The AnewZ TV documentary trailer presents the Kashmir conflict as a humanitarian crisis while misrepresenting key historical events and current realities. It emphasizes Indian militarization and the 2019 repeal of Article 370 but ignores significant issues such as Pakistan-sponsored militancy and the exodus of Kashmiri Pandits during the 1990s.
The film's portrayal aligns with long-standing narratives from Pakistani media, presenting Kashmir as oppressed under Indian rule. However, it fails to acknowledge recent improvements in security, tourism, and economic growth in the region, ultimately serving as geopolitical advocacy rather than objective journalism.
The documentary trailer of AnewZ TV (c. February 2025) uses the Kashmir conflict as an undying humanitarian crisis, misrepresenting Indian militarisation, the Indian partition of 1947, the unfulfilled UN resolutions on plebiscite, and the 2019 repeal of Article 370. The shots of snow-capped mountains and Alpine meadows are mixed with sweeping shots of barbed wire, military checkpoints, and people chanting on Azadi and waving the Pakistani and Palestinian flags in their hands.
The film is an emotional one, like any propaganda movie. It is also not comprehensive, as it does not include Pakistan-sponsored militancy, ethnic cleansing of Kashmiri Pandits, and verifiable post-2019 developments. What is left is geopolitical advocacy in the guise of journalism.
Journalism or Advocacy?
In November 2024, AnewZ was founded in Baku, Azerbaijan, and positioned itself to the world as a free international media outlet. In a trailer of its Kashmir episode, which is vigorously being promoted by Pakistani social media and affiliated sources such as Caliber. Az, the area is spoken of as an occupied Muslim-dominated land under the watch of 900,000 Indian troops - an exaggeration that quietly lumps together army forces, paramilitary forces,s and locally-hired Jammu & Kashmir Police in a single massive figure.The story will be very recognizable to any individual who has been a follower of the Pakistani state media throughout the years. It reverberates ancient lines of argument furthered by PTV, Dawn, and Geo News: Kashmiris as a monotheistic people living under the iron fist of the Delhi government and longing to realize their self-determination. The trailer is based on the observance of the Kashmir Solidarity Day in Pakistan, and early UN Security Council resolutions of 1948-49, but it omits a quite important fact - the same resolutions presupposed the withdrawal of Pakistani tribal invaders, which, however, did not take place in the end.
AnewZ has made a decision worth making a stop to consider is the fact that AnewZ made Baku its headquarters. Azerbaijan has strong Turkic and Islamic associations with Pakistan, and has given sharp parallels to its 2023 conquest of Nagorno-Karabakh and what the nation shapes as a prospective Kashmiri liberation. The Azerbaijani state media, on its part, has been hosting events that have been used to fuel the geopolitical agendas of Islamabad on the international scene. The correspondents of the channel are based in Muzaffarabad, Azad Kashmir, which is under Pakistani governance, and serve as a platform to hear the voices that glorify Azad Kashmir's independence, the stories that deny Azad Kashmir itself of any human rights violations documented in its own reports, and the infrastructure negligence.
When a production can assert that it is not interested in Kashmir but interested in the people of Kashmir and has zero points of view of 14 million people living under the administration of India in Kashmir, this assertion crumbles within itself.
The Extermination of the Kashmiri Pandits
The timeline of the trailer jumps between the 1947 Instrument of Accession of Maharaja Hari Singh, straight to the current day, without mentioning the militancy ripple that occurred in 1989-1990. Most importantly, it makes no mention of the mass exodus of 100,000-350,000 Kashmiri Pandits, the ancient local minority in the Valley of Hindu origin, with a population of about 140,000 people at the time of the 1981 census.
The fight against them was organized. Threats in the form of Raliv, Chaliv ya Galiv (convert, leave or die) were played out by Mosque loudspeakers. A terror campaign was set off by the murder of BJP leader Pandit Tika Lal Taploo on September 14, 1989, that took away judges, journalists, engineers, and civilians. In a few weeks,s by March 199,0 more than 140,000-160,000 Pandits had fled the Valley, leaving houses, orchards, and centuries-old temples behind. Government records of J&K testify to 219 deaths of Pandits by 2004; 399 targeted killings by 2011 according to NGOs, and over 500 desecrated Hindu temples.
