Minister for Education and the State Government Spokesperson, Naeem Akhtar, Advisor to Chief Minister, Prof Amitabh Mattoo, Director Information, Zubair Ahmad and Media Consultant to J&K Government, Syed Suhail Bukhari were present in the meeting.
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The publisher of Kashmir’s largest-circulation newspaper said authorities had asked him to resume publication after police seized newspapers over the weekend and shut down cable television, saying it was necessary to stop people from fomenting trouble. The owners and editors of the Srinagar newspapers met “to review the press emergency imposed by the government”.
They also demanded a statement from the government “guaranteeing that the media operations” including, “the movement of staff, news gathering, printing and the distribution of the newspapers” would no longer be “hampered”. We want it in black and white that a ban was imposed and it has been completely lifted, ” he added.
Government forces fired bullets at villagers who threw stones at them and tried to torch a police station in a remote village in the northern Kupwara area, close to the highly militarized Line of Control dividing Kashmir between India and Pakistan, a police official said.
The blanket ban on newspapers comes amid a popular uprising to which the Indian authorities have responded by killing at least 42 Kashmiri civilians and wounding over 2,000 people. Agreeing with calls for a discussion on the Kashmir situation, the Prime Minister said: “Various parties have given statements on Kashmir events which benefited the country”.
Chief Minister, Mehbooba Mufti, had desired to see the representatives of Kashmir Editors’ Association and Kashmir Press Association, two representative bodies of the Valley-based newspapers, to discuss the issue.
In addition to the printing ban, cellular and internet services were absent and landline phone access limited, except in Kashmir’s main city of Srinagar city.
The newspapers were banned last Friday after Indian police first raided the printing presses of major Kashmiri newspapers at midnight, confiscating the next days’ printed copies and arresting printers, whom they later released. One is a series of photos of people splashing bucket loads of water to wash away blood from the streets of Kashmir, where Indian forces have shot dead at least 45 people since 9 July.
Refuting Congress’ charge that the state government had mishandled or failed to handle the bloody unrest, Jaitley said: “Pakistan never reconciled the fact that Jammu and Kashmir is an integral part of India” and it would be wrong to think that the situation deteriorated because of anything else, but Pakistan supporting terrorism in the violence-ravaged state. Most people in Indian-held part resent the presence of hundreds of thousands of Indian troops.
Kashmir is divided between India and Pakistan, which both claim it entirely and have fought two wars over the Himalayan region since British colonialists left the Indian subcontinent in 1947.
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Meanwhile, Black Day against the recent atrocities being committed by the Indian Occupied forces in the Occupied Kashmir will be observed on Wednesday.
