BURIED EVIDENCE Unknown, Unmarked, and Mass Graves in Indian-administered Kashmir
BURIED EVIDENCE documents 2,700 unknown, unmarked, and mass graves, containing 2,943+ bodies, across 55 villages in Bandipora, Baramulla, and Kupwara districts of Kashmir, based on applied research conducted between November 2006-November 2009.
Findings
The graveyards investigated by IPTK entomb bodies of those murdered in encounter and fake encounter killings between 1990-2009. These graves include bodies of extrajudicial, summary, and arbitrary executions, as well as massacres committed by the Indian military and paramilitary forces.
Of these graves, 2,373 (87.9 percent) were unnamed. Of these graves, 154 contained two bodies each and 23 contained more than two cadavers. Within these 23 graves, the number of bodies ranged from 3 to 17.
Post-death, the bodies of the victims were routinely handled by military and paramilitary personnel, including the local police. The bodies were then brought to the "secret graveyards" primarily by personnel of the Jammu and Kashmir Police. The graves were constructed by local gravediggers and caretakers, buried individually when possible, and specifically not en mass, in keeping with Islamic religious sensibilities.
These graveyards have been placed next to fields, schools, and homes, largely on community land, and their affect on the local community is daunting.
If independent investigations were to be undertaken in all 10 districts, it is reasonable to assume that the 8,000+ enforced disappearances since 1989 would correlate with the number of bodies in unknown, unmarked, and mass graves.
The violences of militarization in Indian-administered Kashmir, between 1989-2009, have resulted in 70,000+ deaths, including through extrajudicial or "fake encounter" executions, custodial brutality, and other means. In the enduring conflict, 6, 67,000 military and paramilitary personnel continue to act with impunity to regulate movement, law, and order across Kashmir.
IPTK asks that the evidence put forward in this report be examined, verified, and reframed as relevant by credible, independent, and international bodies, and that international institutions ask that the Government of India comply with such investigations.
We note that the international community and institutions have not examined the supposition of crimes against humanity in Indian-administered Jammu and Kashmir. We note that the United Nations and its member states have remained ineffective in containing and halting the adverse consequences of the Indians state's militarization in Kashmir.
http://www.islampolicy.com/2011/02/buri ... d-and.html
Buried Evidence: Unknown,Unmarked & Mass Graves in Kashmir.
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ghulam muhammed
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Re: Buried Evidence: Unknown,Unmarked & Mass Graves in Kashmir.
Kashmir violence: Protesters snatch 70 police guns, build armoury
On Monday, two CRPF men accompanying a civilian with a heart condition to a local hospital were attacked by a mob. "The jawans fought despite being hit on the head with rods and stones and didn't let the protesters take the rifles," said a CRPF official.
Earlier, on Saturday, when protests swelled after Wani's death, a police post was looted in Brijbehara and several weapons taken away by the protesters.
The youth, gathering in large numbers in areas like Anantnag, Shopian, Kulgam and Pulwama districts in south Kashmir and Baramulla, Sopore, Kupwara, Ganderbal and Bandipora towns, are indulging in sporadic attacks on the police and paramilitary forces, said a senior J&K official.
It took the CRPF and a contingent of local police a lot of grit and resolve to push back the mob.
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/indi ... 183343.cms
On Monday, two CRPF men accompanying a civilian with a heart condition to a local hospital were attacked by a mob. "The jawans fought despite being hit on the head with rods and stones and didn't let the protesters take the rifles," said a CRPF official.
Earlier, on Saturday, when protests swelled after Wani's death, a police post was looted in Brijbehara and several weapons taken away by the protesters.
The youth, gathering in large numbers in areas like Anantnag, Shopian, Kulgam and Pulwama districts in south Kashmir and Baramulla, Sopore, Kupwara, Ganderbal and Bandipora towns, are indulging in sporadic attacks on the police and paramilitary forces, said a senior J&K official.
It took the CRPF and a contingent of local police a lot of grit and resolve to push back the mob.
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/indi ... 183343.cms
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ghulam muhammed
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Re: Buried Evidence: Unknown,Unmarked & Mass Graves in Kashmir.
NOW THE RSS HALF CHADDI SYMPATHISER ON THIS FORUM WILL COME UP WITH SOME FICTITIOUS ARTICLE FROM HIS MASTER'S WEBSITE TO PROVE THIS ARTICLE WRONG....... AFTER ALL THE RSS HALF CHADDIS ARE FAMOUS FOR DISTORTING HISTORY AND REWRITING HISTORY TEXTBOOKS !!! 
Half-widows in Kashmir live life of beggars: Study
At a time when the Kashmir valley is on the boil, some shocking facts about the terror-affected state were revealed by Jesuit Fr. Paul D'Souza of the Indian Social Institute, Delhi, on Wednesday at Centre for Social Studies (CSS) of Veer Narmad South Gujarat University (VNSGU). D'Souza was addressing a seminar 'Undesired liminality and questions of half-widows of Kashmir' based on his extensive study of the valley.
Explaining the term 'half-widows', D'Souza said, "These are women whose husbands are missing and their death has not been confirmed due to which they cannot have status of wife or dignity of a widow. As per government estimates there are about 1,500 such 'half-widows' still waiting for their husbands. However, the actual number could be much higher."
D'Souza studied 150 half-widows, 149 Muslim and one Kashmiri Pandits between 2013 and 2015. He visited 140 villages during his study and recorded plight of these women who are not allowed to remarry in majority of the cases. As per an estimate, around 8,000 to 10,000 persons are missing from Kashmir since 1989, informed D'Souza. "Majority of the cases of missing persons in Kashmir are of enforced disappearance," he added.
It is claimed in the study that 98% of the half-widows have a monthly income of less than Rs 4,000. The study also revealed that 65% of the half-widows live in houses with minimum amenities.
The health of these widows is also a matter of concern as the study states that more than 79% of them have some physical ailment and nearly 62% are under regular medication.
"Around 95% of these half-widows could not search for their husband due to various limitations. Most of them are living life of a bagger," claimed D'Souza.
The Indian Social Institute, founded in 1951, is a Jesuit institute for research, training and action for socio-economic development and human rights in India. Founded by Jerome D'Souza in Pune it shifted to New Delhi in 1963.
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city ... 318005.cms
Half-widows in Kashmir live life of beggars: Study
At a time when the Kashmir valley is on the boil, some shocking facts about the terror-affected state were revealed by Jesuit Fr. Paul D'Souza of the Indian Social Institute, Delhi, on Wednesday at Centre for Social Studies (CSS) of Veer Narmad South Gujarat University (VNSGU). D'Souza was addressing a seminar 'Undesired liminality and questions of half-widows of Kashmir' based on his extensive study of the valley.
Explaining the term 'half-widows', D'Souza said, "These are women whose husbands are missing and their death has not been confirmed due to which they cannot have status of wife or dignity of a widow. As per government estimates there are about 1,500 such 'half-widows' still waiting for their husbands. However, the actual number could be much higher."
