By taking over Kashmir at
gunpoint, India has set itself up to reap the whirlwind.
By Shubh Mathur, August
22, 2019
“The hasty stroke goes oft
astray.” This piece of remembered wisdom from The Lord of the Rings seems
to be an apt description of the Indian
military siege of Kashmir.
On August 5th, at midnight
local time, the disputed territory was abruptly cut off from all communication,
both with the outside world and within Kashmir, as India snapped internet and
phone connections and shut down all Kashmiri television channels. A strict
curfew was imposed across Kashmir, a region roughly comparable to the state of
Virginia in extent and population (8 million).
During the previous week, an
additional 50,000 Indian troops had been moved into Kashmir, to join the
roughly 750,000 already deployed there. And on August 6, the Indian home
minister announced that India was revoking Articles 370 and 35A of the Indian
Constitution, which gave Kashmir some limited autonomy and restricted outsiders
from buying land in the state.
Under the new dispensation,
Kashmir is to be ruled directly from Delhi as a Union Territory. The last time
Kashmir was ruled directly from Delhi, from 1990 to 1996, it witnessed human
rights violations on a massive scale, with extrajudicial killings, torture,
rape, disappearances, firing on unarmed demonstrators, burning of homes, crops,
and standing harvests, and a complete clampdown on all political activity. The
warning signs that this will be repeated are already loud and clear.
The entire operation has been
overseen by Home Minister Amit Shah, from the hard-right Hindu nationalist BJP
(Bharatiya Janata Party), infamous for his orchestration of the massacre of
3,000 Muslims in the state of Gujarat in 2002. Though very little news escapes
the military cordon India has thrown around Kashmir, there are reports of mass
arrests, including of young children, a near-total clampdown on freedom of
movement within Kashmir, and Indian military forces opening fire on protesters with
live ammunition, tear gas, and pellet guns. Pellet guns are an Indian invention designed
especially for “non-lethal crowd control” and used only in Kashmir. They
bullets explode like shrapnel on impact and have been responsible for blinding
hundreds of Kashmiris since 2016.
The narrative has
shifted
The long and dismal record of
Indian human rights abuses in Kashmir had, until now, been routinely ignored by
the outside world. But now, the narrative has changed.
Media outlets across North
America, Europe, the Middle East, Asia, and Latin America either report from
the ground or pick up news as it appears in independent Indian outlets. They
show images of desolate streets ringed with gleaming new concertina barbed wire
and bristling with checkpoints, children injured and blinded by Indian
troops firing pellet guns and even
using catapults, and doctors and patients trying to reach hospitals turned away
by soldiers at checkpoints. An independent Indian news
outlet interviewed a young woman who was forced by Indian soldiers, in
behavior worthy of Tolkien’s orcs, to walk 6 kilometers while in labor, to
reach a hospital where she could deliver her baby. There seems to be no limit
to the cruelty with which Indian troops treat Kashmiri civilians.
Perhaps because this is
unfolding in a world that is grown weary of war and hatred, these stories and
images are striking home. There has been a trickle of news of Hindu nationalist
violence against minorities and Dalits in India that western media is no longer
able to ignore. Perhaps the true colors of the Hindu nationalist government of
Prime Minister Narendra Modi (who was rehabilitated by the Obama White House
after Condoleezza Rica had denied him entry into the U.S. for his part in the
Gujarat pogroms of 2002), are now being recognized.
Perhaps the lynchings, the
signs of a sinking Indian economy, and
the war mongering emanating from the Indian leadership — whose popular support
was reaffirmed in a massive electoral mandate earlier this year — are making
investors queasy.
And perhaps most
significantly, as the U.S. prepares to pull itself out of the Afghan quagmire,
it will need the help and support of Pakistan’s new government.
This combination of factors
has enabled the western and U.S. media to get in touch with their
conscience. Insightful reporting and
editorials are making front page headlines — and even Human Rights Watch has
broken years of silence on the issue to warn India, quite rightly, to “step back” in Kashmir. Maybe Churchill
was right after all, when he said you can trust the Americans to do the right
thing, after they’ve tried everything else.
To be sure, this shift has
been some time in the making.
In 2017, the Rafto Foundation
of Norway awarded its prestigious annual prize to two Kashmiri human
rights defenders, Parveena Ahangar of the Association of Parents of
Disappeared Persons APDP and Parvez Imroze of the Jammu and Kashmir Coalition
of Civil Society JKCCS. In 2018, the UN Office of the High Commissioner for
Human Rights (OHCHR) issued its first ever report on Kashmir, and a follow up
report in June 2019. Reports from JKCCS on torture and Amnesty International on
arbitrary detentions (aka arrests without charges) added to the growing
evidence of massive human rights abuses by India, putting these squarely in the international gaze.
The Turkish news site TRT World picked up the story with sustained reporting.
The other side of the western
media coverage on the current crisis has been the near-total blockade on all
Kashmiri media, and reports of Kashmiri journalists being attacked by Indian
troops. While some independent Indian media sources have been reporting on the
situation in a courageous and principled way, the majority of Indian media,
traveling freely around Kashmir in army vehicles and helicopters, repeat the
Indian government’s lies about peace, “normalcy,” and a glorious future of
corporate investment for Kashmir.
