Shujaat Bukhari's murder shows perils facing journalists in Kashmir

Conflict-ridden places always pose dangers to reporters. What makes Kashmir more perilous are the players involved—India, Pakistan and militants. All the three have tried to exert influence on the media through threats and use of force.

Several journalists have been killed in Kashmir since the start of the militancy in the 1990s, but the perpetrators were never brought to book. Some journalists were also killed or wounded while reporting incidents like encounters, blasts and protests.

The murder of senior editor Syed Shujaat Bukhari on Thursday, however, stands out. For he was, perhaps, the most prominent voice in debates and discussions on Kashmir. Bukhari's views on Kashmir were always deemed as nuanced. Hailing from a well-to-do, educated family of Kreeri, Pattan in Baramulla, Bukhari's career spanned more than 25 years.

Bukhari's first break was with Jammu-based The Kashmir Times. He then joined The Hindu. Bukhari also wrote for that newspaper's sister publication, Frontline. He also reported for international news organisations like the BBC and Deutsche Welle.

Bukhari was well acquainted with English, Urdu and Kashmiri languages. Bukhari's strength was the impressive contacts developed over the years through his reporting. While on the job, he also completed his PhD. He was also a recipient of the World Press Institute USA fellowship. Bukhari had done his masters in journalism from Ateneo de Manila University, Manila, as a fellow of Asian Centre for Journalism. Bukhari was also a fellow at East West Centre at Hawaii.

In 2008, he quit The Hindu after 15 years and started his own newspaper Rising Kashmir. He then started a Urdu daily, Buland Kashmir, and the first Kashmiri newspaper, Sangarmaal. Bukhari was successful in establishing Rising Kashmir as an important newspaper in a very short span of time.

The paper helped ease congestion in the jobs for reporters and provided a pedestal to budding reporters. The advent of Rising Kashmir also helped improve quality of English journalism in Kashmir and ushered in healthy competition.

Bukhari was a frequent traveller outside Kashmir and abroad and took part in programmes on Kashmir. His first brush with danger was in 2000 when he survived a kidnapping attempt after gunmen bundled him into a auto-rickshaw at Residency Road. Bukhari managed to escape by jumping out of the auto. The media fraternity, Bukhari's friends and civil society in Kashmir remember him as a man who was always ready to help those in distress.

Bukhari's murder has once again brought to the fore the dangers confronting the media in Kashmir. It highlights how vulnerable journalists are in Kashmir and how some of them have paid with their lives for their reportage and stand on issues.

Bukhari is the fourth journalist to be killed by militants in the nearly three-decade-long violence in Kashmir. In 1991, the editor of Alsafa, Mohammed Shaban Vakil, was killed by militants of Hizbul Muahideen.

Calling Bukhari "a voice of moderation'', the Kashmir Editors' Guild said his killing "is a new low in a rapidly deteriorating environment for media practitioners in Kashmir, in particular, and in the country in general". In a statement, it said an attack on a journalist challenges the very foundations of a free press and vibrant democracy and more so in a state like Jammu and Kashmir.

''The Guild calls upon the Centre to take necessary steps to ensure a situation where the media can discharge its duties without any fear of violence," its statement read. Rising Kashmir staff, despite the tragedy, brought out Friday's edition in a fitting tribute to their editor and friend with a story on Bukhari's killing, headlined Shujaat Silenced.

Hours before he was gunned down, Bukhari had defended his work on Twitter after some Delhi-based journalists accused him of doing "biased" reportage on Kashmir, and had posted the UN report on alleged human rights violations in the valley.

With an indistinguishable tall frame and husky voice, Bukhari responded in one of his last tweets before being killed, “In #Kashmir, we have done Journalism with pride and will continue to highlight what happens on the ground."