Indian authorities have remanded in custody a French journalist for five days over illegally filming a crackdown on Muslims in the Himalayan disputed region of Kashmir.<\/p>\n
On Monday, a court in Srinagar, the main city in Indian-administered Kashmir, arrested Paul Comiti over his violation of visa rules as he allegedly filmed a police crackdown on protesters in Kashmir while on a business visa in India.<\/p>\n
Senior Superintendent of Police Imtiyaz Ismael Parray said Comiti, who was arrested on Sunday, had no permit to make a documentary on political or security-related issues.<\/p>\n
A second police official said Comiti had asked the Defense Ministry for permission to film in Kashmir, but the request had been denied. Police said access was provided to a French Embassy\u2019s consular official based in New Delhi to meet Comiti at the police station in Srinagar.<\/p>\n
Another official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Comiti had filmed protesters throwing stones at members of security forces and had also met Mirwaiz Umar Farooq, a prominent leader of the pro-independence movement in Kashmir.<\/p>\n
However, a main theme of Comiti\u2019s filming in Kashmir has been his reported efforts to document rights violations committed by Indian forces in their use of \u201cpellet guns\u201d against Kashmiri protesters.<\/p>\n
The anti-riot technique has left one killed and over 3,800 people injured since a new wave of unrest erupted in Kashmir last year. Official figures show more than 100 people have been partially or fully blinded by the use of pellet guns.<\/p>\n
Rights groups and governments have protested against India\u2019s rights violations in Muslim-majority Kashmir, which has been the scene of a decades-long crackdown over a popular movement for independence or a merger with Pakistan.<\/p>\n
The region was relatively calm until the death in July 2016 of a popular young pro-independence commander. That sparked massive protests by the youths and others and prompted New Delhi to intensify the crackdown.<\/p>\n
India has accused its neighbor Pakistan of fueling the unrest through provision of arms and training to militants in the region. Islamabad denies the allegation<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Indian authorities have remanded in custody a French journalist for five days over illegally filming a crackdown on Muslims in the Himalayan disputed region of Kashmir. On Monday, a court in Srinagar, the main city in Indian-administered Kashmir, arrested Paul Comiti over his violation of visa rules as he allegedly filmed a police crackdown on …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":12575,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"iawp_total_views":3,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[1456],"class_list":["post-12574","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","","category-news-and-analysis","tag-al-quds_-as_-the_-capital_-of_-palestine"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wilayah.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12574","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wilayah.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wilayah.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wilayah.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wilayah.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12574"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/wilayah.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12574\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12576,"href":"https:\/\/wilayah.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12574\/revisions\/12576"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wilayah.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12575"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wilayah.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12574"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wilayah.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12574"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wilayah.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12574"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}