 Hello and let's talk about the ceiling of the office of the well-known newspaper Kashmir Times in Srinagar. Now this happened on October 19th. Anuradha Basin, the executive editor of the newspaper, tweeted that this was done without any due process, just as she had been evicted from a flat a few weeks ago. But this is not the first time Kashmir Times and Anuradha Basin are appearing in the news. Last year, after the center read down Article 370 and abrogated a special status of Jammu and Kashmir, it had imposed a harsh communications lockdown. At that point, she approached the Supreme Court against his blockade. And while it took time, some of the restrictions were eased due to the court's pressure. Newsclicks spoke to Anuradha Basin yesterday on what's happening on the ground as well as the status of media freedom in Kashmir over the last one year. Anuradha, thank you for joining us. About I think two weeks ago, about a couple of weeks ago, you were also evicted from your official residence, government residence, which was allocated to you. So, 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. Yeah, but again, there's also, of course, the other narrative which is being given by the authorities that they, you know, their reasons for doing this, that 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. But so can you tell us about what reasons they're giving and also if they followed any kind of procedure while doing, 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 canceling, 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, after the, 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 Damakali is sold around the next 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 from where the journalists were 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 photo journalists 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 was 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. So 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's really, 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. In our next segment, we bring you part of a conversation between news clicks for Mirpur Kaisa and immunologist Dr. Satyajit Rat. They talk about the government's claim that the number of cases declining and also look at the situation in other countries. Satyajit, we have got the recent reports which the Government of India is claiming that the numbers are going down at a rate by February. They think this will be over and the Prime Minister has said also that unless people break social distancing and other norms due to the festivals, he thinks the numbers are going to go down. But there is absolutely no evidence, no data to support this. In fact, we are seeing second waves, third waves in different countries. So what is the basis of the statement that since numbers have been going down for three weeks, therefore by February it will be over? So this is an enduring problem and part of it is our wishful thinking. We hope that the pandemic will be over soon, whatever soon means for all of us differently. The reality is that the virus spreads by contact, but the spread by contact is not precisely modulable. In fact, there are repeated supporting data coming up to say that most infected people don't transmit to anybody very much, whereas a few infected people transmit to very large numbers. A super spreader either as individuals. I am a little unwilling to use the term super spreader because it makes people responsible and I am trying to be careful. That's why I said super spreader events rather than super spreader individual. Absolutely. And super spreader events, one can certainly hold the US President responsible Absolutely. But because of that variation, the idea that you can simply model how the pandemic will spread and how it will recede is itself significantly mistaken. It's not mistaken in the sense that it's going off in the wrong direction, but it is mistaken in the sense that we can't say today what our monsoon will look like next year. And in a sense, that's what we are trying to pretend we know with the pandemic six months from now, which we don't really. Just to add to that, that US has now, I think, seen the third wave after two waves receding somewhat, third wave again increasing. And it is sometimes, as we have seen in Europe, for instance, it is happening in the same places which had already seen quite significant numbers of cases. In India's case, we have not seen a fall. In fact, we have been steadily going up something we have talked about. This is the first fall we have noticed from 90,000. Now we have come down to something like 50-55,000. And again, this could spread to new areas. It could spread to the same areas, may not be Dharavi, which has 60% looks like antibodies in the people, 60% people have antibodies, but in the places which have five, six, 10%, it can very easily spring up again. So this whole myth that you can actually predict because you have a so-called statistical model and you say, okay, we have done this and done that, and then you make all kinds of claims, is really what we have been saying from the beginning was taken. But these are not modellable in the statistical mechanistic sense. These are really event-driven, human-driven, and it really, these are not something you can either predict except for a week or 10 days. Looking at current trends, you can say seven to 10 days, this is likely to happen. That also within a certain range. So this is what I meant when I said, much of this forward projection, more than a couple of a few weeks into the future is really just wishful thinking. Number one, number two, and I will remind both you and me and our listeners of something that we said many months ago, when it was looking as though Kerala was doing particularly well with its systematic community participatory outreach for, as a response to the pandemic. And even at that time, we pointed out that this was an absolutely stellar response in a variety of ways. But even so, we said that we should be careful about ascribing cause and effect relationships about saying, oh, because they are doing this, control is guaranteed. And we pointed out that control was not guaranteed. Exactly similarly, this notion that somehow if we all behave just so, then we can predict is a doomed wishful notion. Clearly, the Prime Minister is fond of doomed wishful notions, but the rest of us should have other figures like Trump, Bolsonaro, who are keeping him company in this respect. And Kerala or any other state or country for that matters, what we have control over to some extent is the hospital-based treatment that you can provide by which numbers can be reduced. And Kerala in that sense, in terms of number of people to that has been lower, considering they also have a slightly more aging population than the rest of India, because of their earlier good health indicators. But nevertheless, that's all that you can really talk about. You can talk about Germany doing better, for instance, in Spain or Italy. But those are the only things you really have control over, unless you are able to get either the vaccine or you have the response that China has shown. And some of the other countries as well, but they have been able to do really this kind of follow-ups like contact tracing, testing, much more rigorously than most countries have been able to. That's all we have time for today. We'll be back tomorrow with more news from the country in the world. Until then, keep watching NewsClick.