Kashmir journos say local media erasing their work

Al Jazeera :
For decades, local media has documented the conflict in Indian-administered Kashmir, but recently, stories critical of the Indian government have seemingly disappeared from digital archives.
Several Kashmiri journalists have told Al Jazeera their work is among thousands of news reports, many highlighting human rights abuses by Indian security forces, that have gone missing from the digital archives of local newspapers.
Scope for media freedom has been eroded rapidly in Kashmir, where journalists have been criminalised and newspaper advertising funding has been cut since the disputed region was stripped of its special status by India’s Hindu nationalist government in 2019.
Some local newspaper owners call what is happening a “technical issue”, and many are silent about it, but journalists Al Jazeera spoke to say it is a deliberate pattern “to twist history” and project everything as “hunky-dory” in Kashmir – a border region disputed by India and Pakistan.
Mudasir Ali, 37, was a well-known reporter at Greater Kashmir, a popular newspaper in the region, established in 1987. Ali, who comes from central Kashmir’s Budgam district, was a staffer there from 2007 to November 2020 when he suffered a heart attack and died.
He was known for his groundbreaking news reports, but most of his work is missing from the newspaper archives. A search shows just four stories filed by Ali between 2017 and 2020.
“He had done exceptionally great work in some sectors, including power generation, water resources in Kashmir,” lamented one of his journalist friends who did not wish to be identified.
“We will be in very uncertain times and I see erasing of archives as a part of a larger pattern to silence not only the spoken word but the writings, too,” the journalist said.
In the last two years, the local newspapers, which have been a window to the conflict in Kashmir for the outside world, have been forced into self-censorship as proprietors and editors have been hounded by Indian agencies.
Fayaz Kaloo, editor and owner of Greater Kashmir newspaper has been summoned by India’s top “anti-terror” agency – National Investigation Agency (NIA) – multiple times.
Since the local newspapers in the region are solely dependent on the government advertisements for the revenue – which has often been stopped by the government at will – many say it is easier for the government to pull the strings.
Al Jazeera spoke to at least 15 journalists in the region whose years of reporting have been partially or completely erased from the digital archives. Many termed it as a deliberate attempt of “war on memory”.
Junaid Kathju, a journalist based in the main city of Srinagar, also worked as a reporter at Rising Kashmir newspaper for five years until 2021. He too has lost all his work at the paper except for the few newspaper cuttings that he used to save initially.
“As a reporter, you work for by-lines. It is the oxygen for your work. We took up the issue with the organization and they said it will be uploaded back but more than a year has passed, there is nothing,” Kathju told Al Jazeera.
“Our work has been undone and erased like we did not exist.”
Like Kathju, Ahmad, who only gave his last name to conceal his identity, found his work missing from the online edition of the newspaper. Decades of his work, including with Rising Kashmir, have been wiped out, he says.
“If I have to apply for a job or a scholarship, they ask for the links to my previous work, but I have nothing. It has become difficult for me to prove that I am a journalist.”
Ahmad says he is getting calls from people who wrote opinions for the papers as they cannot find their write-ups any more.
“It is like what Russia did to the Chechens,” he said. “First dismantle them then build a narrative that fits them.”
Sameena Jan (name changed), 27, worked at another local newspaper Kashmir Reader, which was launched in 2012 and had initially been highly critical of the government. She joined the paper in 2016. The paper, she says, has deleted all her stories that appeared until 2018.
During the 2016 uprising that was followed by the killing of rebel commander Burhan Wani, Kashmir Reader was banned for three months for being “critical of the Indian government”.
“Sometimes I need to follow up an old story and there is nothing in the archives. I initially believed it might be a technical issue as reasoned by the paper but then I understood it was much more than that,” she told Al Jazeera.
“Journalism is literature in a hurry but it’s literature.”