http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/d...t-about-india-so-we-turn-our-back-on-kashmir/
Think of India and it’s all Gandhian saintliness, Ravi Shankar’s sitar, a whiff of incense and the feel-good beats of Bollywood Bhangra. These memories, sounds and smells conjure images of the world’s largest democracy, where tolerance and spirituality supposedly reign over realpolitik.
We don’t think of it as a country whose troops are jailing opposition leaders or placing them under house arrest, denying people the right to gather in prayer, beating children to death, or massacring stone-throwing protesters. The words “shoot to kill” are a grim relic from our own recent past, and certainly nothing we ever associate with India.
That’s why India is the world’s first
“soft superpower”. It can barely do wrong for doing right, and if it does we don’t really want to know. As David Cameron made perfectly clear during his recent visit, we’re interested in India as the world’s second fastest-growing economy and by its contribution to the war on terrorism, but not how it treats its own people.
So despite the fact that 50 mainly young men and teenagers have either been shot or beaten to death in the last eight weeks in Kashmir; the two main separatist leaders have been jailed or placed under house arrest; that the Kashmir Valley has been locked down and the streets of Srinagar occupied by swaggering Indian troops who threaten housewives with big sticks, our leaders have remained completely silent.
To that end, our leaders overlooked the 53 young men and teenagers who were treated for bullet wounds in just one hospital in Kashmir’s state capital, Srinagar, last week. They had been shot either for throwing stones during protests against killings by Indian security forces in Kashmir – or for being in the wrong place at the wrong time in their own city.
This present wave of protests began after Indian soldiers shot dead three young Muslim men in the hope of passing them off as Pakistani terrorists and themselves as war heroes. They had lured them with the promise of jobs. A few weeks later a 17-year-old schoolboy was killed when Indian police fired a tear gas canister at his head.
Last week I interviewed Fayaz Ahmad Rah, a Srinagar fruit seller, as he mourned the death of his nine-year-old son, Sameer. Neighbours told me they had seen members of India’s paramilitary Central Reserve Police Force beat him to death with sticks and then dump his body in stinging nettles. The CRPF claims he was in fact a protester and that he had been trampled by other demonstrators as they fled a police advance.
Fayaz said his son had been walking through their usually safe tiny back lanes to his uncle’s house 100 metres away after stopping to buy sweets. When he washed his son’s body for burial, there was a half-chewed toffee still in his mouth, he said.
Over the last eight weeks a round of teenage civilian deaths, protests and more shootings followed by further protests has sucked Kashmir into a bleak vortex. But since it began, not a single member of India’s security forces has been shot or killed. It couldn’t be a more unequal contest.
Luckily for India, it happened in Kashmir where the words “Muslim”, “Pakistan” and “militants” shield what is either bad marksmanship or a shoot to kill policy from scrutiny and criticism.
This decision to look the other way only fuels the anger in Kashmir. From his home where he was being held under house arrest last week, separatist spiritual leader Mirwaiz Umar Farooq told me India had turned Kashmir into a “police state” and that British politicians and others were turning their back on it.
He had not been allowed to go to his mosque for more than six weeks, while other separatist Hurriyat leaders were also in jail or under house arrest. In many mosques throughout the state, only men over the age of 50 – regarded as beyond their stone-throwing years – have been allowed to meet to pray.
“It’s a direct interference in our religious affairs, a situation in which in a muslim state, if we’re not allowed to pray, the Muftis will say we have to call a war on the state,” he said.
Those demonstrating are part of a new generation born into violent protest which has seen leaders like Mirwaiz Umar Farooq sacrifice their credibility for talks with India, which came to nothing. “People now ask the question ‘you went for dialogue, what did you get? Did the killings or violence or disappearances stop?’ All it did was undermine the credibility of those who wanted, like me, to give dialogue a chance,” he said.
He believes India is not sincere about talks and is only interested in continual delay in the hope that protests and the desire for Kashmiri independence will peter out.
