A section of Indian media is harping on a negative chorus to scuttle peace prospects in the region and working as a tool by conniving propaganda-based stories.
A recent report of CNN News18, an Indian news channel, highlighting a false claim about Pakistan’s role over Indian Illegally Occupied Jammu and Kashmir (IIOJK) issue proved as fake and an outcome of the same propaganda churned out by certain hostile and biased Indian media outlets, Zaffar Kamal, a security analyst opined.
“The report is part of the Indian state narrative of falsehood and far from ground realities contradicting the Indian state and military leadership’s tall claims,” he said.
In the recent past, the media experts said, the Indian state resorted to malicious tactics like false flag operations and fake news to divert international and domestic pressures and to cover blatant human rights abuses in the Indian Illegally Occupied Jammu and Kashmir (IIOJK).
A hype was also created by the Indian media about its military’s boasting of eliminating cross-border infiltration as a result of different operations. A section of Indian media went crazy over such false claims.
They said India had been repeatedly exposed by the international agencies and global entities like EU Disinfo Lab for using falsehood as statecraft.
The experts said, on the contrary, Pakistan had always acted with restraint and displayed a magnanimous attitude towards Indian continuous pouring out of venom and misadventures.
“Whether it is Abhinandan or Indian missile falling inside Pakistan territory, it had always acted in the greater interest of the regional and international peace. Propagating against Pakistan is ‘one in all solution’ for India to cover up its failures,” they opined.
Moreover, they said, the Indian government’s claims of normalcy and development in IIOJK as the main dividend of the abrogation of Articles 370 & 35A had also been badly exposed at all forums.
“The Indian state-sponsored political coercion has also met severe criticism and firm resentment by the people of IIOJK,” they added.
The experts observed that the Indian government was bent on silencing Kashmiri journalists’ voices by using guns and intimidation (in the form of draconian laws) to mask the ground realities and push false narratives against Pakistan.
The Indian government faced severe criticism from the domestic and international media when a Kashmiri journalist Fahad Shah was arrested on baseless and fabricated accusations.
Geeta, a former Indian journalist, told Wire, “Even if we believe the allegations of the police, it is beyond comprehension why it took so long for the police to act and arrest in the cases registered last year? It is clear from their behaviour that they do not want Fahad to do journalism.”
Ashok Swain, an eminent academician based in Sweden, commented “Fahd’s arrest shows that the ruling government is doing whatever it can to keep Kashmir out of the international agenda,” adding that was why it had been curbing all kind of independent journalism from IIOJK.
Ashok, Professor of Peace and Conflict at Uppsala University, said “The repeated arrests and harassment of journalists and their family members in Kashmir is aimed at creating an atmosphere of fear so that local independent journalism will die out”.
In a statement issued in New York, Committee to Protect Journalists programme director, Carlos Martinez de la Serna strongly condemned the arrest and harassment of Fahad, and asked the Indian administration not to criminalize journalism in the name of national security.
