Srinagar, May 04 (KMS): Senior Kashmiri Hurriyet leader, Syed Ali Gilani has said that the freedom of press is completely non-existent in occupied Kashmir and media persons are performing their professional duties in the most dangerous situations.

Syed Ali Gilani in a statement issued in Srinagar on the occasion of the World Press Day pointed out that the freedom of media was soul of democracy but there were great restrictions in writing or portraying an event in the occupied territory.
 
The Kashmiri leader maintained that working conditions of the journalist fraternity were pathetic as every journalist's activity was screened by the occupation authorities. He further said, a journalist who dares to speak or write a truthful account of an event is harassed by different Indian agencies.

Meanwhile, the President of Committee for Release of Political Prisoners, Professor Abdul Rehman Gilani in a statement in Srinagar expressed grave concern over the plight of Kashmiri detainees languishing in different jails.  He said that jail authorities were subjecting prisoners to worst kind of atrocities.

Professor Gilani pointed out that the detainees who were recently presented in a Gujarat Court were treated inhumanely in a train by police and other forces on their way back to Tihar jail. As a result, he added, many of them were injured in the incident.

Addressing a convention at Batamaloo in Srinagar, Kashmiri leader, Mushtaq-ul-Islam emphasised that the periodical election dramas in Srinagar by India could not be a substitute to Kashmiris’ right to self-determination and were being staged to hoodwink the international community.