• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer
Trending:
  • Kashmir
  • Elections
Sunday, July 20, 2025

Daily Times

Your right to know

  • HOME
  • Latest
  • Iran-Israel Tensions
  • Pakistan
    • Balochistan
    • Gilgit Baltistan
    • Khyber Pakhtunkhwa
    • Punjab
    • Sindh
  • World
  • Editorials & Opinions
    • Editorials
    • Op-Eds
    • Commentary / Insight
    • Perspectives
    • Cartoons
    • Letters to the Editor
    • Featured
    • Blogs
      • Pakistan
      • World
      • Ramblings
      • Lifestyle
      • Culture
      • Sports
  • Business
  • Sports
  • Lifestyle
  • E-PAPER
    • Lahore
    • Islamabad
    • Karachi

AFP

Kashmiris accuse Indian forces of arbitrary arrests, intimidation

Public protests in Indian-occupied Kashmir were once an almost weekly occurrence. But two years after New Delhi imposed direct rule on the region, locals say arbitrary arrests and intimidation by security forces wielding batons and snatching phones have left many too scared to voice dissent.

A week before the region’s partial autonomy was abolished, and as a massive troop deployment fanned out to help forestall a local backlash, Rafiq (name changed) was one of thousands put in “preventative detention”. He believes he was arrested because in the past he had “protested against injustices”. Freed after a harrowing year behind bars, the 26 year old, too frightened to give his real name, says he is a “broken man”.

Echoing accounts from a dozen other Kashmiris told to AFP news agency, he and 30 others were bundled onto a military aircraft to a jail hundreds of miles from his home where they were “abused and intimidated”.

“A bright light was kept on all night in my cell for six months It was hard to imagine that I would come out alive,” he said.

He at least was finally released. Activists say scores of other Kashmiris are languishing in India’s notoriously harsh jails.

Tasleema, a mother of five children, has not seen her husband Gulzar Ahmed Bhat, who used to belong to a separatist group but left in 2016, in two years.

Initially, when police and soldiers raided his home, Bhat was out. So they held his 23-year-old nephew until his uncle turned himself in.

“I almost beg for work to feed my children,” a tearful Tasleema said, a young child on her lap.

India has for decades stationed more than half a million soldiers in Occupied Kashmir. Since 1989, India’s troops have been fighting fighters demanding independence or a merger with Pakistan. Saying it wanted to achieve peace, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government scrapped a section of the constitution guaranteeing the territory’s partial autonomy in August 2019.

For two years now, Kashmiris do not have a locally elected government and are ruled by a lieutenant governor appointed by New Delhi. A legislative blitz has seen new laws applied and others scrapped. There are now hardly any senior Kashmiri police officers or bureaucrats in important decision-making positions.

Changes in land ownership rules have sparked accusations of “settler colonialism” aimed at achieving an irreversible demographic shift in the Muslim-majority region.

Neither the home ministry in New Delhi nor the government’s spokesperson in Kashmir responded to AFP’s requests for comment.

Many of the 5,000 officially arrested two years ago – and scores more since – were booked under the Public Safety Act, a “preventative detention” law allowing two years’ imprisonment without charge or trial.

“In the majority of cases, preventative detention is little more than a tool used to silence dissent and ensure self-censorship,” Juliette Rousselot from the International Federation for Human Rights told AFP.

India has also made sweeping use of its vaguely worded and stringent anti-terror law, the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA), which effectively allows people to be held without trial indefinitely.

Authorities have raided homes, offices and premises of civil society groups, journalists and newspapers, confiscating phones and laptops. One of the groups raided was the Jammu Kashmir Coalition of Civil Society. “All the state institutions that are supposed to protect human rights and civil liberties have also been silenced now, made dysfunctional or threatened into capitulation,” the group’s head Parvez Imroz said.

Local journalists say they are under increased scrutiny. Photographers have been assaulted and foreign reporters are effectively barred from the region.

When shopkeepers attempted a shutdown in protest this month, police smashed locks to force them to open.

Young people say they are questioned and sometimes beaten up at checkpoints if encrypted apps like WhatsApp or Signal are installed on their phones.

More than a dozen government employees have recently been dismissed for “anti-national activities” or social media posts critical of the government.

Last month, police were told to reject security clearance for government jobs and passports to those with past involvement in protests, stone-throwing or activities against “security of the state”.

Violence has continued. This month, a local official from Modi’s party was killed along with his wife, while 90 suspected rebels have died in clashes so far this year.

But while there used to be almost weekly protests, which police would often respond to with tear gas and pellet-firing shotguns, now they are fast becoming a thing of the past. Relatives and even neighbours of those who have protested in the past – or were just suspected of having done so – are regularly pressed by police to give written promises to ensure they desist.

“I am now forced to think of my family and relations before opening my mouth to say anything,” said a young man, who spent a year in prison and whose father was made to sign one such undertaking. “It has separated us. Solidarity with each other is no longer possible.”

Filed Under: Pakistan

Submit a Comment




Primary Sidebar




Latest News

PTI boycott delays KP assembly oath-taking amid quorum crisis

Trump rubs more salt into India’s wounds, says five jets shot down

9 terrorists killed, 3 officers injured in KP’s Hangu

PAF wins two global awards at UK airshow

5 terrorists killed, 8 arrested in Malakand CTD operation

Pakistan

PTI boycott delays KP assembly oath-taking amid quorum crisis

Trump rubs more salt into India’s wounds, says five jets shot down

9 terrorists killed, 3 officers injured in KP’s Hangu

PAF wins two global awards at UK airshow

5 terrorists killed, 8 arrested in Malakand CTD operation

More Posts from this Category

Business

Minister unveils 120-acre aquaculture project to boost blue economy

Pakistani tech firms urge 10-year tax stability, one-window compliance to ‘supercharge’ exports

Ready-made garments worth $4.128b exported in FY25

PAJCCI welcomes trilateral agreement to build rail link

Pakistan, China build stronger financial links for easier business

More Posts from this Category

World

Gaza civil defence says Israeli fire kills 32 near two aid centres

‘Frightening’: Trump’s historic power grab worries experts

Tourist boat capsizes in Vietnam’s Ha Long Bay, leaving 34 dead

More Posts from this Category




Footer

Home
Lead Stories
Latest News
Editor’s Picks

Culture
Life & Style
Featured
Videos

Editorials
OP-EDS
Commentary
Advertise

Cartoons
Letters
Blogs
Privacy Policy

Contact
Company’s Financials
Investor Information
Terms & Conditions

Facebook
Twitter
Instagram
Youtube

© 2025 Daily Times. All rights reserved.

We use cookies to ensure that we give you the best experience on our website. If you continue to use this site we will assume that you are happy with it.