In a statement issued on Monday, 7 May, an Indian police unit operating in the Jammu and Kashmir region — the Counter Intelligence Kashmir (CIK) — announced the arrest of freelance journalist Hilal Mir, a contributor to the Turkish news agency Anadolu, describing him as a “radical social media user” after he posted a comment on Facebook critical of the authorities’ policies concerning the situation in Indian Kashmir.
As military operations continue between India and Pakistan, India has ordered X to block over 8,000 accounts, including the accounts of foreign media outlets, the social network said in a statement on 8 May, without specifying which accounts were affected. The X accounts of several media outlets, such as Maktoob, Free Press Kashmir and The Kashmiriyat, have been suspended nationwide.
The Wire‘s teams also announced on 9 May that their website had been blocked “as per the orders of the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology under the Information IT Act of 2000.” One of The Wire’s journalists, Arfa Khanum Sherwani, also announced on Instagram that she was the victim of a harassment campaign: after the journalist posted a message on X calling for peace, her personal details were disclosed by an account managed by an influencer affiliated with the Hindu supremacist movement.
On 28 April, the Indian government banned 16 Pakistani YouTube channels, including those of widely followed media outlets such as Dawn News, Samaa TV and Geo News.
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