 Hello and welcome to NewsClick. Today we are joined by Anuradha Bhaseen, who is the editor-in-chief of Kashmir Times, which is one of the oldest English dailies in Jaman Kashmir. Two days ago on October 19th, the offices of Kashmir Times in Srinagar were sealed by the Estates Department of the local administration and we will be talking to Anuradha about how and why this was done and also this current state of press and press freedom in media in Kashmir. Anuradha, thank you for joining us. About I think two weeks ago, a couple of weeks ago, you were also evicted from your official residence, government residence, which was allocated to you. Can you tell us why these actions have been taken? I can't say for sure, but what I can say is in the last 14 months, media has been, there are attempts to gag the media and completely impose silence on the media. A new wave of censorship in Kashmir, which is already reeling under a crisis for many, many years. And it appears to be part of that policy and particularly targeting me because I have been and my organization has been consistently critiquing the government policies and actions. We have been trying to bring in as many voices of the marginalized and oppressed people as we can and showing the ground realities to the best of our ability, which is not to the government's liking because they want the media to completely tow the government line and show only one kind of narrative. There is complete intolerance to another kind. Other than that, last year I had gone to court against the communication ban, which had impacted the working of media, including my organization. And that is also something that may not have been liked. And perhaps that time I was in court, so they did withdraw the advertisement support to Kashmir Times, but this move may have been reserved for a later time. So that's it. Again, there is also, of course, the other narrative which is being given by the authorities that they, you know, their reasons for doing this at the property was in the name of their father. And he, of course, passed away a few years ago, so that's why they're taking it. So can you tell us about what reasons they're giving and also if they followed any kind of procedure while taking these actions? Yeah. Okay. You know, now they're talking about that this was allotted in my father's name. It was allotted to him as editor of Kashmir Times for use as a news organization, for the organizational purpose, as is the case with many other newspapers that are functioning out of the same area in similar government buildings. Well, even if they take the plea that it was only allotted to one particular individual and not for organizational use, my father expired five years ago and he was not an unknown person that, you know, a government department would wake up five years later and realize that, oh, this person is dead and do we need to evict these people? The third thing is that even if it has to be done for whatever reason, then government has the right to evict on genuine grounds, anybody who's occupying or has been allotted a government accommodation. But there is a due process of law that needs to be followed. The JNK estates rules, which still apply, say, according to that, the occupant has a right to be informed about any kind of process of cancellation of the allotment. You know, they're supposed to send, serve a notice and ensure that we've received it. They're supposed to advertise it, so not leaving any chance. Nothing of this sort was done. In fact, when we started hearing rumors about six weeks ago, we approached the estates department. My staffers approached the estates department and the higher up officers were unwilling to give any clear answer. So we went to the deputy commissioner's court, which is dealing with these matters, and we petitioned them and hearing in that is yet to be made. A verdict has still awaited in that. And so yesterday they came, no, two days before, in the evening, around five, they just came. I mean, without following that process of cancellation, giving a cancellation order, giving time to the occupant to file objections and then serving the eviction notice and then allowing the occupant to move out along with their belongings. You know, they've completely put a lock there and taken away all our belongings there, which includes the entire newsroom infrastructure, which includes our technical infrastructure. They just came out of the blue, asked our staffers to move out of the office that they had to lock it up and our staffers argued with them and asked them, you know, where is the order? They said, go talk to the higher up officials in the department, we don't know anything. And we are only asked to lock up the premises and which they did. So this seems like a case of targeting and silencing the voice of the media, which as you've said, which also has been, Kashmir Times has also been identified as one of the few remaining media outlets, one of the few remaining newspapers in the region which still does question the government's moves. So can you also talk about the general state of media in Kashmir in the present day because this has been the condition, this has been the situation for most local media outlets these days that you know, this is the kind of repression they're facing. So can you talk about the sort of environment which has been created especially of course in the last one year after the revocation of Kashmir special status? You know, in the last 30 years it's been particularly bad because at one point in time there was a threat of the gun, the physical intimidation and everything. Now this is a new phase that physical intimidation is of a different kind but there is a censorship which has been imposed, which is silent, which is invisible. It's not announced and it exists nonetheless like Damocles sored around the necks of every journalist. First of all they switched off all communication channels, you know, right down till the landline phone which has never happened in the, ever before. And internet and digital media today is a vital need of the media people. So their inability to operate, forcing them to operate from a media created facility at the media facilitation center where their entire work was under surveillance imposes a certain kind of fear. So that sense of fear began from that space called the media facilitation center where the journalist was supposed to work, shattering their confidence and disabling