The Horrific TALE OF A Kashmiri Journalist
SHIBLI’S CRIME!
According to Indian troops, Shibli’s views seemed to be a profound threat to the Indian government as they could arouse a rebellion movement that is why he was arrested. It was the time when Shibli posted a tweet about the deployment of additional troops in Indian occupied Kashmir, which later turned out to be the effects of a clampdown in IoK on August 5, 2019.
Shibli expressed that as a Kashmiri, they are born with the feeling of being caged. They have nothing to lose. They want to attain freedom from the brutal Indian government, at any cost. He said that he tried everything to communicate with his family but he wasn’t allowed to do so. Even his family didn’t know his whereabouts. While describing his experience of being arrested, he was terrified. He explained how those small cells haunted his every breath. He said that while in jail, he was craving for pen and paper to write. Even he went on a hunger strike but the police didn’t allow him anything regarding this, although they gave him some books to read.
After 57 days of imprisonment, finally somebody came to see him from his family, and he couldn’t even express how helpless he was feeling at that time. He remained in that shirt and pajama for the first 57 days, in which he left his house. By the time he got new ones, his t-shirt had 119 holes. He used to see a nightmare which was recurrent during his detention that some ghosts were haunting him and constantly snatching books and pens from him. He was released on April 13, 2020, after national and international organizations for the rights of journalists and press freedom raised campaigns to revoke his detention.
Shibli was again detained summoned for questioning on 31 of July, and then shifted to srinagar central jail. He was released on August 17, after the intervention of CPJ.
A robust and free press in Kashmir has always been a problem for Indian authorities and military establishment that is perhaps the reason that media-men whether local or foreign were never allowed to perform their professional duties in the region the way it happens in the rest of the world. The print, electronic and even the social media activists have been under perennial threat from unelected but powerful institutions of India. The journalists have been denied their fundamental freedom of speech, opinion and thought in the Kashmir region. There has been considerable pressure on journalists from powerful state institutions apparently to stop them from writing the truth about Kashmir. Several journalists have borne the brunt of secret agencies during the past several years. During the past couple of years journalists have experienced targeted attacks at the hands of secret agencies. They were physically assaulted, harassed and humiliated by the security forces and even arrested and booked in different cases.
Qazi Shibli is one of the eminent Kashmiri journalists from Indian occupied Kashmir, who was detained from his home on July 27, 2019, by the Indian security forces. Shibli who runs the news website “The Kashmiriyat”, was booked for nine months in jail under the obnoxious law Public Safety Act (PSA), along with 412 Kashmiris.
Initially, he was taken to the local police station in Sher Bagh, Anantnag and then he was shifted to Central Jail, Srinagar. At last, he was locked up in Bareilly District Jail [in Uttar Pradesh] nearly 2000 kilometers away from his hometown.
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