Militants stop Srinagar papers from publishing

All eight vernacular dailies and two English daily newspapers in Srinagar suspended publication Monday after the Shoura-e-Jehad, a secessionist militant group, imposed a "ban" on the publication of five vernacular dailies.

Relations have often soured between militant groups and local newspaper editors in the last eight years, but the journalists used to approach the All-Party Hurriyat Conference, the opinion of which was usually accepted by the militants.

But recently, after the APHC began giving itself a secular image, a rift has developed between it and the militants. One fundamentalist pro-Pakistan group, the Jamiat-e-Mujahidden, even issued a statement accusing the APHC of indulging in "typical National Conference-type policies". Their differences has effectively left the scribes without a mediator.

The newspersons face fire from both sides, with the security forces describing them as being hostile to normalcy while the secessionists say they are "agents of India".

According to the editor of a local daily, "We have been working in extremely trying circumstances… It is virtually impossible to please so many masters."