Kashmiri Journalist Safina Nabi denied media award by Pune Institute-Jury refuses to attend event in Protest
Kashmiri Journalist Safina Nabi
denied media award by Pune Institute-Jury refuses to attend event in Protest
Despite Kashmiri Jourmalist Safina Nabi’s report been unanimously chosen as the winner of a media award instituted by the journalism school run by the Maharashtra Institute of Technology-World Peace University was cancelled by the University Management.
The cancellation which came on the eve of the award presentation ceremony held in the institute’s premises today was a rude shock to the Journalist.
Nabi’s report, brought out the longstanding plight of the ‘half widows’ of Kashmir who continue to be denied their property rights decades after the disappearance of their husbands. The reporting for the story was aided by the Pulitzer Centre on Crisis Reporting.
Her story had been unanimously chosen from dozens of entries by a seven-member jury comprising three members from the institute and four external members, namely Sunanda Mehta, resident editor of The Indian Express, Pune edition, Sandeep Adhwaryu, cartoonist at The Times of India, Sanjeev Ratna Singh, head of the media school at Bennett University and M.K. Venu, founding editor of The Wire.
Nabi had been informed that she had won the award in a phone call from the director, Department of Media & Communication at MIT-WPU Dhiraj Singh, as well as an email from him, on October 11..
According to Nabi the institute had made arrangements for her to travel for the award ceremony, and was supposed to leave on October 17 for Pune. However, on the afternoon of October 16, she received a call from an unknown faculty member who said the award had been cancelled and so she should no longer travel to Pune.
Everything was in place and for a week they kept reaching out for travel arrangements etc,” When she asked for the reasons she mentioned that there is a lot of political pressure that they are facing for awarding her. She also said it would be highly risky for her to travel or be present at the venue.
Thinking that this was some sort of a prank call, Nabi then reached out to Rajeesh Kumar an assistant professor at the Department of Mass Communication and Journalism to check on the authenticity, as he had been her single point of contact till then. Much to her surprise, he was clueless and requested to be given some time to cross-check
He called her back sometime and confirmed that they were actually canceling her award and he was sorry. She requested they put all of this over email and give her the reasons as to why are they doing so.
Later Dhiraj Singh called her who mentioned the same thing and didn’t agree to put anything over email. They were just calling her and giving her the reason that there is a lot of political pressure on the university not to felicitate her.
Nabi then reached out to the jury, who too had not been told about the cancellation.
On learning about the cancellation of Nabi’s award, which was publicly announced by the institute in a press statement last Saturday, the jury members refused to attend the event where they were to participate in a discussion on “media and democracy”.
Jury members say they were “shocked” to hear about the award being cancelled. “Three jury members were in Pune to attend the event and participate in a discussion (Sunanda, Sandeep and she). On learning of the cancellation, they discussed amongst themselves and decided that the best statement to make would be to not attend the event.
Venu further added that Kashmiri journalists are being subjected to altogether different level of censorship and harassment which is totally unconscionable. That too led to her decision not to attend the event.
News Edit K.V.Raman