India has its own arguments, of course. It focuses on earlier killings and “ethnic cleansing” of Kashmiri pandits, and the reluctance of
Buddhist Ladakh and Hindu and Sikh majority Jammu to follow the Muslim-dominated Kashmir Valley into Pakistan or independence. It criticises the refusal of separatist parties to take part in state assembly elections.
These are valid points, and I certainly don’t have the answers to a problem which has blighted India and Pakistan and provoked three wars between the nuclear enemies since their independence from Britain.
But I do think Britain might come to regret its silence and India its troops’ brutality. We risk alienating the remaining friends we have in the Muslim world and within our own substantial Kashmiri community in Britain. India risks losing the tremendous goodwill it had built up throughout the world over decades.
The Kashmiris, on the other hand, have little left to lose: the world has forgotten them.
Buddhist Ladakh and Hindu and Sikh majority Jammu ???
Very convenient to insert the Buddhists and the Bhai Punjabis when needed.
A Brief Catalogue of Indian Atrocities in Kashmir
Since 1989, an estimated 40,000 Kashmiris have been killed by the Indian forces stationed in Kashmir. For the last five years the people of the State have intensified their efforts in order to invite the attention of the world community towards the “Kashmir Dispute”, though the people of the State had been fighting for their just cause peacefully for the last forty eight years. Indian Government throughout these four decades has been suppressing the people by illegal use of force, putting them into the jails/ Interrogation centres etc. under draconian laws. Whenever any person demanded holding of ” Plebiscite”, he has been put behind the bars.
The Indian Forces, stationed in Kashmir, have been given a free hand to kill any person they choose. These powers have been given to them under the draconian laws like “Disturbed Areas Act of 1990″ and “Indian Armed Forces Act of 1990″. Indifference shown by world community to the miseries of people, have encouraged and given a free hand to armed forces, to deal with the people, as they like. In October 1992, the Indian Armed forces started to intensify the killing of people immediately after their arrest. These operations have been carried out under the code name of “Operation Tiger”, “Operation Eagle” and “Operation Shiva”. Now the armed forces have resorted to another policy of “Catch and Kill” which means that no sooner a person is taken into custody, within minutes he is brutally tortured and killed . The dead body is then thrown into the street. In other cases, innocent civilians are arrested and taken to border areas where they are shot. The Indian government then publicises that these people were militants killed in armed encounters with the troops.
It is common practice for the paramilitary forces to walk into a quiet village/town and start shooting indiscriminately, killing innocent and unarmed civilians - all under the pretence of crack-down operations against the Freedom-Fighters. In most cases, innocent civilians are killed, women gang-raped and properties set on fire.
TORTURE AND CUSTODIAL DEATHS
Indian armed forces have let loose a reign of terror and are pursuing with the policy of unabated killings, torture and brutal methods of killings in Kashmir State since 1989. Despite the fact that international community and Human Rights Organizations all over the World have registered constant protests against this policy of Indian Government in Kashmir, no change is visible in the acts of repressions and suppression at the hands of forces. In fact the death due to torture and in custody have alarmingly increased.
Many such incidents go un-noticed due to severe restrictions on the movement of people, constant crackdowns, curfews and other repressive measures by the forces. However, the Forum has been able to collect details about some such incidents which are based on personal information, print and electronic media and data collected by Human Rights activists. The officials and armed forces are in the habit of naming such killings as the result of so called encounters. But the fact of the situation is that most of such arrests are made during crackdown operations where people of the area are collected first, bodily searched before their entry in the specified area and then subjected to identification. The arrests of the people are made when such persons are totally unarmed and there is no possibility of any encounter with the forces. Such fake encounters are carved out by the forces in order to save themselves from the wrath of international community and over all public resentment.
Rape and Molestation of Women
Presently, the situation in Kashmir, according to international organiasations & global media has not changed yet very much. It is still alarming and sparking flames in South Asia, that more then seven hundred thousand Indian army deployed in a small 40 -80 square miles area is the heaviest concentration in human history, and its all without any moral, political and legal code. 92 thousand Kashmiris have been killed by the Indian army in 17 years.
