SPEAKING
FREELY Why
freedom is a war-cry in
Kashmir By Syed Zafar Mehdi
Speaking Freely is an Asia Times
Online feature that allows guest writers to have
their say. Please
click hereif you are interested in
contributing.
The December 17,
2012, ruthless assault and gang rape of a
23-year-old college-going girl on a moving bus in
New Delhi shook the nation. Irate protesters,
mostly youths, poured out on the streets the next
day. As the victim battled for her life on a
hospital bed, people across India protested and
prayed simultaneously. She was air-lifted to
Singapore for advanced treatment and finally
succumbed to her injuries there after 13 days.
Young protesters in Delhi had to face the
wrath of police as they
marched on heavily fortified
Raisina Hill, the president's official residence.
Tear-gas, water cannons and lathis (cane
batons) were employed against the enraged mob of
protesters who were demanding death for the
accused and more stringent laws to deal with
rapists.
The degree of outrage against the
rape is heartening. However, this was not an
isolated case, and certainly not the first time
such a gruesome incident has taken place. It has
brought back the haunting memories of Kunan
Poshpora, a small hamlet in North Kashmir, where
at least 53 women were gang-raped on February 23,
1991, by Indian security forces. Two decades on,
there has been no action against the accused cops
from the Fourth Rajputana Rifles.
A double
rape and murder case in 2009 also comes to mind.
There, two young women, Aasiya and Neelofar, were
abducted, gang-raped and murdered in mysterious
circumstances on the intervening night of May 29
and 30, 2009, at Bongam, Shopian in North Kashmir.
Locals accused personnel from India's Central
Reserve Police Force of the crime, but the case
was carefully shelved to avoid embarrassment for
the security forces.
Crimes,
perpetrators and inaction On December 6,
2012, the International Peoples' Tribunal on Human
Rights and Justice in Indian-administered Kashmir
(IPTK) released a report -"Alleged Perpetrators -
Stories of Impunity in Jammu and Kashmir". The
report, a painstaking research work of two years,
used data from official state documents and
witness testimonies, examined 214 cases of gross
human-rights abuses and the role of 500 alleged
perpetrators.
Among the 500 perpetrators
were 235 army personnel, 123 paramilitary
personnel, 111 Jammu and Kashmir Police personnel
and 31 government-backed associates. The list of
alleged perpetrators included many heavyweights,
including two major generals, three brigadiers,
nine colonels, three lieutenant colonels, 78
majors and 25 captains. The list also included 37
senior officials of the federal paramilitary
forces, a retired director general of the Jammu
and Kashmir Police, and a serving inspector
general.
"Cases presented in this report
reveal that there is a policy to not genuinely
investigate or prosecute the armed forces for
human-rights violations," said a press handout by
the IPTK.
Taking serious cognizance of the
report, Amnesty International called for an
"impartial probe into the allegations of
human-rights violations made in a report". The
Asian Federation Against Enforced Disappearances
said the study "clearly points to a high level of
command decision, given the involvement of top
ranking officers of the Indian Army, the highest
of them a Major General. If used to the full, it
will go a long way towards the unveiling of the
truth, the prosecution of perpetrators, reparation
for victims and the non-repetition of human-rights
violations in this paradise lost".
However, the findings of report,
notwithstanding their gravity and seriousness,
have gone largely unnoticed in mainstream Indian
media.
A state of perpetual
denial A sense of alienation between the
people of Kashmir and India has reached its
climax. However, people in New Delhi and other
cities in India still have one prickly question on
their mind which occasionally brings out their
patriotic outrage against anything they perceive
as "anti-national" and dangerous to the
"sovereignty" of India. That is the question of
"azadi" or "freedom". For people in
India, the definition of azadi still
appears hazy. "What do Kashmiris want?" asks a
journalist friend of mine from South Delhi.
"Azadi," I tell him. He appears bemused,
almost fuming. "But what does azadi mean to
you. Aren't you free already," he asks with a
puckered brow. "If living under the specter of
terror and breathing through the barrel of
Kalashnikovs is what you call azadi, then
we are more azad [free] than you," I
retort. He retreats, with exasperated looks.
Azadi is not a strange beast or a
hydra-headed monster. It means people demanding
their basic and fundamental right to lead a
dignified life. It means breaking free from the
specter of repressive laws which provide police
and armed forces with extraordinary powers.
Azadi means justice for the 100,000
Kashmiris killed in last two decades of conflict.
