India: CFWIJ Condemns The Police Brutality Against Rifat Mohidin

Location: India, Srinagar
Date: September 29, 2019

Journalist Rifat Mohidin, who is the Kashmir correspondent for The Tribune, based in Chandigarh was attacked by the security forces stationed in the region. The journalist’s car was assaulted with batons after she told an armed officer to not address her rudely. The journalist recounted the horror she felt at the time of the attack to a newspaper and shed light on the impunity with which the Indian military acts in the region.

In an interview to the Telegraph, Rifat said, “I had never before heard the kind of abuses they hurled at me. They battered my car with their batons, although the windows were spared. I started crying but none dared come to my rescue. I’m still in shock. I have already had a tough time convincing my family that I was safe as a journalist even during these times. If I tell them what happened today, they might not allow me to continue.”

Rifat went on to say that her car was stopped and inspected at fifteen different checkpoints after the incident despite the fact that she only traveled for three kilometers to reach the media center present in the city.

“At Jahangir Chowk, the security forces were adamant that I should return. I urged them not to be rude to me. This infuriated them and what followed was hell. For several minutes they kept hitting my car and abused me and my family. “I told them I had a curfew pass but they would not listen. I did not know what to do. Eventually, one CRPF man was kind enough to ask me to drive on. I parked my car somewhere and was in tears all the way to the media centre,” she said in the interview.

Rifat suspects that the reason she did not receive any support was that the people in the region are too fearful of the Indian state. Since the abrogation of Article 370, the press in Kashmir has faced unprecedented repression. 

The Coalition For Women In Journalism is appalled at the attack on Riffat Mohidin and urges international attention towards the overreaches taking place in Kashmir. For a country that claims to be the biggest democracy in the world, actions like these threaten to weaken the democratic principles that it claims to hold dear. Journalists covering regions of unrest and dissent are important to ensure a healthy political culture in the country and any attempt to intimidate them and silence them is a violation of their right to freedom of expression.

The CFWIJ strongly condemns the police brutality against journalists. We demand the immediate return of the press cards seized from the security forces. Policies to intimidate journalists should be abandoned, and journalism should be practiced under the criteria of freedom of the press.

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