ISLAMABAD – An international press advocacy group is urging India toimmediately withdraw its “new media policy” in Indian-administered Jammuand Kashmir, saying it has handed unimpeded powers to authorities.
In a statement, Reporters Without Borders (RSF) said the policy allowedIndian officials to harass journalists and media judicially andeconomically if they “published content it doesn’t like,” it said,describing this as “prior censorship.”
Under the policy, the government’s information and public relationsdepartment (DIPR) exercises “pre- and post-publication control over alljournalism in the territory for the next five years,” it added.
“By means of this totally Orwellian regulation, the Jammu and Kashmiradministration becomes plaintiff against the free press, judge andexecutioner all in one,” said the RSF.
A Srinagar-based journalist told Anadolu Agency that the new media policywas “merely a legal cover to what is already going on in Kashmir.”
“For the last couple of months, many of our colleagues were booked understringent laws, many were summoned [by police] and interrogated for theirprofessional work or social media posts,” said the journalist, who wishedto remain anonymous.
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The RSF said the DIPR would conduct a “background check” of everypublisher, editor and reporter before their media outlet is granted”empanelment” — its term for official approval.
“Any individual or group indulging in fake news, unethical or anti-nationalactivities or in plagiarism shall be de-empaneled besides being proceededagainst under law,” the new policy says, according to the RSF.
“As there is no definition of what constitutes fake news or anti-nationalcontent, the government has absolutely infinite interpretative leeway tocensor any journalism it does not like and to impose its own narrative,”said Daniel Bastard, the head of RSF’s Asia-Pacific desk.
“The media policy is clearly in line with the attempts at controlling thepress freedom in Kashmir and such attempts have increased manifold afterAugust 2019,” the Kashmiri journalist added.
