In Kashmir, another police complaint, another public gag order. On June 7, the Jammu and Kashmir police lodged an “open FIR” against social...
In Kashmir, another police complaint, another public gag order. On June 7, the Jammu and Kashmir police lodged an “open FIR” against social media criticism of a judgment passed by the Jammu and Kashmir High Court on May 28. The court ruling had upheld the incarceration of Kashmir Bar Council President Mian Qayoom under the Public Safety Act, a preventive detention law, on the grounds that there was no evidence to show he had “shunned his separatist ideology”. The 76-year-old lawyer had been detained last year because his ideology had been deemed a threat to public order. As they filed an FIR criminalising criticism of his continued detention, the police cited the “threat of disharmony in the general public” once again.
Since the Centre stripped Jammu and Kashmir of autonomy and split the former state into two Union Territories on August 5, “public order” has become a powerful reason to block the flow of public discourse in Kashmir. It has been used to paralyse the local press and intimidate reporters in the Valley. Last week, the Jammu and Kashmir government issued a vaguely worded statement about a new “media policy” that will “raise alarm against any attempt to use media to vitiate public peace, sovereignty and...
