Over a year after editor’s arrest, The Kashmir Walla says its website taken down
According to the online news portal, which was established in 2011, server providers informed it that the website was taken down on the request of the central government.
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According to The Kashmir Walla portal, it has not been given any specific reasons for the recent action. (Photos: Screengrab of logo from thekashmirwalla.com, and Twitter/@pzfahad) More than a year after its founding editor was arrested, The Kashmir Walla news portal has said its website has been taken down in India.
According to the online news portal, which was established in 2011, server providers informed it that the website was taken down on the request of the central government. The Kashmir Walla’s social media accounts, including its pages on Facebook and X, had also been taken down, it said.
“For the past 18 months, we’ve lived a horrifying nightmare – with the arrest and imprisonment of our founder-editor, Fahad Shah, and the harassment of our reporters and staff, amid an already inhospitable climate for journalism in the region,” The Kashmir Walla said in a statement. “On Saturday, August 19, 2023, we woke up to another deadly blow of finding access to our website and social media accounts blocked,” the statement added.
According to the statement, when the portal asked server providers why thekashmirwalla.com was inaccessible, it was told that the website “has been blocked in India by the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology under the IT Act, 2000”.
“Next, we discovered that our Facebook page – with nearly half a million followers – had been removed. As had our Twitter (now X) account, ‘in response to a legal demand’,” the statement said.
Subsequently, the landlord of the premises that was being used as the office for The Kashmir Walla has also served it an eviction notice, the web portal said, adding, “We are in process of evicting the office.”
This comes four months after the J&K’s State Investigation Agency (SIA) conducted searches at the web portal’s office, and at the Srinagar residence of its jailed editor Fahad Shah.
Shah and PhD scholar Abdul Ala Fazili were jailed in February last year over an opinion piece written by Fazili and published in The Kashmir Walla. The article published on November 6, 2011, was described by the SIA as “highly provocative, seditious and intended to create unrest in Jammu and Kashmir”.
The J&K Police have registered three FIRs against Shah under the stringent Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA), and he was also booked under the Public Safety Act.
According to The Kashmir Walla portal, it has not been given any specific reasons for the recent action. It also said that it was not served with any notice by the government.
“We are not aware of the specifics of why our website has been blocked in India; why our Facebook page has been removed; and why our Twitter account has been withheld. We have not been served any notice nor is there any official order regarding these actions that is in the public domain so far,” the portal’s statement said. The portal also said it was not sure about its future.
More than a year after its founding editor was arrested under the Public Safety Act, The Kashmir Walla news portal has said its website has been taken down in India.
According to the online news portal, which was established in 2011, server providers informed it that the website was taken down on the request of the central government. The Kashmir Walla’s social media accounts, including its pages on Facebook and X, had also been taken down, it said.
“For the past 18 months, we’ve lived a horrifying nightmare – with the arrest and imprisonment of our founder-editor, Fahad Shah, and the harassment of our reporters and staff, amid an already inhospitable climate for journalism in the region,” The Kashmir Walla said in a statement. “On Saturday, August 19, 2023, we woke up to another deadly blow of finding access to our website and social media accounts blocked,” the statement added.
According to the statement, when the portal asked server providers why thekashmirwalla.com was inaccessible, it was told that the website “has been blocked in India by the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology under the IT Act, 2000”.
“Next, we discovered that our Facebook page – with nearly half a million followers – had been removed. As had our Twitter (now X) account, ‘in response to a legal demand’,” the statement said.
Subsequently, the landlord of the premises that was being used as the office for The Kashmir Walla has also served it an eviction notice, the web portal said, adding, “We are in process of evicting the office.”
This comes four months after the J&K’s State Investigation Agency (SIA) conducted searches at the web portal’s office, and at the Srinagar residence of its jailed editor Fahad Shah.
Shah and PhD scholar Abdul Ala Fazili were jailed in February last year over an opinion piece written by Fazili and published in The Kashmir Walla. The article published on November 6, 2011, was described by the SIA as “highly provocative, seditious and intended to create unrest in Jammu and Kashmir”.
The J&K Police have registered three FIRs against Shah under the stringent Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA), and he was also booked under the Public Safety Act.
According to The Kashmir Walla portal, it has not been given any specific reasons for the recent action. It also said that it was not served with any notice by the government.
“We are not aware of the specifics of why our website has been blocked in India; why our Facebook page has been removed; and why our Twitter account has been withheld. We have not been served any notice nor is there any official order regarding these actions that is in the public domain so far,” the portal’s statement said. The portal also said it was not sure about its future.
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