The displaced Pandit families are also approximated to be 60,000 and reside in refugee camps in Jammu and Delhi. The scheme of rehabilitation that has occurred after 2019 has brought back approximately 6,000 people, which is a drop in the ocean of the population that was expelled.
The trailer regrets the Indian post-370 domicile laws as evil demographic engineering. It remains utterly silent on the fact that Islamist militancy emptied the Valley of pluralism and turned the Pandit population, which was previously a successful minority, into virtually nonexistent. This is not an accident; it is a structural decision that reveals the real agenda of the documentary.
Contextualising Militarisation
The trailer highlights exaggerated troop numbers, 4,000 and above post-370 arrests, pellet gun wounds, and an 8,000-plus list of enforced disappearances given by the Association of Parents of Disappeared Persons. These are issues that should be taken seriously. The National Human Rights Commission of India has recorded a total of more than 15,000 complaints in J&K since 1997, with 13,000 being disposed of with a monetary relief in about 2,500 proven cases. Criminal justice has made precedent cases: life imprisonment of BSF staff in the 1996 rape-murder of Anantnag and the Army in the judicial court-martial of the 2010 Machil fake encounter. All the abuses recorded should be held to account.
However, context is very important. A major percentage of the disappeared include Kashmiri young people who entered the Pakistan-controlled side in the 1990s to study in the ISI-based training camps and never came back. South Asia Terrorism Portal documents more than 42,000 neutralised or arrested terrorists since 1988, and over 3,000 attempted infiltrations since 2019 alone.
This defense strategy was developed specifically in reaction to Operation Topac, an insurgency plan of the ISI of Pakistan that recruited Afghan mujahideen veterans to turn an unpopular accession into a full proxy war in 1988. The number of deaths due to that war is more than 70,000 lives, among them more than 15,000 civilians who were killed before 2019. Troop size has since been reduced to about 150,000 active Army personnel, as the level of violence has dropped drastically.
It is not journalism to introduce this counter-terrorism architecture a
s non-provoked colonial oppression, with not a mention of the proxy war that had to be waged. It is inversion.
Post-2019: A Different Picture
The trailer has placed Kashmir in an endless time warp, in the 1990s. The information is narrated differently. Stone-throwing events - the hallmark of teenage radicalization fell by 87 per cent (1,328 incidents in 2018 to 158 in 2022). The number of terror-related deaths was reduced by half, as 452 people died in 2018 and 118 died in 2023. Tourist break records: 2.11 crore tourists came in 2023, the best, and 1.2 crore in 2024, and 95 lakh domestic tourists in the first half of 2025 alone. The houseboats of Gulmarg, Pahalga,m and Srinagar are full to the brim like they were decades ago.
The infrastructure investment has been revolutionary: 47 national highway projects with a total distance of 810 km, 27 major bridges connecting inaccessible valleys, two airports with international status, and trains of Vande Bharat Express, which connect the region to the rest of the country. The investment value, [?]80,000 crore has created more than 45, 000 direct jobs. There was an increase of 7.2% CAGR in the Gross State Domestic Product between 2019 and 2024. Unemployment among the youth was reduced to 6.1, the lowest in a decade.
The most obvious adjudication occurred in the ballot box: the 2024 J&K assembly elections had 67 percent voter turnout, the highest in the last 24 years, and mainstream parties easily outwitted the separatist proxies. Kashmir is voting with ballots and business decisions, and feet, which are the ordinary Kashmiris.
The Complete Picture
The trailer of AnewZ seals the legal accession of Maharaja Hari Singh in 1947, the blueprint of proxy war in Operation Topac, the genocide of the Pandit, and registering gains of integration to present what can be termed as an emotional warfare spectacle with international sympathy pre-set circuits.
Real journalism would count the price of it all: 70,000 lives lost in all the communities, recorded security overkill that needs some form of reprisal, and a Valley where the lunatic fringe that once could muster 10,000 active militants have been pushed to the fringes in favor of economic opportunity and political participation.
Selective omission is no storytelling. It is advocacy. And when the system of advocacy that effectively obliterates the genocide of one community but launders the geopolitical priorities of a foreign state to the global masses, then that is worse than incomplete. It does a disservice to all Kashmiris that it purports to represent.
For the Latest news, India News and breaking stories from around the world, visit Times Now for live coverage and in-depth reporting.
comments
Other categories
Recent Comments
