New media in Kashmir
The conflict in Kashmir has been reported over the years through traditional media channels like newspapers, radio and television, but over the two years there has been an explosion of citizen journalism.
Young men armed with their mobile phones are capturing every disturbance in the disputed state of Kashmir in an effort to combat what they see as restrictive policing.
In doing so, they have sent their images from phone to phone and loaded them on to the internet to reach an audience way beyond their borders.
The most famous of these is footage taken by a 15-year-old of mobile phone salesman Shaheed Tanveer after he was shot during a protest in 2008.
This footage of the incident, posted on YouTube, has subsequently become an important video for the disputed state's "cyber activists."
WARNING: This video contains graphic images.
This documentary tells the story of new media communication in Indian administered Kashmir
Producer Suvojit Bagchi, a correspondent with 成人快手 World Service based in Delhi, India meets the people behind the mobile phones and assesses the impact of their work.
New Media in Kashmir is part of the World Stories series. These are five individual documentaries made by 成人快手 language service producers about the region they come from.
First broadcast on Friday 28 August 2009.
Young people in the disputed state of Kashmir have begun recording public demonstrations and police action on their mobile phones, then uploading these clips to internet video-blogging sites. In doing so, they say, they have captured evidence of heavy-handed treatment by the Indian army - including evidence of deaths caused by unarmed protesters being fired upon.
The social video surge began when footage of violence in Kashmir, featuring the Chris de Burgh song Revolution in the background, was uploaded to YouTube. Soon after, demand for mobile phone with cameras increased - schoolboys taking the lead in purchasing them. None of these young cameramen are ready to disclose their identity, fearing police harassment - although no arrests have yet been made on this count.
Adnan - not his real name - is one of the schoolboys who has filmed the protests. Among these is an iconic video, which was uploaded onto YouTube and received over 50,000 hits over a span of few months.
Adnan's video features the last moments of Shaheed Tanveer, a mobile phone salesman from downtown Srinagar, who was shot and killed last year while watching a protest march. Tanveer has become an iconic figure for some Kashmiris who resent the Indian army's presence.
Although she is aware that “Tanveer is in the computer”, Tanveer’s mother, Hasina, had never seen the YouTube video. She asked to see it while the programme was being recorded. When it started playing, she broke down. She recovered to insist that the video should not be removed from the internet: “it is like an album which reminds us of our suffering and tells the world about Kashmir.”
Adnan’s video also captures Tareque, who was wounded by an army bullet on the same day. While Tanveer was killed, Tareque survived. “Through these videos we re-live the memories of Kashmir,” he says.
One group of boys at the forefront of this movement define it as "cyber resistance". They refuse to disclose their identities. They say it is their favourite pastime to shoot, exchange and upload pictures and videos. “We have no memories of the freedom movement in Kashmir in the nineties when we were kids, as nobody stored its pictures or videos. We came to know about it from our parents. So YouTube is like an archive, which can record the present and tell our children about it,” said a cyber activist.
“During last year’s protests, the city was under curfew and the Indian media was silent," says Shazia Yousouf, a student of Media and Communications at Kashmir University. "It was these boys then who uploaded videos and told the rest of world what was happening in Kashmir. We did not have an internet connection at home, so my brother used to bring us news from blogs.” Shazia feels that today in Kashmir mobile phones have replaced rebel guns: “This kind of resistance is much more difficult for Indian State to control.”
Human rights activists like Khuram Parvez are worried about the rise in cyber activism. “Cyber activists have a reason to feel insecure; any protest activity is monitored by security forces.” Cyber activists say their calls are tracked and IP addresses hacked all the time; to avoid being caught, many use internet cafes.
The Kashmir spokesperson for the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF), Prabhakar Tripathy, admits that they do watch cyber activities. “There may be some government agencies which are doing this," he says. "There are a lot of mechanisms through which we track mobile calls and monitor IP addresses.” But he added that policing Kashmir is a difficult task, and that government agencies use a minimum amount of force.
CRPF spokesman Prabhakar Tripathy adds that he thinks most of the Kashmir footage on YouTube on Kashmir is "fake". He says the boys are paid by separatist forces to shoot and upload the pictures. This is denied by cyber activists.