Digipub News India Foundation on Monday said that the Centre’s decision to block The Kashmir Walla’s website and its social media accounts without serving a notice or issuing an official order was another act of intimidating Kashmiri journalists.

“These events reflect a pattern of arbitrary misuse of the law to silence the media in Kashmir, where the government’s action for four years have had a chilling effect on journalists, journalism, and the fundamental right to free speech,” the association of independent digital news organisations in the country said in a statement. “Journalists there live with fear of being jailed for lengthy periods under stringent laws relating to terrorism and national security.”

The independent news portal on Sunday said that its server provider informed the staff on August 19 that the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology has blocked their website under the Information Technology Act, 2000.

After this, the staff discovered that The Kashmir Walla’s Facebook page with nearly half a million followers had been removed and its Twitter account had been withheld “in response to a legal demand”.

The Kashmir Walla added that the action against the organisation comes at a time when its staff was in the process of vacating their office in Srinagar after being served an eviction notice by the landlord.

It also highlighted that The Kashmir Walla’s editor-in-chief Fahad Shah has been in jail for 18 months now. The police had arrested Shah in February last year and accused him of glorifying terrorism, spreading fake news, and inciting violence.

On Monday, Digipub News India Foundation said that journalists in Kashmir have been facing threats, harassment and arrests at a growing pace since the Centre canceled its special status and split the erstwhile state into two Union Territories in 2019.

It added that Kashmiri journalists have been summoned, questioned, detained over their reports and face travel bans without any explanation from the authorities.

“In this environment where they can no longer rely on individual liberties and freedoms guaranteed in the Constitution, reporters have left the field, and those who continue working do so under intense strain and stress,” the statement continued. “It this degree of intimidation were to be accepted and normalised, it will threaten the very existence of the free press and democracy in India.”

Non-governmental organisation Amnesty International also said that it was concerned about the action taken against the Kashmiri news website.

“This is yet another arbitrary action in a long-drawn pattern of repression documented in Kashmir to harass and intimidate independent media,” Amnesty International said. “The Indian authorities must end this suffocating crackdown on the ever-shrinking number of independent Kashmiri voices.”