Since January 1989 to April 30, 2007:
Total killing. 91,865
Custodial Killing 6,899
Women gang raped & Molested 9,708
Civilian arrested 113,798
Structures arsoned /Destroyed 105,353
Children orphaned 106,930
Women widowed 22,530
The International NGO’s Amnesty International, Human rights watch, Asia watch, Red Cross, Medicine sans frontier and others are not allowed to visit Kashmir. Torture is widespread, particularly in the temporary detention centres; methods of torture include electric shock, prolonged beatings and sexual molestation of innocent women.
Kashmir is a disputed territory. Presently, the ceasefire line between the forces of India and Pakistan has divided Kashmir into two parts. One part is under Indian occupation: this comprises 63% of the whole territory and includes the Vale; it has a population 7.5 million. The other part, with approximately 3 million people, includes Azad Kashmir and the Northern region of Gilgit and Baltistan and is administered by Pakistan. About 1.5 million Kashmiris are refugees in Pakistan, some 400,000 live in Britain, and about 250,000 are scattered around the world. The present arbitrary bifurcation of Kashmir has resulted in the division of thousands of Kashmiri families.
Kashmiris living there have no life safety and human honour. Women are degraded and humiliated, almost 10 thousands women are raped; not only adult women but even eight year old girls are victimised.
Since the Indian government crackdown against Kashmiris in the disputed territory of Kashmir began in earnest in January 1990, security forces and Indian army have used rape as a weapon: to punish, intimidate, coerce, humiliate and degrade. Rape by Indian security forces most often occurs during crackdowns, cordon-and-search operations during which men are held for identification in parks or schoolyards while security forces search their homes. In these situations, the security forces frequently engage in collective punishment against the civilian population by assaulting residents and burning their homes. Rape is used as a means of targeting women to punish and humiliate the entire community. Rape has also occurred frequently during reprisal attacks on civilians. In many of these attacks, the selection of victims is seemingly arbitrary and the women, like other civilians assaulted or killed, are targeted simply because they happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Women who are the victims of rape are often stigmatised, and their testimony and integrity impugned. Social attitudes which cast the woman, and not her attacker, as the guilty party pervade the judiciary, making rape cases difficult to prosecute and leaving women unwilling to press charges.
Government authorities have failed to bring the culprits on record. The normal trend of the Government during these years is to hide the atrocities committed by the Indian armed and paramilitary forces in order to dodge the Amnesty International and the world Human Rights Organization.
Various NGOs and human rights organisations are working for feminism and other civil & social rights, but in my opinion no satisfied work regarding Kashmiri women’s safety and modesty. Women and Children are the victim of the worst human rights violations in this area of armed conflicts and ethnic war. It is crystal clear that sexual violence, which was used to subjugate and destroy a people as a form of ethnic cleansing, was an abhorrent and heinous war crime. These persistent and gross abuses, flagrant denials of the human rights of women and their right to life itself, demanded an urgent response from international human rights bodies.
According to data maintained by a media portal of United Kingdom (UK) on reported cases of rape and molestation in which security forces were allegedly involved, nearly 500 women were raped in various parts of Jammu and Kashmir between1990-1994. Media portal maintains that it has compiled the reports from what was reported by state media. The portal maintains that non-governmental organisations (NGO) hardly took interest in documenting the plight of these silent sufferers of Jammu and Kashmir.
According to a 1994 United Nations publication from 1990 to 1996, 882 women were reportedly gang-raped by security forces in Jammu and Kashmir. But Social Stigma associated with word “Rape” has made work of human rights and women NGOs cumbersome. They say that women are reluctant to come forward. Extra Judicial killings, rapes, custodial killings, kidnappings, burning of houses by Indian security forces within IHK remain a common practice. The whole IHK has risen against the Indian Army and the Armed Forces Special Powers Act AFSPA and POTA that enables the Indian Army to arrest and kill anyone, anytime, anywhere, in a bid to suppress the ongoing Kashmir liberation movement, the Indian authorities have laid a network of torture cells to practice human rights violations. In these torture cells, the worst repressive means such as electric shocks, ironing of sensitive parts of body, are practised against the innocent Kashmiris without caring for the age and health conditions. Besides, the female folk are also taken to these centres where they are reportedly gang-raped for protesting against the Indian brutalities or filing complaints against terrorising of their near and dear ones.
