Part I: Kashmir, Surveilled

The author is from Kashmir, but wants to remain anonymous to protect their privacy.

I was little and every day, on my way to school, I saw men standing in every other corner, in uniform, with a helmet on and a gun in their hands, watching everyone.

One day, I went back home and asked my parents who they were and I was told that those men are here to protect. But they never told me who they’re here to protect.

My curiosity made me wonder who they were, where they came from and why did they always have those big guns on them. Men with guns, in the street, watching everyone. Time passed and I saw them but I stopped noticing them and I wasn’t alone in it. 

Every society in today’s world that has established norms for its members, has also developed mechanisms to enforce those norms. Surveillance, in this regard, might be seen as a necessary tool.

There can and never will be a society in which all individuals obey each and every rule while also side-stepping every tension and taboo. As a result, the government, in one way or the other, will always resort to some processes to ensure a degree of social and cultural conformity. And that process will inevitably violate someone’s—or everyone’s—privacy. Surveillance is a process that, ideally within limits, oversteps upon individual liberty to protect, and sustain the liberties and rights of all. 

That said, surveillance has often been used to serve many not so ethical ends, precisely because of how powerful a tool of social control it has become. In the last two decades, especially since the advent of the internet, we have witnessed rapid technological advances. Growth in technology has also waded into surveillance. Over this period, surveillance has crept into nearly every aspect of governance and even commercial activity. 

Subsequently, enormous, and alarming swathes of information have been vacuumed and manipulated, especially by the State.

As a result, the necessary curtailment of surveillance claims made by the state has become one of the cornerstones of modern democracy. And, in Kashmir, a place where other essential facets of democracy seem to be unaccounted for, this one is no different.

The valley of Kashmir has been in turmoil for the better part of the last three decades. For the entire duration of the conflict, the government has employed many methods of keeping dissent in check. While some of these surveillance measures have yielded supposedly favourable results for the government, their pervasiveness has many times encroached upon individual privacy and civil liberties to a level that is on the verge of violating them.

This is all done in the name of counterinsurgency–– in supposed attempts to rid the areas of dissidents and the dissent that comes along.

In conflict-ridden areas of India, governance has increasingly come to be seen through the lens of the counterinsurgency paradigm, reducing common individuals to witnesses, subject to these measures.

The situation has become such that speaking of it is implicitly forbidden. Fewer and fewer people are ready to speak on the subject. We see what we see, know what we know but speaking on it is much harder now. The fear is pervasive because so is the watch on people. 

Surveillance in Kashmir, can be undisguised, yet hidden in plain sight and, at times, concealed. 

Overt Surveillance

Watchers In The Streets

The landscape in Kashmir is dotted with armed soldiers and the police; civilian movement is filtered and controlled in shopping districts and government offices; restrictions are imposed at the slightest suggestion of dissent.

Some local estimates, like the Jammu and Kashmir Coalition of Civil Society or JKCCS, measure the presence of military and paramilitary forces in the valley at around seven lakhs. Other estimates, from outside the union territory, provide a much lower estimate, mostly around three lakhs or so. The government itself has never actually released the number of troops deployed in J&K. Whichever figure stands true, it isn’t a small one by any means and it shows.

The number of military personnel, in Kashmir, was around fifteen thousand in 1990 and to accommodate the hundreds of thousands of uniformed men that have been deployed since space was needed and lots of it. As a result, houses, schools, hotels and even cinema halls have been taken over by the military. In 2015, nearly two thousand buildings were still occupied by the army or paramilitary forces in the erstwhile state. In the past month, even community centres have been occupied to accommodate incoming forces. 

To get an even better picture of their prevalence, a survey was conducted by Columbia University. 30 schools were randomly selected for survey across the valley and 79% were at a distance of less than 1 kilometre from the nearest military camp or bunker. Some schools even shared a common boundary with the camps. 20% of schools were just 2-3 kilometres away from a military camp and 1% were partially occupied by the military or paramilitary troops.

In the valley at least, whenever one moves out of the house, it’s something you can’t overlook. “You can’t not see them. They’re everywhere. If we can see them, so can they”, says Zain*. 

New generations of Kashmiris have grown up living next door to military camps. They can not just be ‘seen’, but also stopped and frisked wherever and whenever deemed necessary.

Paramilitary forces across the region have set up checkpoints and laid out barbed wire, allowing them to monitor the movement of residents and record the registration numbers of some civilian vehicles. Sometimes, people are even quizzed about their destination and where they came from.

In Kashmir, the state doesn’t always need sophisticated technology to hack your phones or monitor your lives. You can be stopped and your phone checked by a policeman or security personnel on your way to work. You’ll do as they ask, and give them your password because you’ll have little choice because a refusal would entail a bare minimum of threats and intimidation. 

In the last few days, police in Hyderabad have been accused of going through people’s phones, in apparent attempts to “eliminate drug abuse”. While the situation is distressing, the same has been the reality in Kashmir for years now.

At a time when the rest of the world worries about Pegasus, people in Kashmir worry about the next checkpoint and for some, not stopping at one has put an everlasting stop to their life. 

Drones And CCTVs

Drone cameras have been in use for surveillance in Kashmir for some time now but aerial surveillance in Kashmir valley started at a much larger scale from the day the government revoked provisions of Articles 370. Drones are now a common sight across the entire state. Every once in a while, the sound of drones flying low to the ground can be heard. “We can hear them moving above the houses, even at night,” says Zain*.  

While the idea may be new to many, it isn’t new to Kashmiris. “We have been seeing drones for a few years now but now, we can hear and see them a lot more often. It was concerning at first but now we’ve grown accustomed”, he continues. 

Kashmir’s roads are also dotted with police-operated CCTV cameras mounted on mobile phone towers. In many areas, shopkeepers have been asked to install CCTV cameras and keep them on 24×7 for “police monitoring”.

The same digital technologies that have revolutionized our daily lives over the past three decades have also created ever more detailed records about those lives. Surveillance cameras, among other technologies, have increased the ability to track, observe, and monitor citizens. 

Facial Recognition

At the beginning of October, the European Parliament called for a ban on using facial recognition technologies in public spaces across Europe. Unfortunately, in the same month, there have been growing talks of installing facial recognition cameras across the city of Srinagar.

Beneath the idealistic hype of artificial intelligence, the reality is far more malignant. While it can be argued that the security situation requires such measures, their effects on individual privacy are growing exponentially.

The facial recognition software technology that companies are developing can identify a person in a crowd in real-time, track someone’s movements, detect emotions, and predict behaviour. 

What’s even more troubling about its implication in the public sphere is how it can affect and impede one’s constitutional rights to privacy, freedom of speech and freedom of assembly. Given current circumstances, it isn’t too difficult to imagine how technologies like facial recognition can lead to further hostilities towards such rights in public spaces. 

Moreover, facial recognition also comes with technological drawbacks. Research suggests that facial recognition may be disproportionately inaccurate when used on certain groups, including people with darker skin, women, and young people. 

Mistaken identity, more often than not, has been an outcome of using facial recognition technologies. There have already been multiple cases of mistaken identity in Kashmir that have led to serious consequences, with people sustaining bullet injuries and for many, it has led to the irreparable one – death. More such cases caused as a result of technology will further diminish the already fading accountability.

Covert Surveillance

Social Media

In February, the regional government asked common people to register themselves as Cyber Crime Volunteers. They launched the project to seek help from volunteers to report “anti-national” posts. Surveillance on social media, however, isn’t new to Kashmir.

 In October 2019, the Committee to Protect Journalists, or CPJ, in their investigation, found that hundreds of thousands of tweets that were shared by accounts focusing on Kashmir were blocked in India since August 2017, under Twitter’s country withheld content policy. Dozens more tweets were withheld, complying with official requests by the Government of India.

In Kashmir, social media has proven to be instrumental in political activism and mobilising people. Since the abrogation of Article 370 and the outbreak of the pandemic, it has also become the only avenue for Kashmiris to express their opinions. But, with the growing usage, has come growing scrutiny. Social media posts have caused many to end up with summons from their local police stations, leaving them feeling intimidated.

The consequences of a social media post, though, have reached an unreasonably severe level in recent times. While in the past, the post would either be removed or flagged, today, one can be questioned, detained and, as per many allegations, tortured. 

Many who were already fearful of expressing opinions online have either left social media platforms or have restricted access to their accounts. The fear of consequences that could entail is what has pushed me towards anonymity, in my attempts to get the word across. 

