Spot News
In Indian controlled Kashmir, where a decades-old secessionist movement has captured world attention, journalists are threatened on two fronts. Indian security forces in this officially "disturbed area" are granted sweeping powers to discourage media coverage that could risk national security. Separatist militants, on the other hand, threaten journalists whose reporting might be considered unfavorable. With the last more than a decade and a half having wreaked havoc on the overall freedom of expression in the Kashmir valley. The volleys of violence impacted journalists and in particular photojournalists, who are supposed to catch events, live on camera, sometimes costing them their lives. It is not only being on the spot of the site of an encounter between the guerrillas and armed forces, which directly implies being in the proverbial "eye of the storm" but the photojournalists in Kashmir are "in for their life" even while they maybe sitting home. While covering live incidents of violence in Kashmir the photojournalists, attempting to catch a better angle of the news making "scene", often end up with critical injuries to themselves. The restoration of elected government in Jammu and Kashmir in October 1996, after seven years of federal rule and the subsequent appointment of a regional human rights commission, failed to curb state-sanctioned human rights abuses as atleast 12 journalists were killed and hundreds wounded while performing their professional duties.
An Injured news cameraman (C) and a reporter crawl for safety and other journalists take cover under an armoured vehicle during a militants attacked a police vehicle in central Srinagar, the summer capital of Indian-held Kashmir, Friday, 29 July 2005. Eight journalists were wounded, one of them seriously in the attack.
