Terror Threats To Scribes In J&K: Editors’ Guild Voices ‘Deep Concern’

(Source: PTI)

The Editors’ Guild of India on Friday voiced “deep concern” over recent threats issued to journalists working in Kashmir by suspected terror organisations, and the subsequent resignation of five mediapersons from their respective media outlets.

“Journalists in Kashmir now find themselves in the firing line from both the state authorities as well as terrorists, in what is a throwback to the years of heightened militancy in the 1990s,” the Guild said in a statement.

“Once again media houses have been named by terror groups warning that those associated with well-known regional papers including Rising Kashmir and Greater Kashmir will be declared ‘traitors’ and that ‘their timeline is sealed’,” it said.

It added the space for media freedom and active civil society has been steadily eroding in the region.

Turkey-based terror operative Mukhtar Baba and six of his contacts in Jammu and Kashmir are suspected to be behind threats received by several journalists in the Valley in the past couple of days, according to an intelligence dossier.

Several journalists resigned from local publications recently after being threatened by terror outfit The Resistance Front (TRF), a shadow organisation of the Lashker-e-Taiba.

The Guild recalled that the editor of Rising Kashmir Shujaat Bukhari was assassinated in June 2018.

“The Kashmir Press Club, which had become an important institution for fighting for the protection and rights of journalists, was shut down by the state administration earlier in the year, weakening the layer of peer-driven protection for the journalists,” the Guild noted.

“These pronouncements by terror organisations have further worsened the sense of fear and insecurity, which makes it impossible for the journalists to work freely,” it said.

“The Guild strongly condemns such threats and calls upon the state government to create an atmosphere of security and trust, wherein the media is not compelled to take sides, and is able to work in a free environment with full security,” the statement said.

Meanwhile, as per the above-mentioned intelligence dossier, “initial assessment suggests that terrorist Mukhtar Baba is the mastermind” behind the threats.

Mukhtar Baba (55) used to work for various newspapers in Kashmir. He was a resident of Srinagar in the 1990s and is believed to have escaped to Turkey, according to the dossier. Baba, who often visits Pakistan, has emerged as a mastermind responsible for grooming youngsters in the Valley to join the TRF, the dossier said.

He is suspected to be in touch with six associates in the Valley, and two of them have been identified, it added.

Baba has built a network of informers in the journalist community, and used their inputs to prepare a list of scribes to threaten, the dossier said. According to the document, Mukhtar Baba was a member of the Hezbollah in the 90s but was thrown out unceremoniously after he was charged with selling AK-47s to rival terror outfits. He joined Masarat Alam in 2010 with a pivotal role in the 2010 summer agitation, it added.

TRF recently issued an online threat to a few media houses in the valley “for their traitorous” acts and “nexus with fascist Indian regime”. Srinagar police had registered a case and launched an investigation in view of the threats issued to journalists.