Threats – Journalists

Journalists operate under a high degree of surveillance by the state, and those active on social media are particularly vulnerable to monitoring, abuse and intimidation. Senior journalist Gowhar Geelani, who has a high social media presence, said that police officer, who he did want to name for obvious reasons, abused and threatened him on social media: “he said would send the Indian Army to my house to teach me the difference between army and police”. “I have the screen grabs of his threats. I chose to respond to him with civility and requested him to come up prepared next time with a sound argument, not a threat,” he says.

Another police officer tried to silence him when he was writing about a young schoolteacher who died in police custody on March 19, 2019. Yet, Geelani says, “Intimidation tactics don’t work. I have only one life, which they can snatch. Until I am alive, I will use my pen to reflect the ground reality of Kashmir’s political landscape along with the many shades of its competing narratives”.