 Why I was fired in one of the organizations that claims to be the number one organization in Kashmir right now is that because I was forced to carry statements of the party in power in the center from New Delhi, from Punjab and from other states while the politics happening in Kashmir was absolutely blacked out. Since the application of article 370 on August 5, 2019 and since the Narendra Modi government took direct control of the former state, more than 40 journalists in Jammu and Kashmir have faced a crackdown from government authorities. Media houses and independent journalists in Kashmir took to various platforms expressing their dissent. However, with low speed internet and the COVID lockdown, not much of this outburst made it out of the former state. Journalists in Kashmir are being regularly summoned and questioned about their work and social media handles, especially since the past two years. Local journalists allege there is an attempt to censor any report or post that seems inconvenient for the government narrative. News clicks spoke with some such journalists to know more about the state of the media and the valley and the effect of the application of article 370 on the profession. About press freedom in Kashmir, I think the press freedom in Kashmir have remained muzzled from decades. Even in the past, Kashmiri journalists have got killed, killed with bomb parcels, with in-gunman attacks, injured and even kidnapped. It was never easy to report stories, to write stories from Kashmir. Newspapers in Kashmir have become advertorials. They would become more of supporting groups or they will become more of supporting individuals. They would promote people. They would promote their few activities while leaving aside the other side of the story. So I don't think media has remained as it should have been because it has more become of a PR exercise in Kashmir and the role of journalists is totally curtailed because otherwise we were storytellers. Now, we've taken a back seat, I think. I think there is a lot of self-censorship happening now because of the arrests or the summoning of a few of the journalists. It's also a message that is sent to the journalist community as a whole. And to not be caught in that web and because we do see that the media itself is underfunded in Kashmir, the market revenue is not that great. So newsrooms are highly stressed on resources. So not many organizations have a legal team to defend themselves or have the resources to go out and start campaigning for their rights. Kashmir Press is witnessing a brazen media gag where different Aurelian policies are used to make sure that the press remains suppressed. One of such policies is the renewed media policy of 2020. It turns journalism completely into public relations. When I as a young journalist see my senior journalist being questioned, being summoned on stories, it creates a collective fair psychosis. What would happen to me? I can only wonder in hopelessness. You can understand the level of intimidation by the recent rates on the residences of four Kashmiri journalists. You know, the foreign media like Washington Post, Associated France Press, which is thousands of miles away from Kashmir, reported it on the very same day. But the local media in Kashmir did not. You can understand where we have reached. I was summoned by the cyber police in a case where there was an FIR in South Kashmir. So first I was summoned to the cyber police and made to sit there for 2-3 hours. Then I was asked that you have to report to the police station in South Kashmir, which is 60 kilometers away from the same cyber police station. The idea was to make one, the process of punishment and two, when you look legally at my case also, cyber police has no jurisdiction over what was printed in our newspaper. Because I am not an anonymous writer or the Hindu is not an anonymous paper. That cyber police has to intervene to identify what is the source of the news. Recently I was also questioned by DJ Mohan Kashmir Police. All of my details were taken, my bank account details were taken, my passport details were taken. It's not just about me. Many of our colleagues have been summoned and they have been questioned. They have been, you know, harassed, sort of. So all in all the situation with our journalism is very, you know, precarious. Whatever little is happening locally in the name of journalism is basically all about press releases, government press releases. All the newspapers that published from Sri Lanka, the capital city, mostly carry not mostly almost 99% of those newspapers are filled with government press releases, press handouts. So they have sort of become the official handouts of the government. I can't recall how many stories we've killed ourselves because we didn't want to kind of take what would come after publishing it. The backlash, so to say, because we don't have enough mechanisms that can defend us from that backlash. Largely, I won't say just journalists. Everybody seems to be silenced in Kashmir post-abrogation of Article 370. There was this communication blackout, stories from Kashmir could not go. Like people were totally silenced. And after months when internet came, I mean it was very difficult for people. It was a psychological setback. Post-abrogation, speaking about anything in Kashmir, be it the matter of a simple road or be it a matter of, for example if we talk about drone ban, anything in Kashmir has become so difficult that people fear. We can call it like it is an imposed silence.