D'Souza studied 150 half-widows, 149 Muslim and one Kashmiri Pandits between 2013 and 2015. He visited 140 villages during his study and recorded plight of these women who are not allowed to remarry in majority of the cases. As per an estimate, around 8,000 to 10,000 persons are missing from Kashmir since 1989, informed D'Souza. "Majority of the cases of missing persons in Kashmir are of enforced disappearance," he added.
It is claimed in the study that 98% of the half-widows have a monthly income of less than Rs 4,000. The study also revealed that 65% of the half-widows live in houses with minimum amenities.
The health of these widows is also a matter of concern as the study states that more than 79% of them have some physical ailment and nearly 62% are under regular medication.
"Around 95% of these half-widows could not search for their husband due to various limitations. Most of them are living life of a bagger," claimed D'Souza.
The Indian Social Institute, founded in 1951, is a Jesuit institute for research, training and action for socio-economic development and human rights in India. Founded by Jerome D'Souza in Pune it shifted to New Delhi in 1963.
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city ... 318005.cms
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ghulam muhammed
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Re: Buried Evidence: Unknown,Unmarked & Mass Graves in Kashmir.
With over 40 people killed in a civil protest, it is unconscionable that the world press has largely ignored this event.
On Kashmir: Way to redemption is through listening
For the past few days, commentators have been scrambling to explain the tumultuous outpouring on the streets of Kashmir following Burhan Wani’s killing, refusing to wane under either bullets or pellets.
The first response generally is that of absolute and uncomprehending bewilderment. The second of outrage and indignation: look at them mourning a declared enemy of the state, look at them pelting stones at the army. The third is to fall back on the familiar, comforting narratives. Here, one has the luxury of drawing upon layers of sedimented common sense.
When our group, Jamia Teachers’ Solidarity Association, was compiling cases of malicious frame-ups by the Delhi Police’s elite Special Cell, we discovered that in 18 of the 23 cases the Special Cell had passed off Kashmiri businessmen, students, and sundry travellers passing through New Delhi as Hizb or Lashkar operatives.
Who would after all raise doubts about these Kashmiris terrorist links? No one did. Between Kashmiri the terrorist and Kashmiri the stone pelter is a difference only of degree in our common sense. Both are ultimately unreasonably opposed to our nation. Both are prone to violence.
What has been laid bare in the days past is the intimate link between gross institutionalised communal prejudice that exists in India and the militaristic response to Kashmir, of both, the state and its propaganda underlings, the assorted experts and TV anchors. Night after night, stars of television news scream into the camera that the stone-wielding teenager is either a shield for a terrorist who hides behind him or a Jihad-crazed maniac radicalised by a virulent form of Salafism which has supplanted the earlier gentler Sufi traditions.
Nice, Syria, Bangladesh–and preacher Zakir Naik thrown in for good measure–are all linked up to proclaim the onset of a global jihadist project in the Valley. Leaders and anchors excoriate anyone grieving the blindings and the killings: troubled by blood on the paved road? Where is your patriotism and loyalty towards the uniformed men?
The events of the past fortnight, the explanations and the manic commentary around it, hold up a mirror to us, not the Kashmiris. And the image in that mirror is grotesque. We have turned into primal hordes of automatons, exulting in blind jingoism. We are being asked to not feel pain. On the contrary, to take pride in these nationalist kills. We are being asked to abandon understanding, and empathy. We are not to ask why thousands of young people throng the graveyards to offer prayers for Burhan Wani. Indeed, it is not relevant to seek the roots of their rage, a rage so seething that it has inured them to all danger. What matters alone is that Kashmir remains the crowning glory of our sacred map.
When an army veteran writes a letter to the dead Wani, warning him–but really, the warning is to those in the streets because the dead don’t read letters–that the Indian Army “will kill you”, he is talking to us too. He is asking us to corrode our humanity, to leach ourselves of any sensibilities. Death is all that they deserve, even desire. Even to those of us who may be ambivalent about the meanings and consequences of “Azadi”, it is obvious that Kashmir can only be held by force, awful brutal force.
It is immaterial whether pellets can be substituted by a “less lethal, non-lethal” method of crowd management. Democracy in Kashmir will continue to be endless crowd management, and management of dead bodies and graves. Do we want blood on our hands? Remember that war always comes home. It brings with it its logic and symbols.
Technicolour nationalism
Why has the prime minister called upon his workers to undertake tiranga yatras at this moment? The directions are quite specific: BJP leaders are expected to carry flags aloft on an 8-feet pole, ride a two-wheeler, and chant “Bharat Mata ki Jai”. It is to be a spectacle par excellence. This technicolour nationalism fluttering in the air is meant of course to validate the war in Kashmir, but also to protect the “gau rakshak” vigilantes who skin Dalits and lynch Muslims, to prepare us for a possible aerial bombing in Chhattisgarh, to render us quiescent in our own surveillance, to normalise, even legalise, communal profiling and to ratchet up the already skyrocketing defence budgets.
Possibly at the very moment Wani was shot down by security agencies, I was reading a brief life sketch of Pt Rughonath Vaishnavi by his granddaughter, the anthropologist Mona Bhan. Vaishnavi was a vociferous advocate of Kashmiri nationalism.
His paper Jamhoor (Democracy) was banned in 1952. Vaishnavi was jailed repeatedly over the next few years and his habeas corpus petition was rejected on grounds that the protection flowing from the Constitution were not available to him.
His writings bear witness to midnight arrests and detentions of Kashmiri partisans–thrown into dark cells without being assigned any reason. Vaishnavi’s life and writings force us to look at the past and our present anew, and to imagine possibilities other than those thrust on us. Is it not possible to excavate these histories, to complicate the army veteran’s understanding of Kashmir as an “artificially manufactured conflict” with no history and no legitimacy? Perhaps, it is possible to pause for a moment and turn off the jingoism and simply reflect on the unfolding tragedy.
Let us not allow these deaths to become bald and sterile statistics. Let us not allow the Indian state’s hubris to blind us. Listen to what the Kashmiris are saying – not because it will change official policy, but because in that conversation lies our, and India’s redemption.
http://www.deccanherald.com/content/559 ... ening.html
On Kashmir: Way to redemption is through listening
For the past few days, commentators have been scrambling to explain the tumultuous outpouring on the streets of Kashmir following Burhan Wani’s killing, refusing to wane under either bullets or pellets.
The first response generally is that of absolute and uncomprehending bewilderment. The second of outrage and indignation: look at them mourning a declared enemy of the state, look at them pelting stones at the army. The third is to fall back on the familiar, comforting narratives. Here, one has the luxury of drawing upon layers of sedimented common sense.
When our group, Jamia Teachers’ Solidarity Association, was compiling cases of malicious frame-ups by the Delhi Police’s elite Special Cell, we discovered that in 18 of the 23 cases the Special Cell had passed off Kashmiri businessmen, students, and sundry travellers passing through New Delhi as Hizb or Lashkar operatives.
Who would after all raise doubts about these Kashmiris terrorist links? No one did. Between Kashmiri the terrorist and Kashmiri the stone pelter is a difference only of degree in our common sense. Both are ultimately unreasonably opposed to our nation. Both are prone to violence.
