Caravan News
NEW DELHI — Four-time MLA and CPI(M) leader from Jammu and Kashmir, Mohammad Yousuf Tarigami, alleged on Friday that the internet gag clamped by the Union Government on Jammu and Kashmir has crippled media organisations and journalists in the state. Seeking the lift of restrictions, he said the Centre has been painting a rosy picture of the state but nothing there has changed for the better.
Raising the problems faced by journalists since the abrogation of Article 370 in Jammu and Kashmir on August 5, Tarigami said the internet shutdown there for the last about six months has virtually stopped the free flow of information. Journalists continued to face severe restrictions in news gathering, verification and dissemination; leaving behind a pregnant silence that “bodes ill” for the causes of freedom of expression and media functioning.
Highlighting the problems, the CPM leader said hundreds of the Valley-based journalists have had to stand in queues at the Media Facilitation Centre – set up by the government in Srinagar – and rely on a few computers with internet access to file their stories and communicate with their central news hubs.
He said the government-imposed conditions made a mockery of the freedom of the Press in the state, particularly in the Valley. “This has virtually made them dependent on the state, and their submission to government-regulated conditions makes a mockery of the freedom of the press.”
“The Internet gag has created an information black hole in Kashmir and the local press bore the brunt of the blockade,” he said, and added that it’s functioning has been crippled and its coverage of how the clampdown affected people’s lives has been severely curtailed or suppressed. “There has been little or no coverage of how the people suffered in the months after the communication blockade came,” he underlined.
He stressed that the Constitution provided the right of freedom, given in Article 19, with the view of guaranteeing individual rights that were considered vital by the framers of the Constitution. As India is celebrating its 70th Republic Day in two days’ time, it is imperative that the democratic forces including the intelligentsia and the civil society put their heads together, discuss the situation intensively and highlight the sufferings of the people of Jammu and Kashmir and make this BJP government accountable,” the CPIM leader who had been put under house arrest and was now out for treatment, said.
Tarigami noted that use of internet was not limited to the right to speech and expression, but several other fundamental rights such as access to healthcare and statutory welfare schemes to which an individual is legally entitled.
