by admin | May 25, 2021 | Media, News, Politics
Srinagar : Former Chief Minister Omar Abdullah on Wednesday wondered if the situation in Jammu and Kashmir had deteriorated so badly that the government was afraid of allowing foreign correspondents to report freely from the state.
Annie Gowen, the India bureau chief of Washington Post, tweeted on Tuesday that she was in Kashmir for a friend’s wedding.
But she said she was not reporting because the Ministry of External Affairs and the Ministry of Home Affairs had not granted the special permit now required for foreign correspondents. She said she applied for it on June 22. “Unacceptable delay.”
The National Conference leader took exception to the denial of permission to Gowen.
“Has the situation in Kashmir deteriorated to such an extent that we are now afraid to let foreign correspondents report freely from Kashmir? Another crowning achievement of BJP’s Kashmir policy ably assisted by its partner in crime the PDP.”
In the early 1990s too, foreign journalists had to seek permission from the Home Ministry to report from Jammu and Kashmir.
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Media, News, Politics
Srinagar : Jammu and Kashmir has directed cable television operators to stop airing 30 television channels, including controversial preacher Zakir Naik’s Peace TV, among several others that originate from Pakistan.
Sources said the decision was taken by Governor N.N. Vohra after the Union Ministry of Information and Broadcasting took up the issue with the state government.
In a letter written to all District Magistrates, the state Home Department on Tuesday directed them to act against transmission of “these channels as they have the potential to encourage violence and disturb the law and order situation”.
Among others, the channels ordered to be taken off the cable television platform are GEO TV, Peace TV, ARY TV, QTV and ABB TAKK TV.
Tanvir Ahmed, a cable operator in the old city area, said: “With this order in place, we will have to off-load our staff. This could finally close our business.”
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Media, News
New Delhi : Journalist organisations held a remembrance-cum-solidarity meeting here on Monday in memory of Shujaat Bukhari, Editor-in-Chief of Rising Kashmir and said his killing demands accountability at various levels.
In a joint statement, 11 media organisations demanded that the government of Jammu and Kashmir bring the perpetrators of the dastardly crime to book at the earliest.
“Everyone in this country has this sovereign right to freedom of speech and expression. The increasing intolerance to such freedoms has the potential of undermining the character and nature of democracy itself,” said the statement issued by the Press Club of India, Indian Women’s Press Corps, Press Association, Editors’ Guild, SAFMA and South Asian Women in Media, Indian Journalist Union, Foreign Correspondents Club, National Union of Journalists, Working News Camerapersons Association and All India Urdu Editors Conference.
Bukhari was shot dead by militants outside his office in Srinagar on Thursday. His two security guards were also killed in the incident.
“We demand that the government institute a separate inquiry into those who had launched a malicious campaign against Shujaat. The cyber cell of the Union Home Ministry should look into all those IP addresses and their sources from where the malicious campaigns were conducted,” the statement said.
“We feel that such killings are often preceded by hate messages and malicious campaigns on the social media. Various journalists and other civilians have been viciously trolled and targeted. All such instances ought to be monitored by a vigilant government if civilian safety and security is a priority in governance,” it added.
Speaking on the occasion, senior journalist Siddharth Varadarajan said Bukhari was the 19th journalist who has lost his life in the violence in Kashmir since 1990.
“He had the courage to speak forthrightly. This is the paper that doesn’t print what government of Kashmir wants to print,” he said.
Varadarajan said that long before Bhukari was assassinated, his character was sought to be assassinated by branding him as “a soft separatist, pro-terrorist, pro-Pakistani”.
“You are setting up a target when you vilify somebody like this, which creates a space for hidden forces to engage in this kind of active terrorism” he said.
Bashir Assad, a journalist who had worked with Bhukari, said media organisations should be united to free Kashmir from “current mess and build a peace constituency.”
Journalists said Bukhari was not afraid of taking a stand and was an advocate for dialogue between Indian and Pakistan. They said he tried to bridge the gap between the different communities of the Kashmir Valley.
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Media, News
CCTV grab of the attackers of Shujaat Bukhari, editor-in-chief of the English daily Rising Kashmir.