What has been laid bare in the days past is the intimate link between gross institutionalised communal prejudice that exists in India and the militaristic response to Kashmir, of both, the state and its propaganda underlings, the assorted experts and TV anchors. Night after night, stars of television news scream into the camera that the stone-wielding teenager is either a shield for a terrorist who hides behind him or a Jihad-crazed maniac radicalised by a virulent form of Salafism which has supplanted the earlier gentler Sufi traditions.
Nice, Syria, Bangladesh–and preacher Zakir Naik thrown in for good measure–are all linked up to proclaim the onset of a global jihadist project in the Valley. Leaders and anchors excoriate anyone grieving the blindings and the killings: troubled by blood on the paved road? Where is your patriotism and loyalty towards the uniformed men?
The events of the past fortnight, the explanations and the manic commentary around it, hold up a mirror to us, not the Kashmiris. And the image in that mirror is grotesque. We have turned into primal hordes of automatons, exulting in blind jingoism. We are being asked to not feel pain. On the contrary, to take pride in these nationalist kills. We are being asked to abandon understanding, and empathy. We are not to ask why thousands of young people throng the graveyards to offer prayers for Burhan Wani. Indeed, it is not relevant to seek the roots of their rage, a rage so seething that it has inured them to all danger. What matters alone is that Kashmir remains the crowning glory of our sacred map.
When an army veteran writes a letter to the dead Wani, warning him–but really, the warning is to those in the streets because the dead don’t read letters–that the Indian Army “will kill you”, he is talking to us too. He is asking us to corrode our humanity, to leach ourselves of any sensibilities. Death is all that they deserve, even desire. Even to those of us who may be ambivalent about the meanings and consequences of “Azadi”, it is obvious that Kashmir can only be held by force, awful brutal force.
It is immaterial whether pellets can be substituted by a “less lethal, non-lethal” method of crowd management. Democracy in Kashmir will continue to be endless crowd management, and management of dead bodies and graves. Do we want blood on our hands? Remember that war always comes home. It brings with it its logic and symbols.
Technicolour nationalism
Why has the prime minister called upon his workers to undertake tiranga yatras at this moment? The directions are quite specific: BJP leaders are expected to carry flags aloft on an 8-feet pole, ride a two-wheeler, and chant “Bharat Mata ki Jai”. It is to be a spectacle par excellence. This technicolour nationalism fluttering in the air is meant of course to validate the war in Kashmir, but also to protect the “gau rakshak” vigilantes who skin Dalits and lynch Muslims, to prepare us for a possible aerial bombing in Chhattisgarh, to render us quiescent in our own surveillance, to normalise, even legalise, communal profiling and to ratchet up the already skyrocketing defence budgets.
Possibly at the very moment Wani was shot down by security agencies, I was reading a brief life sketch of Pt Rughonath Vaishnavi by his granddaughter, the anthropologist Mona Bhan. Vaishnavi was a vociferous advocate of Kashmiri nationalism.
His paper Jamhoor (Democracy) was banned in 1952. Vaishnavi was jailed repeatedly over the next few years and his habeas corpus petition was rejected on grounds that the protection flowing from the Constitution were not available to him.
His writings bear witness to midnight arrests and detentions of Kashmiri partisans–thrown into dark cells without being assigned any reason. Vaishnavi’s life and writings force us to look at the past and our present anew, and to imagine possibilities other than those thrust on us. Is it not possible to excavate these histories, to complicate the army veteran’s understanding of Kashmir as an “artificially manufactured conflict” with no history and no legitimacy? Perhaps, it is possible to pause for a moment and turn off the jingoism and simply reflect on the unfolding tragedy.
Let us not allow these deaths to become bald and sterile statistics. Let us not allow the Indian state’s hubris to blind us. Listen to what the Kashmiris are saying – not because it will change official policy, but because in that conversation lies our, and India’s redemption.
http://www.deccanherald.com/content/559 ... ening.html
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qutub_mamajiwala
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Re: Buried Evidence: Unknown,Unmarked & Mass Graves in Kashmir.
Shah Faesal shows same lack of nuance for which he blames Indian media
In an article titled 'Disown jihadist 'freedom fighters' in Kashmir' in Pakistan-based newspaper The Nation, columnist Kunwar Khuldune Shahid writes: "Burhan Wani was the offspring of the global jihadist movement that emerged in the last quarter of the previous century, hammering Muslim-majority freedom movements into Islamist struggles wherever the occupying force was 'non-Muslim'- including Palestine, Kashmir and East Turkestan… Wani, like countless other youngsters, unfortunately fell prey to jihadism in a land becoming increasingly fertile for radical Islam."
While talking about "winning of hearts", there is not a single line anywhere in Faesal's posts on Kashmiri Pandits, 99 percent of whom were forced to leave the valley by 1990. His comments are equally shorn of any mention of the causes of military presence in Kashmir, where Pakistan has been busy waging a proxy war by training militants and funding separatist groups
http://m.firstpost.com/politics/kashmir ... 04060.html
In an article titled 'Disown jihadist 'freedom fighters' in Kashmir' in Pakistan-based newspaper The Nation, columnist Kunwar Khuldune Shahid writes: "Burhan Wani was the offspring of the global jihadist movement that emerged in the last quarter of the previous century, hammering Muslim-majority freedom movements into Islamist struggles wherever the occupying force was 'non-Muslim'- including Palestine, Kashmir and East Turkestan… Wani, like countless other youngsters, unfortunately fell prey to jihadism in a land becoming increasingly fertile for radical Islam."
While talking about "winning of hearts", there is not a single line anywhere in Faesal's posts on Kashmiri Pandits, 99 percent of whom were forced to leave the valley by 1990. His comments are equally shorn of any mention of the causes of military presence in Kashmir, where Pakistan has been busy waging a proxy war by training militants and funding separatist groups
http://m.firstpost.com/politics/kashmir ... 04060.html
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ghulam muhammed
- Posts: 11653
- Joined: Tue Oct 07, 2008 5:34 pm
Re: Buried Evidence: Unknown,Unmarked & Mass Graves in Kashmir.
The Modi government may not have begun the current slide towards chaos in the Valley, but by ignoring the many signals of growing anger that emanate from the region, it has opened the doorway to hell.
The Indian state has deployed every instrument of control in its armoury. Kashmir has been under curfew for 15 days. Newspapers were banned for four days, social media on the internet blocked, and the SMS facility on mobile phones remains cut off. Crowds have been dispersed with batons, pellets and bullets. Hospital records show that as of July 23, 47 people had been killed, 125 injured by police bullets and 595 injured by pellets – 70% with these injuries are above the waist, with a thousand or more injured in less grievous ways.
So great is the upwelling of anger that the middle ground that has always existed in Kashmiri politics – which revealed its strength with a 70% turnout in the Valley in the December 2014 assembly elections – has begun to crumble away.
The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has begun to crumble too. None other than Muzaffar Baig, the party’s senior-most leader since Mufti Mohammad Sayeed’s death and its most Delhi-friendly member, has voiced his suspicion that Wani was killed after he had surrendered to the police. Wani’s father, Muzaffar had made the same accusation when his elder son Khalid had been killed by the police in another ‘encounter’ while going to meet his brother in the forest last year. Given the foul reputation of being executioners that virtually all the police forces of India have now acquired, this accusation has been believed not only in Kashmir but also all over the country, albeit to varying degrees.
