Media gag in occupied Kashmir
By Khalid Awan | The News | August 08, 2010
In Occupied Kashmir, working on a two-pronged strategy, India has been trying to suppress the freedom movement by unleashing death and destruction and at the same time making every effort to hide the truth from the world.
For the latter, it has been muzzling the right to expression and freedom of the press by subjecting the media to stringent curbs. Presently, there is a new surge in the uprising and the Kashmiri people are coming to the streets, thousands in number, to demand their right to self determination. Forceful demonstrations all across the occupied territory have become a routine. The occupation authorities are responding by resorting to brute force, randomly killing the innocent people.
Over 18 youth, most of them teenagers have been killed by Indian troops during the last five weeks while firing on peaceful demonstrations. The All Parties Hurriyet Conference Chairman, Mirwaiz Umar Farooq, has been confined to his residence in Srinagar by placing him under house arrest.
The octogenarian leader, Syed Ali Gilani, senior pro-movement leader Shabbir Ahmad Shah, President High Court Bar Association (HCBA) Mian Abdul Qayoom and almost all other Hurriyet leaders have been sent to jails, booking them under the draconian Public Safety Act (PSA). Curfew and other restrictions are in place to prevent people from holding demonstrations.
To keep the international community blind to all these happenings, the occupation authorities have imposed more curbs on the media and are engaged in terrorising the Kashmiri journalists. On many occasions, they were fired upon, subjected to humiliation, thrashing and beating besides prevented from covering events. After the imposition of curfew in the occupied territory, the authorities banned the movement of media-persons and cancelled all the curfew passes issued to them.
At least, 12 media persons were critically injured, including President of Kashmir Photojournalists Association, Tauseef Mustafa, when Indian paramilitary forces and police attacked them with batons at Tengpora-bypass in Srinagar on the morning of 6th July 2010. The incident took place when the media persons were covering protests that had erupted after the killing of two youth by the police in the area. While giving details of the incident, Bilal Bhadur, a photojournalist of Times of India said: “We were taking picture of the dead bodies, when suddenly seven of us were surrounded by CRPF and police personnel and we were beaten up mercilessly.”
The restrictions on the movement of media persons resulted in the non-publication of newspapers in the Valley, the total number of which is around 60, both in Urdu and English languages. Jammu and Kashmir remained a territory without newspapers for four days.
Amidst all this state of muzzling of the media, the authorities banned the beaming of Pakistani channels and the cable operators were directed to block PTV, Geo TV, Dawn News and others, instituting a total blackout of information. Banning of Pakistani channels, which are widely viewed in IOK, was a shameful attempt by the Indian authorities to give an impression to the world community that Pakistan is instigating the local youth to come on the streets. It speaks of the Indian negative mindset to level the blame on Pakistan for its every wrongdoing as ever before.
Since 1989, it has become commonplace that Kashmiri journalists are being beaten up and injured by Indian troops and are subjected to abductions, murder attempts and death threats.
They are also being detained on fake charges and subjected to humiliating interrogation. Nine Kashmiri journalists have so far been killed in the occupied territory while carrying out their professional duties eversince the freedom struggle has started off.
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Experts Warned For Years That A War With Iran Would Happen This Way
By Caitlin Johnstone | April 3, 2026
… It’s so wild how we keep seeing reports that Iran’s retaliation caught the US off guard. For all the years I’ve been paying attention to this issue I’ve been reading experts and analysts saying if the US attacks Iran, Iran can close the Strait of Hormuz and strike US bases and the energy infrastructure of US allies in the region.
A few examples:
A 2006 Oxford Research Group paper titled “Iran: Consequences of a War” warned that Iran has numerous options at its disposal in the event of a US attack, and that the “most significant of these would be any possible retaliatory Iranian action to affect the transport of oil and liquefied natural gas through the Straits of Hormuz,” adding that stopping Iran from doing this “would be difficult if not impossible to achieve, leading to a fear of attack which alone would have a formidable impact on oil markets.”
A 2007 Cato Institute paper titled “The Iraq War and Iranian Power” warns that “Iran possesses the largest ballistic-missile inventory in the Persian Gulf — missiles which can reach Israel, Saudi Arabia and US military bases in Iraq,” and that “experts argue Iran could also use the ’oil weapon’: blocking the 34km-wide Strait of Hormuz and conducting submarine and anti-ship missile attacks against ports and oil facilities in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and other Gulf Cooperation Council states.”
A 2012 NPR article titled “Can Iran Close The World’s Most Important Oil Route?” features then-chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff acknowledging that Iran absolutely can block the Strait of Hormuz, saying Tehran has “invested in capabilities” which specifically enable them to do so.
A paper from the Columbia Center on Global Energy Policy and the Center for a New American Security titled “IN DIRE STRAITS? IMPLICATIONS OF US-IRAN TENSIONS FOR THE GLOBAL OIL MARKET” warns of a potential scenario “that includes damage to Gulf oil infrastructure and a temporary closure of the Strait of Hormuz.”
These weren’t a bunch of keffiyeh-wearing peaceniks making these assessments, they were deeply entrenched swamp monsters entirely loyal to the US empire. They opposed war with Iran not because it would be an evil act of unforgivable mass murder, but because it would be bad for the imperial power structure. … Full article
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