JAMMU, NOV 05: In response to PDP MLA Waheed-ur-Rehman Para’s recent criticism of the Jammu and Kashmir administration’s directives aimed at curbing the misuse of social media, Kundan Kashmiri, President of the Kashmiri Pandit Conference (KPC), issued a detailed statement rejecting the remarks as “misleading and politically motivated.”
As per the statement issued to The Newsroom 24 – Awaz, Kundan Kashmiri emphasized that the recent directives introduced by the Lieutenant Governor’s administration were necessary to counter the long standing misuse of social media by terror networks, radical elements, and separatist sympathizers.
“For decades, social media platforms have been weaponized to spread hate, instigate violence, glorify terrorists, and suppress truth,” the statement read. “These elements, often sheltered and supported by certain political figures, turned digital spaces into tools of narrative terrorism, leading to the loss of countless innocent lives.”
Kashmiri further stated that the silence in the past was not enforced by the government but “by the gun, the stone, and the propaganda machinery of those aligned with anti-national forces.” He criticized leaders who oppose the government’s current efforts to regulate online content, alleging that such politicians “cry foul about gag policies because their political survival depends on misinformation and manipulation.”
“If Para truly values freedom of expression, he should first condemn the decades of silence imposed by militants and their sponsors,” Kashmiri said, urging the PDP leader to speak for journalists who were “killed, threatened, or silenced not by the government, but by terrorists.”
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Clarifying that the monitoring of social media in Jammu and Kashmir is intended to protect democracy and national security rather than restrict democratic rights, Kashmiri said the move seeks to “ensure that the dark era of propaganda-driven bloodshed never returns.”
“Freedom of speech does not mean freedom to promote separatism, terror, hate, and lies,” he asserted, adding that Kashmiri Pandits, as the original and indigenous people of Kashmir, “know the cost of unchecked propaganda,” having lost their homes, temples, and decades of peace due to false narratives.
Reiterating full support for the government’s decision, Kashmiri posed several questions to Para, asking why Jammu and Kashmir continues to be “used as a laboratory for poisonous narratives” and whether “national security is less important than political rhetoric.”
He added that the people of Jammu and Kashmir “deserve stability, clarity, truth, and peace not another cycle of manipulation and anarchy.”
Concluding the statement, the KPC underscored that openness cannot mean allowing enemies of peace to operate freely and that transparency does not equate to permitting the propagation of terrorism.
“These regulations are not about silencing people; they are about silencing terror,” Kashmiri said. “If certain political leaders find their voices threatened, maybe they should examine what they have been speaking all along. We stand for a safer, peaceful, and truthful Jammu & Kashmir no compromise.
