The systematic erosion of human rights in Indian Illegally Occupied Jammu and Kashmir (IIOJK) has evolved from a regional conflict into a calculated laboratory for state-sponsored repression. Under the Modi administration, New Delhi has increasingly abandoned the pretence of democratic engagement, opting instead to mirror the settler-colonial tactics and iron-fisted military doctrines championed by Benjamin Netanyahu’s Israel (Occupied Palestine). This strategic alignment is most visible in the weaponisation of enforced disappearances, a psychological warfare tactic designed to hollow out the Kashmiri resistance from within.
Since the 1990s, an estimated 8,000 to 10,000 Kashmiris have vanished into a black hole of state custody. This is not a series of administrative errors but a deliberate policy of institutionalised impunity. By maintaining the Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA), the Indian state provides its security apparatus with a legal shield that functions much like the judicial bypasses used by Zionist forces in the West Bank. It is a license to abduct, detain, and eliminate without the inconvenience of accountability.
The discovery of thousands of unmarked graves across the valley serves as a silent, grim testament to this policy. While the international community marks August 30th as the Day of the Victims of Enforced Disappearances, India continues to play a cynical game of semantics. By reclassifying these state-led abductions as mere “missing persons” cases, New Delhi attempts to shift the blame from the military to voluntary absence or criminality, effectively gaslighting the families of the victims.
Since the 1990s, an estimated 8,000 to 10,000 Kashmiris have vanished into a black hole of state custody.
The parallels between Kashmir and Gaza are unmistakable. Following the 2019 revocation of Article 370, Kashmir was subjected to the world’s longest internet shutdown and a suffocating military siege. It is a digital and physical blockade that echoes the isolation of the Palestinian territories. The introduction of secret burial policies post-2020, where the state denies families the right to perform final rites, has been aptly described as disappearance in death. This tactic, combined with the use of pellet guns that have blinded an entire generation, is designed to induce a state of collective trauma.
The psychological cost of this heinous Israeli Model is staggering. Studies indicate that nearly 1.8 million adults, 45% of the population, suffer from significant mental distress. The region is haunted by “half-widows,” women caught in a legal and emotional limbo, unable to mourn or move forward. With only a handful of psychiatrists for a population of over 12 million, the Indian state has created a mental health catastrophe while simultaneously dismantling the very organisations, such as the JKCCS (Jammu Kashmir Coalition of Civil Society), that seek to document it.
The growing warmth between Modi and Netanyahu is more than diplomatic; it is ideological. India’s meaningful silence on Netanyahu’s atrocities in Gaza and its adoption of Israel’s (Occupied Palestine) surveillance technology reflect a shared vision of ethno-nationalist dominance. By embracing Netanyahu’s playbook, Modi is signalling that he no longer seeks a political solution in Kashmir, but a total demographic and psychological subjugation. The international community’s failure to compel India to ratify the UN Convention against Enforced Disappearances has only emboldened this behaviour. Until the world recognises that the Kashmir problem is being solved through the same brutal mechanics used in Palestine, the cycle of trauma and state-sponsored disappearance will continue to consume the valley.
The writer is an alumnus of QAU, an MPhil scholar and a freelance columnist, based in Islamabad. He can be reached at fa7263125 @gmail.com.