him from jail after formal charges were reportedly filed againsthim in Srinagar on Wednesday.
Sultan, along with nine other individuals, has been charged with harbouringand giving support to a militant organization and for hatching a criminalconspiracy under India’s Unlawful Activities Prevention Act.
CPJ calls on Jammu and Kashmir police to drop charges against journalistAasif link
— Committee to Protect Journalists (@pressfreedom) February 8, 2019link
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“Filing terrorism-related charges against journalist Aasif Sultan, despitea complete lack of evidence, marks a terrible injustice and furtherundermines press freedom in Jammu and Kashmir,” Steven Butler, CPJ’s Asiaprogramme coordinator in Washington, D.C., said in a statement onWednesday. “Is it so hard to understand that journalists, in the normalcourse of their work, must make contact with the people they write about?”
Sultan has been jailed since August 27, 2018, after he wrote a story forthe Kashmir Narrator magazine on Kashmiri militant leader Burhan Wani. InJanuary, CPJ called on Jammu and Kashmir Governor Satya Pal Malik to ensurethat the journalist is released.On Wednesday, CPJ also distributed a picture of Asif Sultan, in handcuffs,wearing a T-shirt with an inscription: “Journalism is NOT At a crime.”
