In Indian illegally occupied Jammu and Kashmir, the Kashmir Press Club has condemned the harassment of journalists and their summoning to the po-lice stations over tweets and social media posts.
The Kashmir Press Club in a statement said, “In the latest incident, Journalist Irfan Amin Malik, who worked for the Rising Kashmir was summoned by police for a tweet and questioned for hours together even though he had already deleted the tweet in question”.
Irfan in a written testament to the Kashmir Press Club said that he was summoned by police Sunday morning after he tweeted about the recently launched film policy. He said he was called by the police in Tral and was questioned for several hours.
“I had tweeted against J&K film policy on Sat-urday night and I had deleted the tweet within two minutes
. On Sunday morning I was called by the police and asked to appear at the police station. For five hours my phone was taken, I was questioned and kept inside the police station. Later on, follow-ing the media intervention I was released,” he stated.
“My family became worried after they received information about my police summons. I wonder how a simple tweet of a journalist can land him inside the police station,” he added.
The Kashmir Press Club while taking strong note of the continued harassment and summons to the journalists by the police has urged the authori-ties to stop the practice of targeting the media per-sons for their work and opinions, adding that the freedom of media ought to be respected in a democ-ratic setup.—KMS