It means justice for the 7,000-odd custodial
killings, and the 3,700 people who have vanished
under mysterious circumstances in past two
decades.
Kashmir happens to be the most
militarized zone in world, more than Iraq and
Afghanistan. The struggle for the right to
self-determination has a long history because
Kashmir has always been ruled by "outsiders".
Massacres and a culture of
impunity The people of India need to be
reminded of prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru's 1947
promise at Lalchowk Srinagar, where he spoke to a
large gathering accompanied by his friend Shiekh
Abdullah. They should be reminded about the
umpteen United Nations resolutions on Kashmir and
how successive regimes in New Delhi made a mockery
of them.
Speaking of killings, massacres,
carnage; they need to be told about the Gaw Kadal
Massacre on January 20, 1990, when Indian police
opened on Kashmiri protesters, killing an
estimated 200. Author Victoria Schofield in her
book Kashmir in Conflict: India, Pakistan and
the Unending War calls it the "worst massacre
in Kashmiri history". This massacre took place
just a day after New Delhi sent Jagmohan as
governor to Kashmir.
The Chhatisingpora
massacre that took place on March 20, 2000, is
another blot on India's history. Around 15 armed
personnel entered the village of Chattisinghpora
in Anantnag district, lined up 34 men and boys
belonging to Sikh community in an open field and
mowed them down in cold blood. This happened on
the eve of the then US president Bill Clinton's
visit to India. No army personnel were prosecuted
in the case.
Five days after the
Chattisinghpora massacre, a battalion of Indian
troopers gunned down seven men in Pathribal
village of Anantnag district, dubbing them as
"foreign militants" responsible for
Chhatisingpora. Last year on March 19, the Indian
Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) said that
those officers taking part in the Pathribal
killings, "were cold-blooded murders and deserve
to be meted out exemplary punishment".
The
Zakoora massacre occurred on March 1, 1990, when
thousands of protestors decided to approach a
United Nations Military Observer Group office in
Srinagar, next to the chief minister's Gupkar Road
residence, to protest against the policies of
governor Jagmohan. Army bullets left 26 dead.
The Tengpora massacre took place on the
same day, when 21 more Kashmiri people, totally
unarmed, were killed by the Indian army at a bus
stop in Tengpora, Srinagar. The dead included five
women. There is also the Handwara Massacre, when
nine civilians were shot dead by border security
forces on January 25, 1990, in frontier district
of Handwara. The list goes on.
The new
'intafada' The years 2009 to 2010 brought
back memories of the 1990s when the resistance
movement was at its peak. Many people were killed,
most of them innocents. A 45-year old physically
challenged man, Abdul Rashid Reshi, was shot dead
on January 7, 2009, near CM's high-security
bungalow in Srinagar. A 17-year old Amina fell to
bullets on May 12, 2009, in an "exchange of fire".
Neelofar (24) and Asiya Jan (17) of Shopian were
raped and murdered on May 29, 2009. Final-year
student Amina Masoodi of Doolipora Trahgam was
killed inside her house during the night
intervening of July 8 and 9, 2009.
Inayat
(16) was shot dead on January 08, 2009, followed
by Wamiq (13) on January 31 and Zahid (16) on
February 5. Habibullah Khan of Handwara, a beggar,
was mowed down on April 13 and passed off as
"veteran militant". Shehzad Ahmed and Riyaz Ahmed
of Rafiabad were mowed down in a fake encounter in
Machil and dubbed as "militants".
Tufail
Ahmad (17), whose death gave fresh impetus to the
spirit of rebellion among Kashmiris, was killed
while returning from lessons on June 11, 2010.
Asif Ahmed Rather, a nine-year-old from Baramulla
was literally bludgeoned to death. Mukhtar Ahmad
Sheikh, 68, a father of five children, including
three daughters was shot dead by the army's 21
Rashtriya Rifles in the Bawan Watser forest area.
The army said the man was killed in an encounter
between militants and the army.
These were
followed by even more brutal killings of Ishtiyaq
Ahmed Khanday (15) on June 29, 2010,
Shajat-ul-Islam (18) on same day, and Muzaffar
Bhat (17) and Abrar Ahmad (18) on July 6. An
11-year-old Irshad Parray, of Islamabad, fell to
fire by police while protesting against the
earlier incident of women being beaten by police
and the CRPF. One injured boy died on his mother's
lap near Batamallo bus stand during curfew on
August 2010. There were more than 150 killings,
mostly teenagers, in 2009-10 alone.
