(RSF/IFEX) – On 11 June 2002, RSF called for the release of Kashmiri journalist Iftikhar Ali Geelani and suggested his arrest was an attempt to restrict coverage of events in Kashmir. “Charging a Kashmiri journalist under the Official Secrets Act in the present circumstances would seem an effort to intimidate any media which tries to […]
(RSF/IFEX) – On 11 June 2002, RSF called for the release of Kashmiri journalist Iftikhar Ali Geelani and suggested his arrest was an attempt to restrict coverage of events in Kashmir.
“Charging a Kashmiri journalist under the Official Secrets Act in the present circumstances would seem an effort to intimidate any media which tries to report independently on the conflict in the province,” said RSF Secretary-General Robert Ménard in a letter to Indian Interior Minister Lal Krishna Advani.
Ménard called on the minister to explain the arrest and charging of Geelani, noting that the case against the journalist was “weak.” Geelani is the New Delhi bureau chief for the Indian daily “Kashmir Times” and also a correspondent for the Pakistani daily “The Nation”.
Ménard also asked the minister to make a speedy inquiry into the beating of another Kashmiri journalist by Indian police who, he said, “seem incapable of putting a stop to a wave of physical attacks and attempts to kill journalists in Kashmir. It would be regrettable if the government allowed the climate of impunity enjoyed by these attackers to get worse,” he added.
On 11 June, Geelani was charged under the Official Secrets Act and police were granted a further five days to hold him for questioning. The journalist was arrested on 9 June at his New Delhi home by tax department officers and police, but was then accused of storing information about India’s military presence in Kashmir in his laptop computer. Geelani pointed out that the material originated from a 1997 United States State Department report and had previously been published in the Indian daily “The Hindu”.
The daily “Hindustan Times” said the journalist admitted to his interrogators that he worked for Pakistani intelligence, but this information has not been confirmed by other sources. Many Kashmiri journalists, as well as the New Delhi Journalists’ Union, have condemned his arrest, which followed the detention of his father-in-law, Kashmiri leader Syed Ali Shah Geelani, who was charged under an anti-terrorist law and accused of being in the pay of Pakistani intelligence.
Another Kashmiri journalist, Mohammad Yusuf Dar, a reporter for the “Daily Excelsior” newspaper in Jammu (Kashmir), was beaten and insulted by police and detained for two hours on 10 June. The independent English-language daily “Kashmir Images” reported that he was arrested on his way home.
In addition, police have yet to make any serious investigation into the attempt on the life of Zafar Iqbal, a journalist for “Kashmir Images”. He was shot and seriously wounded by masked men at his office in Srinagar on 29 May (see IFEX alert of 30 May 2002). Iqbal’s colleagues told RSF that police have neither made any efforts to guard the newspaper’s offices, nor have they made any inquiries into the shooting.
