SRINAGAR: Anti-terrorism officers have arrested a journalist and rights group worker from Indian Illegally Occupied Kashmir over accusations he was involved in “funding terror activities,” authorities said Tuesday.
On Monday, a freelance journalist and magazine editor, Irfan Mehraj, was summoned to a police station in Srinagar city, where members of the NIA (National Investigation Agency) took him into custody, the agency said in a statement.
He had previously been questioned several times by NIA investigators.
Irfan Mehraj also worked with the Jammu Kashmir Coalition of Civil Society (JKCCS), a prominent rights group whose founder Khurram Parvez has been detained by India since November 2021.
“Irfan Mehraj was a close friend of Khurram Parvez and was working with his organization,” the NIA statement said.
“Investigations by the agency claimed that the JKCCS was funding terror activities in the (Kashmir) valley and had also been involved in propagation under the garb of protection of human rights.”
India Continues Violation of Human Rights
However, the rights group has monitored violence in the region for more than three decades, and its reports have exposed violations by both rebels and Indian government forces, including torture, extra-judicial killings and unmarked mass graves.
Rights groups across the world have demanded the release of Parvez, who, like Mehraj, was accused under the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA) — a vaguely worded anti-terror law that effectively allows people to be held without trial indefinitely.
About 2,300 people have been arrested under the UAPA in the Indian-controlled territory since 2019, when New Delhi cancelled the region’s partial autonomy and brought it under direct rule.
More than half of them are still in prison, though convictions under the law are very rare.
The Press Club of India on Tuesday said it “vehemently” opposed the law’s use against media persons.
“The misuse of this draconian law by the agency in randomly arresting Irfan Mehraj, a journalist from Kashmir ominously shows a violation of freedom of speech and expression,” the club said in a tweet. “We demand his immediate release.”
Since the 2019 changes, tensions have rapidly risen in the highly militarised territory, which Pakistan also claims.
Journalists have been routinely summoned for investigation over their work in recent years, dissent has been criminalized, and protests made virtually impossible in the Indian-controlled territory.
The region was divided between the arch-rivals during their first war over its control soon after independence in 1947.
Since 1989, rebel groups have been struggling against over 500,000 Indian soldiers deployed in the territory, demanding independence or its merger with Pakistan, leaving tens of thousands of civilians, soldiers and rebels dead so far.
