For over five months now, hundreds of journalists in Kashmir have had to wait in long queues every day in a couple of cramped rooms in Srinagar to get a few minutes of access to the internet. Reporters, newspaper designers, freelance journalists, photojournalists, and video journalists have had to stand in lines at the Media Facilitation Centre – set up by the central government in the premises of the Department of Information and Public Relations – and rely on a dozen computers with internet access to file their stories, make pages, and communicate with their editors.
Enforcing such a complete dependence of the media on the state is part of the Delhi government's strategy after the imposition of an unprecedented internet ban in Jammu & Kashmir following the abrogation of Article 370 and the downgrading of former state into two federally governed union territories on 5 August 2019. Since then, irrespective of their organisations and experiences, journalists are forced to rely on this government-run 'facilitation' centre – the only place in Kashmir where journalists can briefly access the internet, which, despite a recent Supreme Court order for the review of the ban, remains inaccessible to people in Kashmir since the lockdown began.
The frustrations and the delays, the absolute reliance on the state, and submission to government-regulated conditions that make a mockery of freedom of the press, can be illustrated by the following example. An editor emails a query one night to their reporter in Srinagar regarding a minor detail in a story; it is an urgent update. So, the reporter has no choice but to travel to the Media Facilitation Centre, all the way from their home, to check an email and send back the necessary detail. Not only is such a process time consuming, it is also humiliating for the journalists. Most importantly, it undermines the role of the press: to question and make the ruling government accountable.
Kashmir might be the only place in the world where all journalists, newspaper offices, and media organisations continue to be deprived of basic internet access – a human right as declared by the United Nations – for more than 160 days. 5 January marked the fifth straight month of continued online blackout in Kashmir – the longest ever internet shutdown imposed in any democracy, according to an international advocacy group, Access Now, that tracks internet suspensions across the world.