Srinagar: Sadia Munawar is a 29-year-old government employee in Indian-Ocupied Kashmir. She is also an amateur poet.
Sitting at her home in a picturesque town in central Kashmir, Munawar (not her real name) says she has closely witnessed the recent years of unrests, lockdowns and fear among the people in the disputed region.
“Had we feared the darkness like this, dead we would have been, nameless, long ago,” she recently wrote.
She says her poetry is about “all the happenings in Kashmir, about the people in jails, about the vast meadows, about mountains, about deaths and the fear”.
“When the light brings fear, and darkness frightens us, better than this dread, is death,” she said in another of her poems. “An accident after accident, I have witnessed… Destruction of my home, I have witnessed.”
“Writing gave relief to my anxiety,” she told Al Jazeera. “I shared it with people on social media but now I am having more anxiety because I write and I am unable to share it anywhere because of the fear that you can be questioned for your words.”
Munawar has now decided to quit social media following a recent order asking government employees to share details of their social media accounts, mainly Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.
Modi-led fascist Indian government is using strong-arm-tactics to strangulate media in Indian illegally occupied Jammu and Kashmir (IIOJK) and mainland India. Under Modi, press freedom in India has steadily shrunk since 2014.
As per media watchdog Reporters without Borders India ranked 142 in the global press freedom index in 2021, below Afghanistan and Zimbabwe. According to a study by Geeta Seshu for the Free Speech Collective, India is rapidly becoming unsafe for journalists.
Sixty-seven journalists were arrested and nearly 200 physically attacked in 2020. Journalists are arrested and sent to jail under draconian law of Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA) for doing their journalistic work which is a blatant violation of UN charter. India is perpetually persecuting the voices of dissent since long. Journalists in the IIOJK face killings, murder attempts, arrests and threats on regular basis and a number of journalists have been killed and scores injured since 1989. The fake Indian state controlled media carries continuous campaign to conceal the deploring state of independent journalists and analysts, India blatantly act in defiance of international laws and ethical codes in vogue. Two examples are stated below: –
Arundhati Roy was forced to publically apologize for her remarks comparing the Indian and Pakistani armies, “Indian state has deployed its Army against people in regions including Kashmir, the northeast, Telangana, and Goa“. Pakistan has not deployed its army against its people the way India has…”
Famous Indian actor Naseeruddin Shah was targeted, criticized and threatened on his remarks “I feel anxious for my children, if tomorrow a mob surround them and ask them are you Hindu or Muslim. They will have no answer”. Web Desk