Vanished into thin air? Nazima
Jan of Tathmulla Uri in Baramulla district has
been waiting for her "missing" three brothers for
15 years. She, along with the kith and kin of
other missing persons, gather in Partap Park
Srinagar on the 10th and 28th day of every month
to register their protest against enforced
custodial disappearances in Kashmir. They have
formed the Association of Parents of Disappeared
Persons (APDP).
A 48-page report "Half
Widow, Half Wife" by the APDP speaks about the
conundrum of "missing versus disappeared". It says
the fact that men have disappeared and not been
declared dead has left thousands of children and
women (half-widows) in a hopeless state with no
legal protection.
Activists claim that
close to 8,000 people have gone missing in the
region over the past 20 years. The IPTK in Kashmir
in its report released in December 2009 revealed
2,700 unmarked graves containing more than 2,900
bodies in more than 50 villages in northern
Kashmir. Due to operational constraints, the
research was confined to few select villages so
they suspect the number could be much higher. In
August 2011, the 11-member police investigation
team of the State Human Rights Commission (SHRC)
verified 2,156 unidentified bodies in unidentified
graves in Bandipora, Baramulla, Kupwara, and
Handwara districts.
Arrested,
persecuted and released The tales of horror
do not stop in Kashmir. Many Kashmiris have faced
the music in different states of India. There have
been many instances where Kashmiri journalists,
academics, artists and students have been abused,
vilified, and targeted by state and its agencies
outside Kashmir.
Syed Maqbool Shah (32)
was aged 17 when he was arrested by Delhi Police
on 17 June, 1996, in Lajpat Nagar. He was
holidaying in Delhi when he was arrested in
connection with the Lajpat Nagar bombings of 21
May, 1996. He was sent to Tihar Jail, and released
on 8 April, 2010, after almost 14 years, due to
"lack of sufficient evidence".
Mirza
Iftikhar Hussain (40) used to run a Kashmiri
handicrafts shop in Mussoorie (UP), and had come
to Delhi when he was arrested in Bhogal on 14 June
1996. He was also accused of involvement in the 21
May, 1996, Lajpat Nagar blasts. He was set free on
April 08, 2010, after 13 years, 10 months and 25
days, again for want of foolproof evidence.
Shakeel Ahmad Khan had a government job in
Srinagar. He had come to Delhi when he was
arrested on 24 April, 1992, in Lajpat Nagar for
allegedly plotting to kill Bharatiya Janata Party
politicians. He was released in August 2002 after
serving almost 10 years behind bars, again for
lack of evidence.
Delhi University
Professor SAR Geelani was arrested in the 2001
parliament attack case and was later acquitted
after some human rights activists took up his
case. There are still more questions than answers
in the case of Afzal Guru, who has been sentenced
to death in the parliament attack case, to satisfy
the "collective conscience of the society". What
makes the "death sentence" gross and
disproportionate, according to legal experts, is
the fact that Guru's case is riddled with many
loopholes and he was not defended properly at the
trail court.
The case of Kashmiri
journalist Iftikhar Gilani is most peculiar. He
was arrested in June 2002 for allegedly
"violating" the Indian Official Secrets Act 1923.
He was accused of being a Pakistani spy after
police found some "documents" in his possession
which otherwise are freely available on the
Internet. He spent nine months behind bars and was
finally acquitted for lack of evidence.
Conclusion Life in Kashmir
remains crippled. The political leadership has
failed and the economy is in tatters. No matter
what the tourism ministry says, normalcy seems
like a far-fetched dream. The fate of the
strife-torn state hangs in balance. As the youth
on streets would tell you, it is no more about the
political or economic packages, half-hearted
pronouncements, or cosmetic confidence-building
measures.
The resounding war-cry on the
streets of Kashmir is "azadi" - complete
freedom from the specter of oppression,
repression, humiliation, and occupation.
Syed Zafar Mehdi is a
26-year-old New Delhi based journalist, born and
brought up in Indian-controlled-Kashmir. His
writings have featured in newspapers and websites
across the world. He blogs at
www.liveaxle.wordpress.com and can be reached at
armaan.journo@gmail.com.
Speaking Freely is an Asia Times
Online feature that allows guest writers to have
their say. Please
click hereif you are interested in
contributing.
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