Mir told CPJ he did not know what stories particularly concerned the government, but that he believed the “credible inputs” the magistrate referenced were from the state director of information”s office.
Authorities in Jammu and Kashmir should immediately reverse an order to suspend publication of the Kashmir Reader newspaper, the Committee to Protect Journalists said on Tuesday.
Police arrived at the daily newspaper’s office with an order to stop publishing on Monday.
“Yesterday, around five or six policemen delivered the order at our office,” Hilal Mir, editor of the newspaper, told CPJ by phone on Tuesday. “The order invokes local press laws and says that law and order in the state will be disturbed if the newspaper is allowed to be published.”
Mir told CPJ he did not know what stories particularly concerned the government, but that he believed the “credible inputs” the magistrate referenced were from the state director of information’s office.
More than 50 journalists from several publications yesterday protested the order in a march from Srinagar’s press enclave, which houses newspaper offices, to the office of the director of information.
“Censoring the press will not put an end to the unrest in Jammu and Kashmir,” CPJ Asia Program Coordinator Steven Butler said from Washington. “The Kashmir Reader should be allowed to resume publication without delay.”
The order is the latest in a series of attempts to censor the press in Jammu and Kashmir since protests erupted in July over the killing of Burhan Wani, a commander with the Hizbul Mujahideen, a pro-independence militant group.
On August 29, two journalists from the English-language daily Kashmir Observer – managing editor Farooq Shah and sub-editor Muntazeer Yaseen — were attacked in separate incidents in Srinagar.
Police in July raided the offices of newspapers, including most-circulated Greater Kashmir, Rising Kashmir, Daily Kashmir Images, Kashmir Observer, and Kashmir Reader, halting printing presses and confiscating printed newspapers due for delivery, CPJ reported at the time.