Kashmiri photojournalist and Pulitzer Prize winner Sanna Irshad Mattoo was stopped from travelling to Paris without giving any reason. The immigration officers stopped her at Delhi airport and told her she cannot travel internationally.
Mattoo was on her way to attend a book launch and a photography exhibition as one of the 10 award winners of the Serendipity Arles grant 2020. She was stopped at the immigration desk despite having a French visa.
She tweeted that she was not given any reason for the action. Sources in the Jammu and Kashmir Police told The Indian Express that Mattoo is among the several journalists from the state put on the no-fly list by the Centre.
The 28-year-old is a photojournalist for the international wire agency Reuters. She won the 2022 Pulitzer Prize in feature photography for covering the second wave of Covid-19 in India.
Mattoo is a resident of Srinagar and graduated in Convergent Journalism from the Central University of Kashmir. She has done works focusing on the tension between everyday life in the Valley and the presence of the military.
This is not the first time professionals and artists from the Kashmir Valley have been stopped by the immigration department from travelling abroad.
In September 2019, Kashmiri journalist Gowhar Geelani was stopped at Delhi airport when he was supposed to fly out to Germany. He was a vocal critic of the abolition of article 370. In 2020, he was booked under the anti-terror legislation for his writings on social media. Earlier this year, he was arrested under Section 151 CrPC, a person can be put into preventive detention.
Journalist-turned-academician Zahid Rafiq was stopped last year from travelling to the US where he was supposed to teach at a university. Journalist Ruwa Shah was also stopped from travelling abroad. He was permitted to fly internationally after a few months.