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Mediapersons can’t buck pellet attacks in Valley
SRINAGAR: Two Kashmiri photojournalists were covering a rally in the old city of Srinagar on Sunday when pellets rained on them.
SRINAGAR: Two Kashmiri photojournalists were covering a rally in the old city of Srinagar on Sunday when pellets rained on them.
While Muzamil Matto escaped with a few pellets in his head as he ducked on seeing policemen aim guns at protesters, Zuhaib Ahmad had his whole body — including the left eye — pierced by the minute particles. The latter underwent an eye surgery and is recuperating at the SMHS hospital.
The incident was the latest in a series of attacks on mediapersons — both by protesters and security forces — in the ongoing Kashmir turmoil. “Journalists walk a very tightrope in Kashmir,” said senior journalist Sheikh Mushtaq.
Photographers, always the first to be in the line of action, have repeatedly bore the brunt during the ongoing turmoil that has killed 74 people so far, including two policemen.
Last week, cops thrashed photojournalists in Batamaloo area of the city after an altercation over taking snaps of the protest. In south Kashmir’s Bijbehara town last month, photojournalist Muneeb-ul-Islam was allegedly assaulted by security personnel while covering a stone-pelting incident.
Senior photographer Farooq Javed Khan said policemen presume photographers to be mob-inciters. “That’s wrong. Clashes happen without us on the spot,” added Khan, who is president of Kashmiri Press Photographers Association.
During the longest spell of curfew in Kashmir’s history, journalists often got into heated exchanges with security forces as they travelled across restricted areas of the city. Last month, Sumaiya Yousuf, who reports for ‘Rising Kashmir’, faced harassment from a police party led by an IPS officer when she was returning home at night.
When HT asked IGP (Kashmir) SJM Gillani about repeated attacks on mediapersons in the last two months, he promised action. “From wherever we are getting such complaints, we are enquiring into them and whatever action is needed to be taken, we will take that,” he said.
The protesters, too, attack reporters and photographers, believing journalists either distort news or provide information to security agencies.
Danish Bin Nabi of ‘Rising Kashmir’ was thrashed by attendants of patients at the hospital when he went to report on victims of police firing. A reporter with ‘The Indian Express’ and a senior photographer with an international photo agency also faced the same fate at the hospital.
