Life under lockdown: A Kashmiri journalist: A Kashmiri journalist speaks about the difficulties – personal and professional - of living in the state with an internet shutdown during lockdown

Index talks to Bilal Hussain, a journalist in Kashmir, about the impact of India’s internet shutdown on the region, his life and his work

Tell us about yourself

I was the business editor for local dailies that include Greater Kashmir and Kashmir Times. I live in Srinagar, the summer capital city of Jammu and Kashmir, with my family.

Has the coronavirus lockdown left people feeling even more isolated?

I have witnessed people crying when they could finally speak to loved ones after months of no communication. This has taken a heavy toll on people’s mental health.

How does the internet shutdown affect your day-to-day life?

Like other journalists, I was forced to use the internet at a government-run “media facilitation centre” for months… on the computers installed by the state, thereby compromising internet security and privacy.

There was no privacy at all. Even fellow journalists could look through [my] emails.

I had to create a new email ID to use on government-installed computers to communicate with my editors, so that the authorities would not have access to our past conversations.

Kashmiri journalist Bilal Hussain, who continues to work despite the internet shutdown

CREDIT: Salma Ashai

Are people using creative ways to subvert the shutdown?

Since March 2020, the government allowed restricted internet access that blocked many news websites. So journalists installed VPNs that could break the firewall and enabled journalists to access those websites.

Some journalists used to travel to Delhi to access the internet and came back after filing their reports.

To get video interviews to my editor in Paris, I put them on a memory stick and gave it to a friend who was travelling to the USA, and he sent it on from there.

What challenges are you facing with work?

The abrogation of Article 370 in August 2019 was a historic story for my generation, and as a journalist I was not able to tell it to the world because of the internet blackout. Even today, I frequently lose opportunities to report on the situation unfolding in Kashmir.

Do you feel free to write about the pandemic without persecution from the government?

My fellow journalists have been charged for writing social media posts. This was a message to journalists to stifle and not to deviate from the state narrative.

I tried to venture out in the initial days of lockdown to report on Covid-19. However, the Indian military didn’t allow me to go more than 1km from my home, so I couldn’t report.

Has the internet shutdown left people in Kashmir without access to critical information about the coronavirus pandemic?

The situation is so tragic here that even doctors were not able to download critical-care guidelines recommended by the World Health Organisation.