S Rahman
Anything evil that comes in human imagination, has been done in Indian Illegal Occupied Jammu & Kashmir (IIOJ&K), whose natural beauty, flora and fauna and enviable peace maintained by its peace-loving inhabitants, have been badly blemished by mercilessness of Indian armed forces, assigned the task of crushing all those voices that talk about the Kashmiris’ inviolable right of self-determination. This right of self-determination has been recognized and emphasized in UN Security Council resolutions and also formally endorsed by India’s own elected chief executives including the one-time influential PM, Jawaharlal Nehru.
On February 5, Pakistanis, Kashmiris and morally sound supporters of the Kashmiris’ genuine cause, observe Kashmir Solidarity Day, every year, in keeping with the tradition set up by former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto on the recommendation of former Ameer of Jamaate Islami, Qazi Hussain Ahmad. In the refined, cultured world, expression of solidarity is taken for one of the most civilized ways of supporting and promoting any cause.
Pakistan has, in this manner, adopted a universally acclaimed diplomatic route by expressing solidarity with the brutalized people of Kashmir whose Muslim majority is facing naked, incessant Indian aggression just because of raising the voice against oppression although India’s shrewd and cunning propagandists and lobbyists have been painting Pakistan’s moral support as an interference in India’s “internal affairs”.
India has been spending millions of dollars on such decades’ long propaganda or hybrid war offensives, trying to present lies as truth. Going deep into the history of Indian aggression, one is led to infer that the Indian establishment and their gurus within the top political leadership, treat IIOJ&K as a ‘vanquished territory’ where crackdowns, clampdowns, abductions, mass killings, communication blockades, black laws, rape and humiliation, are order of the day.
Even the atrocities committed by cruel invaders of the past, dwarf before the cruelties perpetrated on Kashmiris by seven hundred thousand regular Indian troops and four hundred thousand plus paramilitary troops.
In the reign of PM Narendra Modi, however, things have gone from worse to worst since Modi Sarkar (Modi government) is guided and driven by RSS’ ideology of violence and hegemony.
It is their firm conviction that differences can be settled only by dealing with an iron hand and that Bharat cannot be dictated by the non-Hindu “untouchables” (sic) even if the latter claim to have their stakes as is the case with many minorities in India, for instance, Sikhs, Muslims (including the Muslim majority of Kashmir), Christians and others.
The government of Modi has not paused for a while in perpetrating multi-faceted atrocities on Kashmiris who have been subjected to all the tools of subjugation and humiliation as discussed, in brief, in the aforementioned lines. However, driven by its supremacist tendencies, the Modi government has finally ‘taken over’ IIOJ&K through unfair means i.e through the annulment of Articles 370 and 35 A that conferred special status, rather autonomy, on the Kashmir Valley, at least till the stalemated dispute’s resolution in accordance with the resolutions of UN Security Council which require the holding of plebiscite in this regard.
It must be borne in mind that this plebiscite was a mutually agreed arrangement or mechanism with Indian governments pledging before the global community and different world forums that they stood committed to holding a plebiscite in IIOJ&K to ascertain the will of the people of Kashmir.
Nothing doing! Seven decades have gone but not an iota of indication has ever come from the Indian side in the direction of any plebiscite. Instead, all the governments of New Delhi have been using different methodologies to consolidate illegal Qabza (occupation) of Kashmir.
That included, inter alia, the installation of puppet ‘democratic’ state governments in IIOJ&K, sham and engineered elections, mass killings, mass rapes and imprisonments and promulgation of draconian laws like Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA), Public Safety Act (PSA) and Disturbed Areas Act, all of which empower Indian troops to abduct and detain Kashmiris without producing them in courts, even for a period extending to two long years in illegal detentions. A large number of these illegal detainees never ever returned to their homes, even after the lapse of the ‘legalized’ period of two years (no law of any land, all over the world, allows such inhuman, lengthy detentions).
Later on, the discovery of mass graves revealed the story of bloodbath in the Valley of Kashmir in the wake of these detentions, fake encounters and cordon-and-search operations.
In addition to these deaths, monumental escalation has also been reported, during the incumbency of BJP government, in the occurrences of extrajudicial killings, enforced disappearances, torture, civilians’ harassment, arbitrary arrests of youth, persecution of political leaders, ban on rights organizations and a witch-hunt against dissenters especially the rights activists, media houses and journalists at the hands of occupation troops.
And during the last two years, civil liberties and basic rights such as access to information and the right to education and proper healthcare have also remained severely restricted. Internet services have remained largely suspended in the region and the information and communication blockade was imposed at a time when Kashmiris were confronted with deadly pandemic, the coronavirus. Access to information and conversation through social network platforms such as Facebook, WhatsApp and Twitter was also banned during these days of health disaster.
Kashmir’s siege for about one-and-a-half year, followed by suspension of economic activities has also led to severe economic meltdown. Sane and conscientious voices all over the world view these governmental measures as BJP government’s deliberate attempt to cripple Kashmiris economically and thus undermine their independent living. All these excesses notwithstanding, the Indian authorities have unlawfully embarked on redefining Kashmir’s domicile laws with the sole objective of changing the local demography. In the same breath, issuance of permanent residence certificates (PRCs) to as many as million outsiders or non-Kashmiris (called non-state subjects in the Kashmir ‘special status’ perspective) has exposed the colonial intentions of Indian authorities that are hell-bent upon cutting down to size the majority community of IIOJ&K.