This poverty struck women have nothing to feed their children. Their husbands went missing and they could not even wail over their missing husbands.Thousands of widows, whose husbands have disappeared but not been proven dead. Their children were killed in front of their eyes and yet they are doing rounds of the government offices to prove that their children were killed in cold blood. The dreaded attack by soldiers and an assault on their honour and body remains in the minds of every woman in Kashmir. The young widows and teenaged orphan girls are facing more problems due to their youth as they are always at danger of getting molested or raped. It is matter of concern that most of the married women face the problem of miscarriages, which is one of the fastest growing problem in the rural and border areas of Kashmir.
These happenings are not confined to Muslims. In the last 16 years the women of Kashmir have had to bear male vengeance in silence and they have been unable to find spare to transcend that. Estimates given by various organisations place widowS between 30 000 to 40 000 and Orphans between 50 000 to 80 000.the raped women are doubly victimised and have to live the rest of their carrying to stamp of stigma in silence.”
The peace process began three years ago between India and Pakistan on Kashmir, and there has been dozens of talks for 60 years, three wars in 1947, 1965 and 1971, thousands of innocent peoples from both sides have been killed. But the end is no where in sight. The United Nations had 6 resolutions passed time to time but justice, and implementation of these resolutions have been delayed.
It is imperative that the United Nations, European Union and Organisation of Islamic Conference and other powers to start the negotiation and mediation with Kashmiri leadership and influential organisations from both sides of Kashmir. Because both countries Pakistan and India have got nuclear capacity because of Kashmir. Political pundits predict cloud of nuclear war is seeing on sky of South Asia clearly. In these difficult circumstances, this dress code edict is simply misplaced, if not a deliberately planted red herring. More pain for the Kashmiri women, thousands of whom have already lost their husbands, sons and loved ones to the bullets and atrocities of the marauding Indian soldiers and many of whom have also fallen victim to sexual defilement.
The European parliament has adopted MEP Emma Nicholson report titled “Kashmir; Present situation and future prospects” on May 25, 2007, by an overwhelming 522 votes in favour to 19 votes against. The report recognised Kashmiris right to self-determination, deploring massive human rights abuses in Jammu & Kashmir, encouraging the Peace process between India and Pakistan and emphasising inclusion of Kashmiris in the Peace process. The Amnesty International released a latest Global report 2007 said in that there is many violence, torture, custodial deaths enforced disappearances and extra-judicial executions continued in Jammu & Kashmir in the year 2006.
Rape in war is not merely a matter of chance nor is it a question of sex. It is rather a question of power and control which is `structured by male soldiers’ ( condoms minus 2 sizes, hahaha
)notions of their masculine privilege. Kashmir is rising flame, which is increasing speedily.
If United Nations, European Union and other world wide NGO’s do not succeeded in finding an acceptable solution with the participation of Kashmiris, it will cause disaster for this part of South Asia. World powers and Global Institutions need to understand this burning issue.
The people of Kashmir demand an end to the military occupation of their land. Because they demand what they have been pledged by both India and Pakistan and guaranteed by the United Nations Security Council with the unequivocal endorsement of the United States, demilitrisation of Kashmir and a free plebiscite vote organised impartially.
Every Kashmiri is waiting anxiously for somebody to help attain freedom for them. I am a women so I understand feelings and emotions, inner voice of every Kashmiri woman.
World's largest DEMOCRACY???
World's “soft superpower ???”
Press Freedom???
Tankuku, ok...:oIo::oIo::oIo:
Had these incidents been in Taliban-controlled parts of Afghanistan, or had the victims been Tibetans revolting against Chinese rule, the Indian's and western's press would have called it a massacre. But India’s great “soft power” is that the world wants to think the best of it.
Indian's Army is an animal, to sum it up in one sentence.:oIo:
