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NEW DELHI, 3 Jul:<\/strong> The Indian Journalists’ Union (IJU) has condemned “the petty and vindictive action of both the Centre and J&K administration for stopping Kashmiri photojournalist and Pulitzer Prize awardee Sana Irshad Mattoo from flying to Paris to attend a book launch and photography exhibition.” This, said the IJU, is yet another case of ongoing harassment of journalists and the Press Council of India must take suo moto cognizance.<\/p>\n Mattoo, a photo journalist with Reuters, is among the 10 award winners in South Asia of the Serendipity Arles grant 2020, supported by the Institut Francais en Inde, a section of French Embassy in India. On Saturday, she was stopped by the immigration desk of Delhi’s International airport. Her tweet with a cancelled boarding pass read: “I was scheduled to travel from Delhi to Paris today for a book launch and photography exhibition as one of the 10 award winners of the Serendipity Arles grant 2020. Despite procuring a French visa, I was stopped at the immigration desk at Delhi airport. I was not given any reason but told I would not be able to travel internationally.”<\/p>\n In a statement the IJU president Sabina Inderjit said that the action deserves the strongest condemnation.<\/p>\n Taking note of reports that Mattoo was stopped as she was among several journalists from the Valley put on the ‘no-fly list,’ the IJU demanded the Press Council of India and particularly the three-member Fact Finding Team, which went to J&K should take suo moto cognizance of the case and get the ban removed, to defend freedom of press.<\/p>\n Kashmiri journalist Gowhar Geelani was stopped from travelling to Germany in September 2019 and journalist-turned academician Zahid Rafiq was prevented from flying to the US in 2021 to teach in a university. Ruwa Shah, another journalist was also stopped. The IJU said such actions are an attack on press freedom and unacceptable in any democratic society.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" NEW DELHI, 3 Jul: The Indian Journalists’ Union (IJU) has condemned “the petty and vindictive action of both the Centre and J&K administration for stopping Kashmiri photojournalist and Pulitzer Prize awardee Sana Irshad Mattoo from flying to Paris to attend a book launch and photography exhibition.” This, said the IJU, is yet another case of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-194518","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-state-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/194518","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=194518"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/194518\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=194518"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=194518"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=194518"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}