By Sheikh Qayoom,
Srinagar : The murder in broad daylight of senior journalist Shujaat Bukhari, editor-in-chief of the English daily Rising Kashmir, has shocked the entire media fraternity in the Valley — and has them wondering whether the killers will ever be brought to justice.
Bukhari is not the first journalist who has fallen to the bullets of unidentified assassins in Kashmir. So far, none of the killers has been cuaght and punished.
The first media person to be killed in Kashmir was Lassa Koul, director of the local Doordarshan Kendra. Koul was kidnapped and subsequently killed in early 1990.
In April 1991, Muhammad Shaban Vakil, editor of the vernacular daily Al-Safa, was killed in his office in Srinagar city.
In September 1995, Mushtaq Ali, a photojournalist with the AFP wire service, was killed in a parcel bomb explosion in the office of Yusuf Jameel, the then BBC correspondent in Kashmir. A burqa-clad woman had delivered the parcel bomb at Jameel’s office in Srinagar’s Press Enclave.
On January 1, 1997, Altaf Ahmad Faktoo, an anchor of the local Doordarshan Kendra was killed.
On March 16, 1997, freelance journalist, Saidan Shafi was killed in Srinagar.
In February 2003, Parvaz Muhammad Sultan, who ran a local news agency, was killed in his office, again in Srinagar’s Press Enclave.
Bukhari himself had survived two assassinations attempts before the government provided him personal security guards.
Bukhari had just come down from his office and boarded his car around 7.15 p.m. on Thursday in Press Enclave when three assassins came on a motorcycle and fired indiscriminately at his car.
Bukhari and his two security guards, Hameed Chowdhary and Mumtaz Awan, were killed in this attack after which the assassins escaped.
Bukhari’s murder has been widely condemned by everybody.
Hardline senior separatist leader Syed Ali Geelani and chairman of Hurriyat Conference Mirwaiz Umer Farooq joined the mourners, saying that the murder was totally unacceptable and needed to be condemned by everybody.
Congress President Rahul Gandhi, Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh, state Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti, former chief minister Omar Abdullah, state secretary of CPI-M Yusuf Tarigami, members of the media fraternity and others across Kashmir society have condemned Bukhari’s killing.
The family has taken the slain journalist’s body to his ancestral north Kashmir Kreeri town in Baramulla district where he will be buried later on Friday.
The authorities have released the CCTV footage of three militants believed to be the Bukhari’s killers.
Police has appealed people to help in bringing the killers to justice.
Will Bukhari’s killers be brought to justice? This question is now haunting the media fraternity in Kashmir for whom discharge of professional duties is fraught with grave danger lurking at every nook and corner here.
(Sheikh Qayoom can be contacted at sheikh.abdul@ians.in)
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Media, World
Seoul : North Korean authorities on Tuesday morning denied permission to South Korean journalists to attend the dismantling of their nuclear base scheduled to take place between May 23-25.
Pyongyang had originally invited the South Korean media along with those from Russia, the US, the UK, and China, but the South Korean journalists’ list was rejected on Tuesday, Efe news reported quoting Seoul’s Ministry of Unification.
Members of a news agency and a South Korean television network had travelled to Beijing to fly to North Korea from there on Tuesday to attend the dismantling ceremony.
The Ministry in a statement said it regretted Pyongyang’s decision but despite the setback, it will continue working towards cooperating with Pyongyang and improving US-North Korea ties.
The announcement of the closure of the Punggye-ri base came during the inter-Korean summit, when Pyongyang pledged to work towards total denuclearisation, after claiming that it would stop its weapons tests.
Pyongyang, which announced that it wanted the closure to be made public with the presence of foreign journalists, has conducted six underground nuclear tests, including the last and most powerful in September 2017.
The latest cancellation is a new setback after last week when Pyongyang abruptly suspended a high-level meeting with Seoul after accusing it of holding joint military exercises with the US.
Kim Jong-un’s regime also said that holding the summit with US President Donald Trump would be uncertain due to the pressure from the White House on the denuclearisation model that it wants to impose on North Korea.
—IANS
