Daily Times

On behalf of the oppressed people of the Indian Occupied Jammu & Kashmir, I would like to apprise you of the horrifying and worsening human rights situation of our region, in which Indian troops and paratroopers are engaged in an undeclared war against the inhabitants to bring them under submission. There is explicitly great contradiction, enormity and an unabridged gulf between India’s claim of secularism and practice in relation to Kashmir and the Indian Muslims. Because, on the one side Indian leaders say that the Kashmiris are our brothers and sisters, while on the other they do opposite, kill us like goats and sheep, burn and loot our properties and humiliate women.

Indian regime tries to absorb Kashmir with India by “various scientific arts of slaughter-the predatory instinct of its rulers has not been curbed.” Last year, India’s Hindutva racist rulers dismembered and fragmented the J&K State, merged it into India and passed a new Reorganization Act and, and Domicile law to change the history and demography of the Muslim majority region. It has deprived the people of the State of their right to honour, land and liberty. India has deployed over 7 hundred thousand army and paratroopers in the occupied Jammu, blocked the road towards a peaceful resolution of J&K; and thus scraping the Kashmir-related special clauses-370 and 35 A of its own constitution.

After the abrogation of special status of the State a long curfew and lock-down was clamped on the disputed region; thousands of young and old people were picked during nocturnal police raids from every nook and corner of Kashmir, detained under the black laws in the far flung Indian jails. Whereabouts of many are yet unknown and the poor parents and families are in pitiable and impoverished conditions, wandering from pillar to post, as they have no resources to travel to far way detention centers. Some detainees passed away in jails during the last decades. The health of many other political prisoners has deteriorated but the Delhi rulers are used to prolong their imprisonment with ill-intent to inflict mental/physical torture on them in jails..

The dead bodies of the freedom fighters and civilians are not handed over to their bereaved families for their funeral rites because they are scared of the coffins carrying the mortal remains and the massive funeral processions of the martyrs

In Jan/Feb.2020, the lock-down was further stiffened under the pretext of fight against the COVID-19 and a third dose of curfew and lock-down was given in May, 2020, when a brutal military operation was carried out to kill a young fighter ImtiyazNaiko in BeighporeOwantipore (Pulwama). Again, in the same month the army and police, blasted and rampaged about 20 residential houses in Srinagar’s KanihMazar- Nawakadal locality, killing Junaid Ansari, a young freedom fighter who happens to be a son of Ashraf Sahrai, Chairman J&K Tehreek e Hurriyet. Manhandling and humiliating the people on roads has been intensified by the police in these pandemic times. All this is impinging upon the basic liberties of the people and peace and stability of the region.

During these operations and crack-downs, the army/police, do not spare pedestrians or drivers–civilians, or by-passers, setting ablaze and looting shops and houses and killing whosoever innocently is seen walking along as road. In fact, violence in J&K is the by-product of India’s state-sponsored terrorism, excessive use of force, vindictiveness & revengeful police actions, enforced disappearances, thrashing youth on roads, arrests, long detentions in/ outside the State, custodial killings etc. Young, old and teen-agers are targeted by the police, CRPF, BSF and army without any fault. Consequently, their brothers are radicalized. The dead bodies of the freedom fighters and civilians are not handed over to their bereaved families for their funeral rites because they are scared of the coffins carrying the mortal remains and the massive funeral processions of the martyrs. They don’t hold guns, they are simply mourners, yet India– an atomic power is addicted to a revengeful Hindutva psychology and ideology. Therefore, the mortal remains of the Kashmiri martyrs are buried at faraway places by the authorities. It’s a bitter truth beyond any doubt that a Kashmiri does not feel himself or herself safe inside or outside of his or her home. The molestation of women, humiliation and thrashing of youth has become second nature of the police in Jammu and Kashmir.

And the same is repeated against the Kashmiri students, business men or travelers in the Indian cities and towns, and education institutions. Obviously, life, honour and property of a Kashmiri Muslim are nowhere safe and secure. The present Hindutva regime has declared a ruthless war on its Muslim population by making most anti-social, cruel and malicious changes and amendments in the country’s citizenship laws, demolishing the secular edifice of the Indian constitution. A Kashmiri himself sees no future in these changes of the India’s basic constitutional law, visualized, drafted and adopted by its forefathers in the Constituent Assembly of India in 1949. Obviously, if the life, culture, religion, worshiping places, commerce, employment and all other basic rights and liberties of the Indian Muslims or other minorities are not safe, how Kashmiris could be free, safe and secure. The State of Jammu and Kashmir was invaded and annexed by India in 1947. The UN had appointed its own administrator to hold plebiscite across the former princely State, but India always fabricated lame excuses and obstructed implementation of the UN resolutions.

No doubt, the people of Jammu & Kashmir have been facing repressive military operations for the last 30 years but the human rights environment has become extremely horrific after India’s Hindutva regime of RSS and BJP dismembered the State and began a strangling politics and blood-thirsty rule from Delhi on 5 August 2019. The Presidential ordinance followed by a majority RSS-BJP communal vote in both houses of the Parliament was no less than a racist coup, tearing apart the history, and geography to change the Muslim majority character of Jammu, Kashmir and Ladakh. Today, the secular constitution is only in name. No racist Hindu leader of BJP is ashamed, but takes pride in drinking a glass of cow-urine and rubbing cow-dung on the body to cure the COVID-19. The BJP regime happily is hammering the last nail in the coffin of the Indian secular constitution. The Kashmiris are forced to remain with this very Hindustan in the 21st century. How the two can co-exist?

The writer is a freelancer