Fears

‘Phonas peth pazan ne yem kathe krne’ (One should not talk about so-and-so things on call) is a common phrase used by Kashmiris. The fear that someone must be listening and would get them in trouble for no reason at all is a norm.

Technical glitches are considered strong indications of phone tapping. For instance, if there is a beep during the call, a person assumes that their phone is being tapped.

There are instances when people give wrong addresses and talk nonsense on phone, ostensibly to confuse those whom they perceive are tapping their conversation.

People in Kashmir, for the longest time, have held the belief that their phone calls are being listened to. While there’s little evidence other than vague accounts to back up such claims, it certainly provides an insight into how deep the idea of surveillance has crept into the lives of people in Kashmir.

Other than the looming threat of an Orwellian dystopia, as a society, we don’t really understand why over-surveillance is problematic and why we should be wary of it. At the same time, we’ve been able to live with this state of affairs largely because the threat of constant surveillance has been relegated to the realms of science fiction and failed totalitarian states. We end up overlooking the examples present in our midst, like the ones in Kashmir.

A Crumbling Fourth Pillar

The last few years have seen a steady and rampant decline of the free press in Kashmir and since 2019, the restrictions on media couldn’t be more conspicuous.

In the past two years, more than 40 journalists in Kashmir have either been called for a background check, summoned, or raided. Many are being forced to present themselves to explain their stories, social media conduct and other societal behaviour. A few have also been booked under UAPA as well as the PSA or Public Safety Act. 

Journalists in Kashmir had been an essential part of a precarious balance of perspectives in Kashmir for years, reporting all sides of the story but have now been slowly pushed out of the picture. Their working conditions have deteriorated and many are even said to have switched professions.

Qazi Shibli, 29, was one of the first to have faced the gruelling consequences of being a journalist doing their job in Kashmir. He was arrested in July 2019, in connection with his tweets on paramilitary movement in the then state. Documents revealed that Shibli was formally arrested on August 8 for alleged “separatist activity”. He was released after nine months.

Since then, he has been going about his work in the same manner and subsequently, hasn’t avoided thequestioning and detention. When I asked him about it, he probed back saying, “What more can they do? I was jailed for nine months, questioned many times. What more can they do?“

But not everyone has been able to work in such circumstances as they used to. The only organisations trying to offer a different perspective or offer news that goes underreported are independent.

Newspapers often avoid reporting on suspected rights violations. Self-censorship is prevalent in Kashmir today. One of the fears preventing them from reporting is a loss of revenue from being denied advertisements, which the government has done in the past. Their offices haven’t been safe from raids either.

The blame though, can’t be put entirely on news organisations– the stakes are high.

Shibli says, “It is wise to be unwise sometimes. No organisation would want to risk the lives livelihood of their employees. It’s a matter of survival, for everyone,” he adds.

In 2020, the government issued a media policy that contained vague definitions of what news outlets could and couldn’t publish. It is fair to believe that the policy only underlined the utter vulnerability of the media. The document bore a clear warning both to the owners of the media houses as well as to the journalists they employ. While it was condemned and questioned in both international and national circles, it is still in force today.

Measures and policies enforced, ensure that other opinions that challenge these “official” narratives remain marginalized and even suppressed. “Information isn’t allowed to be dispensed here unless it suits a certain narrative. Of course, there needs to be accountability but, not to the bureaucracy,” says Shibli.

The room for dissent or even for providing a view alternate to that of the government, if there was any left, is shrinking each day. “Everything seems to be justified in the name of national security and nationalism,” Shibli explains.

The Kashmir of the last two years isn’t much different than the decades before. But it reflects a more pervasive and flagrant use of power and authority to suppress any contending voice and narratives that seek to challenge and contest authority. It seems to have made citizens passive recipients of the information the government intends to disseminate. 

In absence of the legislature, the executive and the judiciary have been of no help to a fraternity that exists solely to inform the public. Yet, the curbs on it are justified in the name of ‘national interest’ and ‘law and order’.

In Kashmir, the so-called fourth pillar of democracy, as evidence suggests, seems to be constantly put down by the ones that were tasked with upholding it.

This is Part 1 of the two-part series on surveillance in Kashmir. You can read the second part here.

*Names have been changed to protect the privacy of individuals