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Video Producer: Maaz Hasan
Video Editor: Rajbir Singh
For decades, Kashmir has been in the eye of the storm. Be it the separatist movement, Kashmiri Pandits' exodus, militancy, or abrogation of Article 370 – the Valley has seen it all in the last three decades.
The chaos in the Valley has disrupted the lives and livelihood of lakhs of Kashmiris, and content creators are one such group of professionals facing the heat of the turbulence.
We, as freelance journalists, thought of speaking to our colleagues and fellow content creators to understand the challenges we are facing in the present times.
Imad Clicks, a film-maker from Kashmir, said,
"We have to work with a lot of clients that are outside Kashmir. They are car manufacturers or mobile manufacturers. They say they want to create advertisements having great footage. But if we have to go to those epic locations, mostly mountainous areas on the outskirts of the city, we have to follow the long process of permissions which sometimes takes a month and even gets rejected."
Photographers also share the same pain. Aneaus Sheikh, a daily life photographer, told us about the challenges she faces every day in taking a photograph.
Well, and for us journalists, everyone knows how difficult it is to work without the internet as it gets blocked every now and then, leaving us helpless without proper communication.
Khalid Khan, a fellow freelance journalist who has been working for four years, talks about how difficult it gets when the internet is snapped.
"Some journalists have to do live sessions from the location. But when the internet is blocked, we are unable to forward the data. Most of my colleagues work with MoJo (Mobile Journalism) and all of their work is done with the help of their mobiles. With the help of mobile internet, they are able to send the data. But when the internet is shut down, we can't do that," adds Khalid.
A few days ago, when the judgment on the Yasin Malik case came in Delhi, we were covering the shutdown here. We had pitched the story (with a media house) and in the evening, mobile internet was snapped. We couldn't file the story. We couldn't respond to their messages. They might have thought of us as unprofessional. These are the kind of challenges we have to face and this isn't the first time we are facing this. Earlier also, we have faced the challenge of the internet getting shut down several times.
When you are a freelancer doing a story, you always have to think what stories you can do. You have to think about it two-three times as you don't want to get into any kind of trouble.
(Najmus Saquib and Wasim Nabi are freelance journalists from Kashmir.)
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