Kashmiri journalist Gowhar
Geelani, who was able to access an internet connection after nearly two
weeks, sent out this message
on Twitter: “Kashmir will remember the Instruments of Tyranny. Especially
those who raised a toast to celebrate, to mock at Kashmir’s collective misery,
helplessness, unprecedented information blockade, crackdown, and mass arrests.
History shall never forget their Goebbelsian propaganda!”
Despite the continuing
communications blockade, videos are starting to trickle out.
Which way to the future?
It was probably the impending
U.S. departure from Afghanistan, and the increasing role that China plays in
the region through the CPEC (China-Pakistan Economic Corridor), that explains
the timing of India’s rushed move to annex Kashmir.
The idea may have been
to ratchet up tensions in the
region to prevent the U.S. withdrawal. But all is not going according to plan.
There have been popular protests around the
world, with global peace activists supporting the
Kashmiri right to self-determination. Along with the media, this represents a
significant shift in the global narrative on Kashmir.
As was reportedly affirmed at
a closed door UN Security Council meeting on August 16, the UN continues to
recognize Kashmir as a disputed territory and the unilateral Indian annexation
does not change that status. According to Indian reporters with inside sources,
Russia surprisingly joined China in calling for an open UNSC meeting, which can
have more lasting consequences. This means that a major pillar of the Indian
position on Kashmir, that it is an internal matter for India to handle as it
sees fit, has been blown to smithereens. And a major foreign policy objective
for Pakistan, to internationalize the Kashmir dispute, has been achieved.
No formal statement on the
meeting has been issued by the UNSC, and naturally both India and Pakistan are
spinning it as a diplomatic victory for their side. What is certain Kashmir is
back on the agenda at the UNSC after a gap of 48 years. The threat of nuclear
war with catastrophic global consequences may have the effect of focusing the
efforts of that august and secretive body on finding a just and peaceful
solution.
What would such a solution
look like?
The Kashmir Scholars Network, a group
of which I am a member, has developed a set of recommendations for action
towards a peaceful and just resolution of the conflict in accordance with the
wishes of the Kashmiri people. It is based on our collective knowledge of the
Kashmir conflict and our connections to multiple actors, including human rights
activists, civil society groups, lawyers, journalists, writers, artists, and
academics in Kashmir.
“We recommend that United
Nations bodies work urgently towards the following goals:
1) Immediate cessation of
Indian violence against Kashmiri civilians and restoration of all civil and
political rights.
2) Recognize the right of the
Kashmiri people to determine their own political future, and mediate a just
settlement based on the right to self-determination. In this process,
international monitors must ensure that there is no government reprisal or
intimidation against the people of Kashmir as they discuss future arrangements
and express their political aspirations.
3) Demilitarize both sides of
the Line of Control between India and Pakistan. Further, to demilitarize all of
Kashmir and immediately revoke Indian emergency laws such as the Armed Forces
Special Powers Act.
4) Create mechanisms and
procedures that will allow Kashmiris on both sides of the Line of Control to
meet freely and discuss their political futures.
5) Create a Special Rapporteur
with the mandate to investigate and report on crimes against humanity in
Kashmir. This would be the first step in setting up credible mechanisms for documentation,
accountability, and justice for human rights abuses in Kashmir over the past
three decades, including extrajudicial executions, torture, gendered and
sexualized violence, enforced disappearances, and unknown, unmarked, and mass
graves.
6) Create a UN Commission of
Inquiry with the mandate to investigate all instances of human rights
violations, which will be the first step in seeking accountability and justice
for these crimes.”
As the UNSC faces up to the
task of decolonization in Kashmir, what of the rest of India? The trashing of
the Indian Constitution by the BJP has grim implications for democratic
processes within India, as is already becoming evident. At the far
eastern corner of the country, another slow-motion humanitarian and human
rights disaster is unfolding in Assam, where the Indian government is ready
to strip 4
million Muslims of their citizenship and place them in concentration
camps prior to deporting them to Bangladesh. The two leading alerts on
Genocide Watch today are Kashmir and Assam.
Minority groups like the Sikhs
and Nagas, with their own histories of suffering repression and violence at the
hands of the Indian state, are watching events in Kashmir
closely, and what they foretell. The long
night of Indian fascism has just begun.
What do the Kashmiris make of
this? No one knows at present, because they are still under a communications
lockdown with leaders, civil rights activists, and teachers under arrest,
without charges. But when the Indian clampdown is lifted, their voice will be
heard loud and clear, and it will be a roar for freedom. The Indian soldiers
will be standing by, armed and trigger-happy, ready to shoot down teenagers,
women, and children, as they have done so many times in the past.
This time, the world will be
watching.
Update: As of August 22, the
number of arrests was estimated to be around 4,000. Reports of torture are
surfacing. The UN Office of the High Commissioner on Human Rights has issued a statement calling
on the Indian government to end the communications clampdown and expressing
concern about the reports of arrests and torture.
A friend received a call from
Parveena Ahangar of the Association of Parents of Disappeared Persons, an
inspiring human rights defender and one of the mothers of the disappeared. Parveena
asked her to tell friends and supporters around the world that she is fine and
the spirit of the Kashmiri people is unbroken.
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