Roohi Nazki, a former Tata Group executive who now runs a tea house in Srinagar and is the wife of Haseeb Drabu, Mehboba Mufti’s extremely able finance minister, has sharply criticised the chief minister for not resigning and thereby allowing the BJP to make the PDP an accomplice in the reign of terror that it has let loose on Kashmir.
But the most telling evidence is the quiet anger of four-time CPI-M MLA Mohammad Yousuf Tarigami, perhaps the most respected politician in the Valley. Tarigami has confirmed on television what many of us knew from anonymous sources – that the Centre approved Wani’s killing without even informing the chief minister of J&K, in the full knowledge that this would destroy the peoples’ trust in her and her party.
These are not terrorists, let alone ‘separatists’. Mehbooba survived three attacks on her life and home in the 1990s for daring to raise another political party that supports Kashmir’s accession to India. Tarigami has been shot and nearly killed for staunchly maintaining through the insurgency years that Kashmir is better off with India. The Mirwaiz has lost his father and uncle to ISI-directed assassins for ignoring warnings from across the border not to enter into a dialogue with Delhi.
Fazal Qureshi, another iconic nationalist leader of the Maqbool Butt vintage who was responsible for the Hizbul Mujahideen’s ceasefire offer in July 2000 and went on to become a member of the Hurriyat’s executive committee, was shot in the head in December 2009 and nearly died, a mere six weeks after he formally declared Hurriyat’s acceptance of the Manmohan Singh-Musharraf formula on behalf of the council. He now survives deeply mentally impaired.
These leaders are the Kashmiri nationalist mainstream itself. Not one of them has ever wanted Kashmir to become part of Pakistan. So it is not surprising that Delhi’s intelligentsia has suddenly thrown off its torpor and begun to thrash about looking for solutions.
As expected, it is laying the blame on Pakistan for instigation. Foreign minister Sushma Swaraj has warned Islamabad that its dream of acquiring Kashmir will not be realised “even till the end of eternity”.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi, and specifically his home minister Rajnath Singh and invisible security establishment – India’s increasingly lawless Deep State – have done everything they can to help Pakistan achieve in a matter months what it could not do in 27 years: convince a large section of the Kashmiri middle ground that life under the heel of Pakistan could not possibly be worse than it is under India. Pakistan has to do absolutely nothing but sit back and enjoy India’s discomfiture.
The most inane response to the crisis has come from Rajnath Singh, who visited Kashmir over the weekend “to consult with different groups on how the violence can be checked”. All he received was a well deserved slap in the face, for not a single Kashmiri organisation agreed to meet him, and the few individuals who did, covered their faces in order not to be identified. The fact that no one in the home ministry advised him not to visit Kashmir at this time because all he would do was fan the anger roiling the Valley, shows that no one in the entire ministry has the faintest clue about what has been happening in the state in recent years. Few governments anywhere in the world have experienced such a monumental failure of intelligence, or shown so little capacity to analyse the information they have.
Former home minister P. Chidambaram has candidly, and correctly, put the blame for the alienation of Kashmiris on India’s failure to live up to the promises it made to the people in 1947. The road to peace even today, he believes, lies in doing so to the greatest extent possible.
Today all that is left for the leaderless youth of Kashmir is rage. This rage will not die out; nine out of ten persons hurling rocks at police vans and trying to break through its cordons are in their teens. Many are too young even to have sprouted beards.
These young people, who make up more than half of its population, have known India only as an oppressor. They have lived their entire lives in a world of curfews and crackdowns, surrounded by police informers, in which the faintest murmur of political dissent invites a visit from the police.
This generation of the youth holds its elders in contempt for having knuckled down to “Indian rule”. It feels betrayed by the 1990s generation of militants who were naïve enough to have trusted New Delhi, laid down their arms, and tried to negotiate with a government that has only abused their trust in order to destroy them.
Wani had the added advantage of not having killed anyone, making him an ideal person to negotiate with, when the occasion arose.
Access to him was also far easier than it had been to the leaders of the 1990s insurgency, as his father was the respected headmaster of a school and his brother a Ph.D student. The Wani family was educated, influential and, best of all, capable of understanding, and therefore cooperating in, an endeavour that would not only save his life but bring peace to the Valley.
Delhi’s goal from the outset should have been to capture Burhan and his associates, not kill them. But from the very beginning the hunt for Wani had only one goal – to eliminate him. This difference in the administration’s strategy in the 1990s and today highlights how rapidly the capacity for strategic thinking has disappeared within the Indian government.
By killing Burhan, Delhi has not only closed the door to negotiations in the immediate future, it has also left itself with no alternative but to continue with the ruthless suppression that it is engaged in today.
The tragic, inescapable truth is that by dubbing the tiny and, in political terms, insignificant remnants of insurgency in Kashmir after 2008 as ‘terrorism’, and using only force, George Bush-style, to eradicate it, Delhi has turned the use of force into its own vindication.
Can killing militants and opening fire repeatedly upon protestors restore calm if not peace? If the government is ruthless enough, it can.
One has only to consider the wave of Islamophobia that half-a-dozen terrorist attacks have released in Europe since the Paris attack in November to appreciate what a sustained ISIS-backed campaign can do to the social harmony in India. Muslims number less than 21 million in the EU and account for less than 5% of its population. But one in seven Indians is a Muslim. Should a similar wave seize India’s mainly Hindu population, it will tear the country apart.
I do not wish to speculate on the many ways in which continuing to rely solely on force to “solve” the Kashmir problem can trigger a chain reaction that could culminate in civil war within Kashmir, war with Pakistan and the arrival of ISIS in the Valley. Suffice it to say that all scenarios have the same end: suicide bombings spreading through the country, a flight of capital from India, the end of economic growth and a blight on the future of our youth.
The Modi government did not begin this slide towards chaos. But by ignoring the many signals of growing anger that were emanating from South Kashmir for the last two years, doing next to nothing to help Kashmiris after the Srinagar floods, casually dismissing all the commitments it made to Mufti while forming the government, and finally bypassing the Kashmir government and ordering the killing of Burhan Wani, the Modi sarkar has opened the doorway to hell.
There may still be ways to close it, but none can be implemented without first restoring order with the absolute minimum resort to lethal force in the Valley.
READ FULL ARTICLE :-
http://thewire.in/53943/how-rajnath-sin ... the-heart/
The Indian state has deployed every instrument of control in its armoury. Kashmir has been under curfew for 15 days. Newspapers were banned for four days, social media on the internet blocked, and the SMS facility on mobile phones remains cut off. Crowds have been dispersed with batons, pellets and bullets. Hospital records show that as of July 23, 47 people had been killed, 125 injured by police bullets and 595 injured by pellets – 70% with these injuries are above the waist, with a thousand or more injured in less grievous ways.
So great is the upwelling of anger that the middle ground that has always existed in Kashmiri politics – which revealed its strength with a 70% turnout in the Valley in the December 2014 assembly elections – has begun to crumble away.
