TUESDAY 20 AUGUST 2019

Kashmir and the challenge of

reporting on life in lockdown

Reporters are cut off when they conduct interviews – and face

harassment from security forces, writes Adam Withnall

In the days after India’s government announced its decision to withdraw Kashmir’s

constitutionally protected autonomy, people in the regional capital Srinagar said it

was like being sent back to the stone ages.

Or at least, that’s what they told journalists once they had left Kashmir and landed in Delhi, returning to the
world of modern technology – telephone calls and email, never mind WhatsApp and Twitter.

Reporting on the lockdown has presented unique challenges for both international and local media. Even
before the current crisis, foreign journalists were required to apply for special government permission to
visit and report from Jammu and Kashmir state. No such permits have been granted since 5 August.

Some sources on the ground have not been contactable on the phone at any point in the last 11 days –
indeed, many Kashmiris living outside the valley have had to fly back just to check their relatives are OK.

The establishment of a media centre for journalists has helped improve getting out information to the rest of
the world – so today we are able to bring you a report from inside Srinagar on the first day back at school
that never was.

But reporters are still cut off from all contact for hours at a time when they conduct interviews and attend
the few isolated displays of protest mushrooming across the valley – and face harassment from security
forces as they do so.

It is a risky business, and there is distrust in authorities among some local journalists. One Kashmir-based
reporter I met today is filing all his articles from Delhi – flying back and forth from Srinagar, bringing the
news out with him each time he goes.

Such a model of journalism is scarcely seen these days even in most war zones. It means the reports you see
on Kashmir may sometimes come out several days after the events themselves.

But bear with us, as the stories that do get out tell of a life under total lockdown, a city alien to its own
residents, and a region lying dormant like a fire starved of air, waiting for a breath of oxygen.

This is a crisis that will get much worse before it gets better, and these are stories that need to be heard.

Yours,

Adam Withnall

Asia editor

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