them from writing out freely. And for a prolonged period when you do that, it's very easy to induce that fear. The other way was, you know, imposing other restrictions on the journalists. Several, especially photojournalists were targeted on the roads and with Section 144 being used as a pretext, some of them were beaten up or they were abused on the roads or they were not allowed to proceed to different places that they needed to go to for discharging their duties. The third thing, you know, and it kept increasing with time, was that any journalist reporting something that the government felt uncomfortable with started being summoning to the police stations, to the cyber police station, was grilled and questioned for hours, abused, intimidated, even slapped around and this process continues. Other than that, we've had criminal cases slapped against journalists. Some journalists have been detained. So this kind of an atmosphere where, you know, journalists can be picked up for writing any small wrong word or any word that the government is uncomfortable with induces widespread fear amongst the entire journalistic fraternity. And you pick up one journalist you've actually threatened at least 10 or 20 along with that because other than that, there has been, in June, the government introduced the media policy, 2020, which is another Orwellian policy according to which a government officer will decide what is fake news and what is anti-national, which virtually means that any word that you write could anytime be treated against you, could be used against you, could be treated as fake news, could be treated as anti-national according to how that particular officer sees it or what the government's policies are. If it's not suitable to that, he or she could be victimized. So this policy itself has, though it hasn't been implemented, the rules haven't been framed, but it's right there out in the public domain and it has created immense fear. And along with that, there are examples of journalists being picked up, harassed and criminal cases lodged against them to set the example that this is what we can do and this is what the media policy is also about. And that is something extremely worrying about the future of media in Kashmir. So in this kind of environment, how has your personal experience been, as an editor running your organization and asking your reporters to get stories, getting stories from your reporters knowing the kind of threats they are facing on a day-to-day basis? It's been a very difficult experience because right from the day when the first time that I spoke to my bureau chief and later some of the other reporters from that media facilitation center after a gap of several days, before which I didn't even know whether they were safe, what was happening in Kashmir, we had no idea. And it's been difficult because I could sense that sense of fear in the way they spoke. It wasn't the usual way of talking. The communication was very limited because there was only one phone for several people to be used. There was that sense that you were being watched and you were being heard. And it was also difficult to get them to do stories, initially what the dispatchers they were sending and we couldn't pressurize them beyond the point. It was virtually what the government was saying. We went along with that and we gradually tried to create a different kind of space for different kind of stories about people, what people were facing through that lockdown. We had to push and prod the reporters to and encourage them to do a little better. And you couldn't even blame them. You couldn't push them beyond a point because one needed to be sensitive to the kind of fears that they were going through, being at the forefront. Also, I was conscious of the fact that I would be lesser targeted being a non-Kishmiri Muslim. And they were right there in the field. They were Kishmiri Muslims. Their identity was something they were conscious about. They were conscious that it could be used against them. One had to be as an editor, one had to be sensitive to these facts as well. But we tried to do the best that we could in the given circumstances. At the same time, we were faced with the financial problems because the day I'd gone to quote as it is Kishmiri times for years has been going through financial issues because of its independent policy. And the day I went to quote the state government ads, which was a vital support for Kishmiri times had stopped. JNK's economy had been badly hit, which meant that our source of private advertisements was also going to further shrink. Soon after the COVID followed, it further dipped down. So all these things contributed to the deterioration in the quality of the story that we could have told in a maybe better way. We could have told more stories. We were unable to perform as well. But despite that we did what we could as best as we could and we continued to, through our editorials, through our comment articles, continued to look at the various policies critically. And finally, can you tell us how is now Kishmiri media outlets? How are they planning to resist this onslaught? And what is the path forward for you and for your organization in this environment? Because I guess a certain drastic steps will have to be taken for Kishmiri media to now survive. Yeah, I think we need to look at new models of survival. For years we've been grappling with that and being, when you're operating out of Kishmir, it's even more difficult than it is anywhere else in the country because you carry that Kishmir tag and it's difficult to get much support. Anyway, there are several models across the country where media houses have drawn away from corporate support or government support and that is the way forward. And then we're still trying to search for answers and that is something that I think media houses in Kishmir instead of succumbing to the pressures and imposing a self-censorship as some of the organizations unfortunately out of fear, intimidation, out of fear of losing ads or whatever it is have chosen to be a little more silent. It's not going to help anybody's cause. I think we need to collectively, one we need to be collective, two we need to look at newer models of revenue, newer models that can sustain independent media. And of course collectively also resisting the new media policy. Thank you Anuradha for joining us today. And that's all the time we have. Keep watching NewsClick.