Shujaat Bukhari: a brave reporter, a real journalist, deeply mourned
BEING a journalist is a dangerous business. It is not dangerous to be a stenographer – someone who regurgitates the views of the powerful.
A real journalist is someone who gets beneath the stories, who seeks answers to difficult questions, who won’t leave a story because to do so would be to betray both the people who tell us these stories and those who need to hear them.
So far, according to the Committee for the Protection of Journalists, 28 journalists have been killed this year. Ten journalists have been killed in Afghanistan, and their names are not well known.
Yesterday, Shujaat Bukhari was shot dead in Srinagar’s Press Enclave in Lal Chowk. For those of us who write in the universe of The Hindu – where he was a correspondent from 1997 to 2012 – and for Frontline – for whom he was the Jammu and Kashmir Bureau Chief – Shujaat is not another name on a list. He was a colleague and a friend, a brave reporter, a real journalist.
He had received police protection since an attack on him in 2006. In this fatal attack, his two security guards were shot dead. Three men had been waiting for him. After they shot him and his guards, they jumped on a motorcycle and fled.
Jammu and Kashmir, the state in northern India, has been hazardous for journalists ever since Doordarshan television director Lassa Kaul was killed by militants in 1990.
The covert spies have not been the only assailants. Indian soldiers have turned their ire on journalists – one remembers the death of cameraman Javed Ahmed Mir, shot during a demonstration in 2008.
In 1996, Shujaat had been abducted by gunmen in Anantnag and held for several hours. A decade later, two gunmen seized him.
When one tried to shoot him, his gun jammed. Shujaat bravely made his escape. At that time, Shujaat said something that rings true even today: “It is virtually impossible to know who your enemies are and who your friends are”. It is not clear who murdered Shujaat.
Shujaat was shot on the same day the UN called for an independent evaluation of human rights violations in Jammu and Kashmir. The UN’s 49-page report detailed accusations of these violations. It is on the basis of this report that the chief of the UN’s Human Rights Council called for the establishment of a Commission of Inquiry.
Two weeks before he was murdered, Shujaat went on twitter to document the terrible death of Kaiser Bhat, 21, run over by an Indian army jeep. Shujaat shared a video of the attack then said, “These pictures from Srinagar downtown are very disturbing. This is a horrible way to quell a protest.” This is the kind of clear outrage that came from Shujaat.
Having posted the video and picture, Shujaat began to be attacked. ‘I am being trolled’, he wrote.
Kaiser Bhat’s sisters – Toiba, aged 19, and Iffat, aged 17 – cried when they heard their brother had been run over and killed by the jeep. “Where will we go now?” Their parents had already died. They lived with their uncle and aunt. Kaiser had decided to forgo his own studies and get a job, so he could earn money to make sure his sisters continued with their education. This was important to them. It was inevitable that Kaiser would get involved in the protests against the intolerable and suffocating Indian military presence in the Kashmir valley. There are more than700000 Indian soldiers in Kashmir. The Indian government has itself said that there are no more than 150 militants in the state.
What maths makes this ratio – 700 000 to 150 – reasonable is beyond belief. The soldiers are trained to see a “terrorist” behind every tree.
Given immense authority by the Armed Forces (Jammu and Kashmir) Special Powers Act (AFSPA), 1990, these soldiers are known to have acted with impunity against Kashmiri civilians. No wonder the UN report calls on the Indian government to immediately repeal this act. To get a sense of why AFSPA is such a cause of contention, read Shujaat’s article from Frontline (March 16, 2018) on the Shopian firings.
Shujaat’s coverage for Frontline is an indictment of the Indian government’s policy in Kashmir, but it also offers a sharp criticism of the degeneration of politics in the state.
Most recently, on May 11, Shujaat led the coverage on the Kathua rape case. His writings show us with precision and feeling that Kashmir is in deep distress.
Shujaat had written a story this March that tracked why so many young men had turned to militancy. In one of his last tweets about Kaiser’s death, Shujaat wrote that the authorities had to realise “why this fear of death is missing in Kashmiri youth”. It is because of his reporting that a serious question should have been raised after the death of Kaiser.
The question is not why such a sensitive and generous young man such as Kaiser would get involved.
The real question is why everyone in the Kashmir valley is not on the street every day.
In 2016, Shujaat said of the dangers to journalists, “Threats to life, intimidation, assault, arrest and censorship have been part of the life of a typical local journalist”.
His life is now taken. It will be remembered.
Khan is the founder and chairperson of SAKAG South African Kashmiri Action Group and an independent political analyst on South-East Asia.