The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has begun to crumble too. None other than Muzaffar Baig, the party’s senior-most leader since Mufti Mohammad Sayeed’s death and its most Delhi-friendly member, has voiced his suspicion that Wani was killed after he had surrendered to the police. Wani’s father, Muzaffar had made the same accusation when his elder son Khalid had been killed by the police in another ‘encounter’ while going to meet his brother in the forest last year. Given the foul reputation of being executioners that virtually all the police forces of India have now acquired, this accusation has been believed not only in Kashmir but also all over the country, albeit to varying degrees.
Roohi Nazki, a former Tata Group executive who now runs a tea house in Srinagar and is the wife of Haseeb Drabu, Mehboba Mufti’s extremely able finance minister, has sharply criticised the chief minister for not resigning and thereby allowing the BJP to make the PDP an accomplice in the reign of terror that it has let loose on Kashmir.
But the most telling evidence is the quiet anger of four-time CPI-M MLA Mohammad Yousuf Tarigami, perhaps the most respected politician in the Valley. Tarigami has confirmed on television what many of us knew from anonymous sources – that the Centre approved Wani’s killing without even informing the chief minister of J&K, in the full knowledge that this would destroy the peoples’ trust in her and her party.
These are not terrorists, let alone ‘separatists’. Mehbooba survived three attacks on her life and home in the 1990s for daring to raise another political party that supports Kashmir’s accession to India. Tarigami has been shot and nearly killed for staunchly maintaining through the insurgency years that Kashmir is better off with India. The Mirwaiz has lost his father and uncle to ISI-directed assassins for ignoring warnings from across the border not to enter into a dialogue with Delhi.
Fazal Qureshi, another iconic nationalist leader of the Maqbool Butt vintage who was responsible for the Hizbul Mujahideen’s ceasefire offer in July 2000 and went on to become a member of the Hurriyat’s executive committee, was shot in the head in December 2009 and nearly died, a mere six weeks after he formally declared Hurriyat’s acceptance of the Manmohan Singh-Musharraf formula on behalf of the council. He now survives deeply mentally impaired.
These leaders are the Kashmiri nationalist mainstream itself. Not one of them has ever wanted Kashmir to become part of Pakistan. So it is not surprising that Delhi’s intelligentsia has suddenly thrown off its torpor and begun to thrash about looking for solutions.
As expected, it is laying the blame on Pakistan for instigation. Foreign minister Sushma Swaraj has warned Islamabad that its dream of acquiring Kashmir will not be realised “even till the end of eternity”.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi, and specifically his home minister Rajnath Singh and invisible security establishment – India’s increasingly lawless Deep State – have done everything they can to help Pakistan achieve in a matter months what it could not do in 27 years: convince a large section of the Kashmiri middle ground that life under the heel of Pakistan could not possibly be worse than it is under India. Pakistan has to do absolutely nothing but sit back and enjoy India’s discomfiture.
The most inane response to the crisis has come from Rajnath Singh, who visited Kashmir over the weekend “to consult with different groups on how the violence can be checked”. All he received was a well deserved slap in the face, for not a single Kashmiri organisation agreed to meet him, and the few individuals who did, covered their faces in order not to be identified. The fact that no one in the home ministry advised him not to visit Kashmir at this time because all he would do was fan the anger roiling the Valley, shows that no one in the entire ministry has the faintest clue about what has been happening in the state in recent years. Few governments anywhere in the world have experienced such a monumental failure of intelligence, or shown so little capacity to analyse the information they have.
Former home minister P. Chidambaram has candidly, and correctly, put the blame for the alienation of Kashmiris on India’s failure to live up to the promises it made to the people in 1947. The road to peace even today, he believes, lies in doing so to the greatest extent possible.
Today all that is left for the leaderless youth of Kashmir is rage. This rage will not die out; nine out of ten persons hurling rocks at police vans and trying to break through its cordons are in their teens. Many are too young even to have sprouted beards.
These young people, who make up more than half of its population, have known India only as an oppressor. They have lived their entire lives in a world of curfews and crackdowns, surrounded by police informers, in which the faintest murmur of political dissent invites a visit from the police.
This generation of the youth holds its elders in contempt for having knuckled down to “Indian rule”. It feels betrayed by the 1990s generation of militants who were naïve enough to have trusted New Delhi, laid down their arms, and tried to negotiate with a government that has only abused their trust in order to destroy them.
Wani had the added advantage of not having killed anyone, making him an ideal person to negotiate with, when the occasion arose.
Access to him was also far easier than it had been to the leaders of the 1990s insurgency, as his father was the respected headmaster of a school and his brother a Ph.D student. The Wani family was educated, influential and, best of all, capable of understanding, and therefore cooperating in, an endeavour that would not only save his life but bring peace to the Valley.
Delhi’s goal from the outset should have been to capture Burhan and his associates, not kill them. But from the very beginning the hunt for Wani had only one goal – to eliminate him. This difference in the administration’s strategy in the 1990s and today highlights how rapidly the capacity for strategic thinking has disappeared within the Indian government.
By killing Burhan, Delhi has not only closed the door to negotiations in the immediate future, it has also left itself with no alternative but to continue with the ruthless suppression that it is engaged in today.
The tragic, inescapable truth is that by dubbing the tiny and, in political terms, insignificant remnants of insurgency in Kashmir after 2008 as ‘terrorism’, and using only force, George Bush-style, to eradicate it, Delhi has turned the use of force into its own vindication.
Can killing militants and opening fire repeatedly upon protestors restore calm if not peace? If the government is ruthless enough, it can.
One has only to consider the wave of Islamophobia that half-a-dozen terrorist attacks have released in Europe since the Paris attack in November to appreciate what a sustained ISIS-backed campaign can do to the social harmony in India. Muslims number less than 21 million in the EU and account for less than 5% of its population. But one in seven Indians is a Muslim. Should a similar wave seize India’s mainly Hindu population, it will tear the country apart.
I do not wish to speculate on the many ways in which continuing to rely solely on force to “solve” the Kashmir problem can trigger a chain reaction that could culminate in civil war within Kashmir, war with Pakistan and the arrival of ISIS in the Valley. Suffice it to say that all scenarios have the same end: suicide bombings spreading through the country, a flight of capital from India, the end of economic growth and a blight on the future of our youth.
The Modi government did not begin this slide towards chaos. But by ignoring the many signals of growing anger that were emanating from South Kashmir for the last two years, doing next to nothing to help Kashmiris after the Srinagar floods, casually dismissing all the commitments it made to Mufti while forming the government, and finally bypassing the Kashmir government and ordering the killing of Burhan Wani, the Modi sarkar has opened the doorway to hell.
There may still be ways to close it, but none can be implemented without first restoring order with the absolute minimum resort to lethal force in the Valley.
READ FULL ARTICLE :-
http://thewire.in/53943/how-rajnath-sin ... the-heart/
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ghulam muhammed
- Posts: 11653
- Joined: Tue Oct 07, 2008 5:34 pm
Re: Buried Evidence: Unknown,Unmarked & Mass Graves in Kashmir.
