ISLAMABAD: Leading Pakistani journalist unions this week threatened to launch protests over the government in Azad Kashmir registering a case against a prominent local newspaper on charges of spreading “fake news” and “negative propaganda” against state authorities.
The Daily Jammu & Kashmir is an Urdu-language newspaper based in the area’s capital, Muzaffarabad, and describes itself as the oldest newspaper in Azad Kashmir, the part of the Himalayan valley that is administered by Pakistan as a nominally self-governing entity. It constitutes the western portion of the larger Kashmir region, which has been the subject of a dispute between India and Pakistan since 1947.
Last year, the Azad Kashmir government passed a controversial amendment to Section 505 of the region’s Penal Code of 1860, making public criticism of government officials a punishable offense, with penalties including a minimum of 7 years in prison.
As per a copy of the complaint filed by the Azad Kashmir Home Department Affairs on Apr. 6, the Mar. 26 and 28 editions of the newspaper had published a report with incorrect details about a new paramilitary Rangers force being raised to manage security in several parts of the territory.
The home department accused the publication of spreading “fake news and negative propaganda” that was damaging to the government and public order and registered cases under several sections of the Azad Penal Code (APC) that relate to offenses such as defamation and public criticism of government officials.
“If this case is not withdrawn, then we will begin our protest movement,” Afzal Butt, president of the Pakistan Federal Union of Journalists (PFUJ), said in a video message.
“This will begin from every village and city in Azad Kashmir to all of Pakistan’s provinces and capital.”
Butt said as per his knowledge, this was the first police case registered against a newspaper in the history of Azad Kashmir.
The Rawalpindi Islamabad Union of Journalists (RIUJ) separately condemned the case, calling it an “open attack on the freedom of press and a cowardly act.”
“RIUJ demands that the FIR against Daily Jammu & Kashmir be withdrawn immediately,” RIUJ President Tariq Ali Virk said in a statement. “The RIUJ leadership has said that if such authoritarian tactics are not stopped, a protest plan will be prepared soon.”
The central Pakistan government has always kept a tight grip on Azad Kashmir but calm in the region was shaken last year when four people were killed and over 100 injured in clashes between protesters and law enforcers over inflation.
The protests were called off days later after Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif approved a grant of $86 million to help meet most of the protesters’ demands, which included subsidies on flour and electricity prices.
Through the decades, Pakistan and India, nuclear-armed neighbors, have intermittently rained mortars, shells and small arm fire on each other alone the Line of Control (LOC), a 740-km (460-mile) de facto border that cuts Kashmir into two.
Since early 2021, the LOC has been mostly quiet, following the renewal of a ceasefire agreement between India and Pakistan. But the broken diplomatic ties between India and Pakistan, who fought two of their three wars over Kashmir, continue to cast a dark shadow over the region.
