In Kashmir, journalist's arrest intensifies pressure on media

On Saturday, the Monitor’s international editor, Peter Ford, got the kind of call no editor wants to receive: that your correspondent has been arrested. 

On the line was a friend of Fahad Shah, who has written for the Monitor for many years from Kashmir, India, and is editor of The Kashmir Walla. The friend said that Mr. Shah, a respected journalist, had been charged with sedition in response to stories that police said were “glorifying terrorist activities.” 

Just days before his arrest, Mr. Shah had been questioned about a story for which The Kashmir Walla interviewed the family of a 17-year-old who was killed in a gunfight between authorities and alleged militants. Police said the young man was a “hybrid militant,” but the family said he was an innocent civilian. The story included comments from the police and the army. 

The Monitor has issued a statement calling for Mr. Shah’s release, as have numerous other publications and media groups, including the Editors Guild of India, Digipub News India Foundation, the International Press Institute, and the Committee to Protect Journalists. 

India, which placed Kashmir under its direct rule in 2019, ending the region’s special autonomous status, ranks 141st out of 180 countries in the 2021 World Press Freedom Index. But press freedom and independent media voices are under attack around the globe, the index shows, from violent assaults across the Americas and Europe to jail sentences imposed by an array of governments eager to suppress critical and investigative reports. 

Enabling such repression is growing public disdain for journalists in many quarters, fed by targeted public campaigns about fake news and sharply waning public trust in government, media, and social institutions. Those efforts are having an effect: The 2022 Edelman Trust Barometer found that two-thirds of people in 28 countries say they are being lied to by journalists. 

The staff of The Kashmir Walla are continuing to publish even as they work for Mr. Shah’s release. But in Kashmir, journalists like Mr. Shah face intensifying pressures. The Kashmir Press Club closed last month; a contributor to The Kashmir Walla was arrested last month and is still in jail. Mr. Shah has been repeatedly harassed and detained for hours of questioning, and his publication said in a statement that he could face lengthy imprisonment if convicted. 

The authorities “don’t want people to know what they are doing here,” says one local observer who knows Mr. Shah. “They want [people] to fall in line. Fahad has refused to do this despite the intimidations.

“It’s not just that Fahad has been arrested,” he adds. “It means a lot for the fraternity. The authorities are saying, ‘If we can arrest Fahad, then you are no one.’”

Mr. Shah, he says, had been told by concerned family and friends to shut the publication and leave. But the journalist has consistently refused: “He always told me, ‘If I run away right now, I don’t know how to face people when I come back.’”