A Month Later, Pellets Maintain Anti-India Mood In Kashmir
Doctors say they have never seen eye injuries at this scale
The hospital ward may help to understand why the young generation of Kashmir has been out on the streets for the past month, bursting with anger and shouting, "We want freedom" and "Go India, go back". It presents a dreadful scene: partially or fully blinded victims of pellet injuries occupy all the 32 beds, with two patients sharing many single beds. Doctors say not a single bed has remained empty since July 9 when the patients began arriving. The victims have bruised, swollen faces; their eyes are covered in cotton and surgical bandage. In their teens and twenties, most of them are from south Kashmir. Their future looks as dark as the glasses they are wearing.
Since Burhan's killing, nearly 60 people—aged 13 to 40—have died in police and paramilitary action. Most of the fatalities have occurred in south Kashmir, bastion of Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti's PDP. The number of injured is put at a staggering 5,000. Between July 9 and August 5, at the SMHS hospital alone, ophthalmologists have performed nearly 280 surgeries of pellet gun victims. Ironically, the Modi government told the Supreme Court on August 5 that only 51 persons with eye injures were treated in the Valley hospitals. On the same day, 91 patients were received by the hospital and among them, 50 were eye injuries. Of the pellet victims brought to the SMHS Hospital so far, as many as 202 have been operated upon once and 77 twice; 24 were hit in both the eyes of whom four could never see again. The prognosis for rest of the victims is not encouraging, though.
Dr Rashid Maqbool, one of the dozen eye surgeons working round the clock in the SMHS hospital, says the ongoing agitation differs from those of 2008 and 2010. "It would not be an exaggeration to say that all world records have been broken by our department considering the number of pellet injury patients we admitted and operated upon," he says. Dr Maqbool says that he and his colleagues find it extremely difficult to remain focussed given the magnitude of the task before them. "Remember these kids are 10, 12, 15 and 20 years old. When we know they are blinded for life, what can we do? How can we just tell them that the chances of regaining eyesight are bleak?" Dr Maqbool fears that some of these injured boys are so angry that "they will pick up stones again and lose the other eye too".
Indeed, the situation is disastrous, as India's leading retinal surgeon Dr Sundaram Natarajan put it. "This is for the first time that I saw pellet injuries. The eye injuries in Kashmir are unique and more severe than other parts of the world especially in conflict regions," says Dr Natarajan, who headed a three-member team which conducted 46 eye surgeries here since July 26.
Dr Kumar echoed what his local counterparts have been saying since July 9: "We have never seen injuries on this scale."
The Israeli-style pellet guns or pump-action guns, billed "non-lethal", were introduced during the 2010 agitation in the Valley. A pellet gun unleashes hundreds of small metal pellets that maim and blind their targets. In 2010 alone, around 50 youth lost their sight in one or both eyes, according to a study by the SMHS Hospital. And in the last five years, doctors at the hospital put the number of eye injuries due to pellets at 500; it excludes the current toll.
So huge is the anger over devastation caused by the use of pellet guns that the J&K High Court has blamed the Modi government for not treating Kashmiris as its own people. "They are not aliens, they are your own people, and you don't treat them as your own people. They have not descended from outer space," the court told the Union government's counsel. The court also wanted to know why most of the victims had injuries above the waist, often in the eyes.
As the agitation hardly shows any sign of ebbing anytime soon, the number of victims, particularly of the pellet guns, is only mounting by the day. Young boys like Suhail are walking out of the hospitals as one-eyed survivors, just another statistics of the 'Kashmir dispute'.
READ FULL ARTICLE :-
http://www.outlookindia.com/website/sto ... mir/297133
Doctors say they have never seen eye injuries at this scale
The hospital ward may help to understand why the young generation of Kashmir has been out on the streets for the past month, bursting with anger and shouting, "We want freedom" and "Go India, go back". It presents a dreadful scene: partially or fully blinded victims of pellet injuries occupy all the 32 beds, with two patients sharing many single beds. Doctors say not a single bed has remained empty since July 9 when the patients began arriving. The victims have bruised, swollen faces; their eyes are covered in cotton and surgical bandage. In their teens and twenties, most of them are from south Kashmir. Their future looks as dark as the glasses they are wearing.
Since Burhan's killing, nearly 60 people—aged 13 to 40—have died in police and paramilitary action. Most of the fatalities have occurred in south Kashmir, bastion of Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti's PDP. The number of injured is put at a staggering 5,000. Between July 9 and August 5, at the SMHS hospital alone, ophthalmologists have performed nearly 280 surgeries of pellet gun victims. Ironically, the Modi government told the Supreme Court on August 5 that only 51 persons with eye injures were treated in the Valley hospitals. On the same day, 91 patients were received by the hospital and among them, 50 were eye injuries. Of the pellet victims brought to the SMHS Hospital so far, as many as 202 have been operated upon once and 77 twice; 24 were hit in both the eyes of whom four could never see again. The prognosis for rest of the victims is not encouraging, though.
Dr Rashid Maqbool, one of the dozen eye surgeons working round the clock in the SMHS hospital, says the ongoing agitation differs from those of 2008 and 2010. "It would not be an exaggeration to say that all world records have been broken by our department considering the number of pellet injury patients we admitted and operated upon," he says. Dr Maqbool says that he and his colleagues find it extremely difficult to remain focussed given the magnitude of the task before them. "Remember these kids are 10, 12, 15 and 20 years old. When we know they are blinded for life, what can we do? How can we just tell them that the chances of regaining eyesight are bleak?" Dr Maqbool fears that some of these injured boys are so angry that "they will pick up stones again and lose the other eye too".
Indeed, the situation is disastrous, as India's leading retinal surgeon Dr Sundaram Natarajan put it. "This is for the first time that I saw pellet injuries. The eye injuries in Kashmir are unique and more severe than other parts of the world especially in conflict regions," says Dr Natarajan, who headed a three-member team which conducted 46 eye surgeries here since July 26.
Dr Kumar echoed what his local counterparts have been saying since July 9: "We have never seen injuries on this scale."
The Israeli-style pellet guns or pump-action guns, billed "non-lethal", were introduced during the 2010 agitation in the Valley. A pellet gun unleashes hundreds of small metal pellets that maim and blind their targets. In 2010 alone, around 50 youth lost their sight in one or both eyes, according to a study by the SMHS Hospital. And in the last five years, doctors at the hospital put the number of eye injuries due to pellets at 500; it excludes the current toll.
So huge is the anger over devastation caused by the use of pellet guns that the J&K High Court has blamed the Modi government for not treating Kashmiris as its own people. "They are not aliens, they are your own people, and you don't treat them as your own people. They have not descended from outer space," the court told the Union government's counsel. The court also wanted to know why most of the victims had injuries above the waist, often in the eyes.
As the agitation hardly shows any sign of ebbing anytime soon, the number of victims, particularly of the pellet guns, is only mounting by the day. Young boys like Suhail are walking out of the hospitals as one-eyed survivors, just another statistics of the 'Kashmir dispute'.
READ FULL ARTICLE :-
http://www.outlookindia.com/website/sto ... mir/297133
-
ghulam muhammed
- Posts: 11653
- Joined: Tue Oct 07, 2008 5:34 pm
Re: Buried Evidence: Unknown,Unmarked & Mass Graves in Kashmir.
UN chief deplores Kashmir deaths, offers to help in dialogue
UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has deplored the deaths in the current unrest in Jammu and Kashmir and also offered his good offices to facilitate dialogue between India and Pakistan to "achieve a negotiated settlement" on all outstanding issues, including Kashmir.
"I deplore the loss of life and hope that all efforts will be made to avoid further violence," the UN Secretary-General said in his letter, obtained by IANS.
"I appreciate the continued commitment of Pakistan to the peaceful resolution of the Kashmir dispute for the sake of regional peace and security, as you reaffirmed in your letter," Ban said in reference to Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif's letter.
"The United Nations remains convinced that it is only through dialogue that the outstanding issues between Pakistan and India, including on Kashmir, can be addressed."
"I stand ready to offer my good offices, should it be requested by both sides, to facilitate dialogue in order to achieve a negotiated settlement," Ban wrote.
In his letter earlier, Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif apprised the UN chief about the "deteriorating" situation in Kashmir.
Nearly 70 people have been killed and thousands more injured in the Kashmir Valley in clashes with security forces in the wake of the killing of a prominent Kashmiri separatist Burhan Wani, in a military operation on July 8.
In his letter of August 5, Prime Minister Sharif called for efforts to end the "violation of human rights" of the Kashmiri people and also to "implement the decades old UN Security Council resolutions for the settlement of the Kashmir dispute through a plebiscite".
The UN Secretary-General said that he looked forward to meeting the Pakistani leader again during the upcoming 71st session of the UN General Assembly to "discuss matters of common interest".
https://in.news.yahoo.com/un-chief-depl ... 04198.html
UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has deplored the deaths in the current unrest in Jammu and Kashmir and also offered his good offices to facilitate dialogue between India and Pakistan to "achieve a negotiated settlement" on all outstanding issues, including Kashmir.
"I deplore the loss of life and hope that all efforts will be made to avoid further violence," the UN Secretary-General said in his letter, obtained by IANS.
"I appreciate the continued commitment of Pakistan to the peaceful resolution of the Kashmir dispute for the sake of regional peace and security, as you reaffirmed in your letter," Ban said in reference to Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif's letter.
"The United Nations remains convinced that it is only through dialogue that the outstanding issues between Pakistan and India, including on Kashmir, can be addressed."
"I stand ready to offer my good offices, should it be requested by both sides, to facilitate dialogue in order to achieve a negotiated settlement," Ban wrote.
In his letter earlier, Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif apprised the UN chief about the "deteriorating" situation in Kashmir.
Nearly 70 people have been killed and thousands more injured in the Kashmir Valley in clashes with security forces in the wake of the killing of a prominent Kashmiri separatist Burhan Wani, in a military operation on July 8.
In his letter of August 5, Prime Minister Sharif called for efforts to end the "violation of human rights" of the Kashmiri people and also to "implement the decades old UN Security Council resolutions for the settlement of the Kashmir dispute through a plebiscite".
The UN Secretary-General said that he looked forward to meeting the Pakistani leader again during the upcoming 71st session of the UN General Assembly to "discuss matters of common interest".
https://in.news.yahoo.com/un-chief-depl ... 04198.html
-
ghulam muhammed
- Posts: 11653
- Joined: Tue Oct 07, 2008 5:34 pm
Re: Buried Evidence: Unknown,Unmarked & Mass Graves in Kashmir.
The Rise of Kashmir’s Second ‘Intifada’
For the first time since 1990, the anger in Kashmir and support for azadi from India is stretched across society in the Valley.
Not “unrest” but an uprising
These encounters and a series of discussions over the next three days enabled us to understand the mosaic of sentiments in the Valley today. I have been coming to the Valley since the first outbreak of armed revolt 26 years ago, but have never before witnessed such a unanimity of sentiment. The very air of the Valley is suffused with a profound anger directed against the Modi government for its utterly heartless treatment of Kashmir, its betrayal of its commitments to Kashmiris, be it Mufti Sayeed over the Agenda for Alliance or the flood victims of 2014, its systematic persecution of Muslims in India and its single-minded determination to depict each and every manifestation of discontent in Kashmir as terrorism and crush it with brute force.
The anger is particularly virulent towards the Indian media. In 1990, the militants treated Indian and foreign journalists as allies who would carry their message to the larger Indian public and the world. Today they consider the Indian media to be their enemies, particularly TV channels.
They have given up on India ever giving them a chance to govern themselves even to the extent that other states of the Union do, let alone enjoy the autonomy that was promised to them in Article 370 in the constitution. “Modi wants our land, not us,” we heard over and over again. “That is why we have opted en masse for azadi.”
What India is facing is not, therefore, another bout of unrest to be managed and then forgotten, but an uprising. The last such upsurge had followed the Gowkadal massacre of January 1990, when the Kashmir police had opened fire on a large, unarmed procession from both ends of a street, killing between 24 and 55 unarmed civilians. This had instantly converted what had till then been a simmering revolt into a general uprising.
But the current uprising is far more deeply imbedded and pervasive.
This time, however, there is a wall of support for the basic demand of azadi from India that stretches across every stratum of Kashmiri society. In meeting after meeting, our interlocutors pointed out that unlike the upsurge after the Amarnath land scam in 2008 and the Macchhil fake encounter killings by the army in 2010, this time there is no specific demand for justice, punishment or restitution embedded inside the upsurge of stone pelting or the calls for azadi. University professors, lawyers, hoteliers, houseboat and shikara owners, traders, manufacturers, former militants and even militant leaders who had surrendered voluntarily in the ‘90s are now determined to see the uprising through till its end.
The burden of their song is the same: “Our schools and colleges are closed and our children have lost another year; our businesses are ruined and we don’t know how to pay back our loans; we are short of food, of medicines, of fuel, but this time we are going to support the boys to the bitter end. For as long as India rules Kashmir through the gun and the security forces alone, the killing and the upsurges of anger and violence will continue and we will face ruin again and again.”
“It happened to us in 2008 because of the Amarnath land scam; in 2009 because of the Shopian double rape and murder agitation; in 2010 because of the Macchil fake encounter killings. It has happened again after your forces killed Burhan Wani. This has to end. So we will let the boys take the lead.”
The apple growers of Kashmir have said that they would prefer to let their apple crop rot rather than break the uprising. The All Kashmir Traders and Manufacturers association, whose members have a normal turnover of Rs 650 to 750 crores a day at the height of the summer, have resigned themselves to doing so too. “All we ask of them is that this time they finish what they have started.”
What the government of India is facing, therefore, is not terrorism or a proxy war by Pakistan. Elements of both are present within it. R&AW estimates that Pakistan has spent Rs 300 crores in the past year or more, encouraging militancy in Kashmir. But no amount of money or exhortation could have made 1.5 lakh people from all over South Kashmir rush to Tral within hours of Wani’s death to catch a last glimpse of him and offer no fewer than 40 prayers for his soul. And Pakistan did not even learn of Wani’s death, let alone instigate it, before the people of South Kashmir.
“In 1965, no Kashmiris joined the infiltrators from Pakistan … In 1992 we said that you cannot create a state based on religion. Pakistan offers nothing to us … But despite this you did nothing. For 70 years we rejected the two-nation theory. You were our protectors. But in these 70 years all you did was to wrest powers away from us. You took away, you did not give. Why did you forsake us?”
“Your problem is not with Kashmir, it is with yourselves. Slowly, bit by bit, you are becoming a fascist country and the Muslims are your Jews. This is steadily closing the gray space (between independence and subservience) in which we can reside. If you don’t set your own house in order, the India you know, and have been trying to build, will not survive … Today all Kashmiris are of one mind – we want to be free of India. Our differences are about means … (If you want us to stay with you) you have to create the political space for us to express ourselves.”
When Tikoo reminded Javaid that martyrdom for Islam was originally a Shia ideal and had been brought into Sunni Islam by the Wahabis, and asked him whether he had become a Wahabi, he was genuinely non-plussed: “We go to shrines. Our Islam was brought by Shah-i-Hamdan to Kashmir 700 years ago. We want to save our Islam. Don’t get me wrong, we love the Muslim world especially Pakistan because of our Islamic bond with them. It’s the same blood after all! But we want to be independent and not with Pakistan.”
READ FULL ARTICLE :-
http://thewire.in/61048/kashmir-uprising/
For the first time since 1990, the anger in Kashmir and support for azadi from India is stretched across society in the Valley.
Not “unrest” but an uprising
These encounters and a series of discussions over the next three days enabled us to understand the mosaic of sentiments in the Valley today. I have been coming to the Valley since the first outbreak of armed revolt 26 years ago, but have never before witnessed such a unanimity of sentiment. The very air of the Valley is suffused with a profound anger directed against the Modi government for its utterly heartless treatment of Kashmir, its betrayal of its commitments to Kashmiris, be it Mufti Sayeed over the Agenda for Alliance or the flood victims of 2014, its systematic persecution of Muslims in India and its single-minded determination to depict each and every manifestation of discontent in Kashmir as terrorism and crush it with brute force.
The anger is particularly virulent towards the Indian media. In 1990, the militants treated Indian and foreign journalists as allies who would carry their message to the larger Indian public and the world. Today they consider the Indian media to be their enemies, particularly TV channels.
They have given up on India ever giving them a chance to govern themselves even to the extent that other states of the Union do, let alone enjoy the autonomy that was promised to them in Article 370 in the constitution. “Modi wants our land, not us,” we heard over and over again. “That is why we have opted en masse for azadi.”
What India is facing is not, therefore, another bout of unrest to be managed and then forgotten, but an uprising. The last such upsurge had followed the Gowkadal massacre of January 1990, when the Kashmir police had opened fire on a large, unarmed procession from both ends of a street, killing between 24 and 55 unarmed civilians. This had instantly converted what had till then been a simmering revolt into a general uprising.
But the current uprising is far more deeply imbedded and pervasive.
This time, however, there is a wall of support for the basic demand of azadi from India that stretches across every stratum of Kashmiri society. In meeting after meeting, our interlocutors pointed out that unlike the upsurge after the Amarnath land scam in 2008 and the Macchhil fake encounter killings by the army in 2010, this time there is no specific demand for justice, punishment or restitution embedded inside the upsurge of stone pelting or the calls for azadi. University professors, lawyers, hoteliers, houseboat and shikara owners, traders, manufacturers, former militants and even militant leaders who had surrendered voluntarily in the ‘90s are now determined to see the uprising through till its end.
The burden of their song is the same: “Our schools and colleges are closed and our children have lost another year; our businesses are ruined and we don’t know how to pay back our loans; we are short of food, of medicines, of fuel, but this time we are going to support the boys to the bitter end. For as long as India rules Kashmir through the gun and the security forces alone, the killing and the upsurges of anger and violence will continue and we will face ruin again and again.”
“It happened to us in 2008 because of the Amarnath land scam; in 2009 because of the Shopian double rape and murder agitation; in 2010 because of the Macchil fake encounter killings. It has happened again after your forces killed Burhan Wani. This has to end. So we will let the boys take the lead.”
The apple growers of Kashmir have said that they would prefer to let their apple crop rot rather than break the uprising. The All Kashmir Traders and Manufacturers association, whose members have a normal turnover of Rs 650 to 750 crores a day at the height of the summer, have resigned themselves to doing so too. “All we ask of them is that this time they finish what they have started.”
What the government of India is facing, therefore, is not terrorism or a proxy war by Pakistan. Elements of both are present within it. R&AW estimates that Pakistan has spent Rs 300 crores in the past year or more, encouraging militancy in Kashmir. But no amount of money or exhortation could have made 1.5 lakh people from all over South Kashmir rush to Tral within hours of Wani’s death to catch a last glimpse of him and offer no fewer than 40 prayers for his soul. And Pakistan did not even learn of Wani’s death, let alone instigate it, before the people of South Kashmir.
“In 1965, no Kashmiris joined the infiltrators from Pakistan … In 1992 we said that you cannot create a state based on religion. Pakistan offers nothing to us … But despite this you did nothing. For 70 years we rejected the two-nation theory. You were our protectors. But in these 70 years all you did was to wrest powers away from us. You took away, you did not give. Why did you forsake us?”
“Your problem is not with Kashmir, it is with yourselves. Slowly, bit by bit, you are becoming a fascist country and the Muslims are your Jews. This is steadily closing the gray space (between independence and subservience) in which we can reside. If you don’t set your own house in order, the India you know, and have been trying to build, will not survive … Today all Kashmiris are of one mind – we want to be free of India. Our differences are about means … (If you want us to stay with you) you have to create the political space for us to express ourselves.”
When Tikoo reminded Javaid that martyrdom for Islam was originally a Shia ideal and had been brought into Sunni Islam by the Wahabis, and asked him whether he had become a Wahabi, he was genuinely non-plussed: “We go to shrines. Our Islam was brought by Shah-i-Hamdan to Kashmir 700 years ago. We want to save our Islam. Don’t get me wrong, we love the Muslim world especially Pakistan because of our Islamic bond with them. It’s the same blood after all! But we want to be independent and not with Pakistan.”
READ FULL ARTICLE :-
http://thewire.in/61048/kashmir-uprising/
-
qutub_mamajiwala
- Posts: 1052
- Joined: Tue Jul 23, 2013 4:17 am
Re: Buried Evidence: Unknown,Unmarked & Mass Graves in Kashmir.
http://indianexpress.com/article/opinio ... m-4447772/
Kashmiris trapped in deadly politics of grief, must abandon macabre heroism
Looking at the Muslim world’s crisis, it will serve Kashmiris well if we abandon false hope and work towards a dignified exit from the conflict
Written by Shah Faesal
http://indianexpress.com/article/opinio ... m-4447772/
Kashmiris trapped in deadly politics of grief, must abandon macabre heroism
Looking at the Muslim world’s crisis, it will serve Kashmiris well if we abandon false hope and work towards a dignified exit from the conflict
Written by Shah Faesal
http://indianexpress.com/article/opinio ... m-4447772/