For a few weeks, an article titled “Israeli Forces Bury Palestinian Kids Alive” from The 41 News website has been circulating on Facebook. The people who run The 41 News are crackpots & troublemakers. In fact, in 1988 Israeli soldiers were accused of burying four young Palestinians alive in the West Bank & no one in their right mind can deny the extreme violence of the Israeli army toward Palestinians, including children. But there has been no reporting from Palestinians or human rights groups that the Israeli military systematically buries Palestinians alive. What they do that is provable is monstrous enough.

It is wrong to recklessly circulate unsubstantiated claims, not because the crimes are not possible, but because it discredits Palestinian solidarity. We don’t use deceit & false allegations; those are the methods of Israel & the US to cover for Israeli human rights crimes.

Vetting news sources is absolutely imperative when you post on social media. It takes only about ten minutes to search a website to understand its political character. For justice, only the truth need be told.

The chance that Facebook will lock me out again is real since I don’t intend to stop posting about the murderous siege in Kashmir. Many of my friends did not know that many of us were blocked from posting & were confined to Twitter (if we had it). So not a lot of people came to our defense.

If I am again locked out, you can contact me on my new Twitter account at Mary Scully@mscully94; or follow my blog at www.maryscullyreports.com; or try Maude O’Toole, my James Bond-style nom de guerre on FB
(https://www.facebook.com/maude.otoole.1?fref=nf&pnref=story).

There are still Kashmiri activists locked out without a time limit & we must take this up immediately to reinstate their accounts.

It’s possible the internet lockout in Kashmir has made photojournalist reporting difficult–except that it was barely existent before the current siege. There was coverage of Kashmiri women’s prayer rituals but almost nothing on the Indian occupation. This photo is one of the very few appearing in major media of the current barbarous siege. The young man is sitting (yesterday) inside a hospital in Srinagar waiting to be treated for injuries from pellet munitions.

Pellet guns, which have been used against democracy protesters in Bahrain since 2012, were first used against Kashmiri protesters in 2010. For public relations purposes, they are called non-lethal weapons but they are intended to inflict unbearable & permanent suffering & disability, particularly blindness. And they can be fatal.

One pellet cartridge holds up to 500 tiny iron balls shot at high velocity which explode into innumerable pellets on impact with the human body. If they hit a vital organ, they are fatal.There are frequent reports from Kashmir that Indian soldiers are indiscriminate in use of pellet guns & direct them at the face & upper body precisely to cause blindness & disfigurement. The pellets are difficult, in most cases impossible to remove & remain lodged in the body despite long hours of surgery. Many cause life-threatening infections & permanent pain. A majority of victims are young people, including many children. The use of pellet guns subjects them to a lifetime of unspeakable pain & suffering.

In short, they are a major human rights crime & must be denounced regardless of what one thinks about the Kashmiri claim to self-determination.

Long live Kashmiri Intifada. End the Indian occupation. Kashmir has a right to self-determination.

(Photo by Danish Ismail/Reuters)

Even if you believe Kashmir belongs to India & that Kashmiris have no right to self-determination, are these Indian human rights crimes in Kashmir justified in your mind? To which we must add 40 killed & over 2,000 injured since July 9th, including hundreds permanently blinded, disfigured, & disabled in other ways by pellet munitions.

(Figures from Voice of Kashmir)

Article about censorship on social media by Kashmiri activists. The authors cite comments by myself & others about the control of information about Kashmir.

http://tribune.com.pk/story/1142158/analysis-kashmiris-voice-muzzled-offline-online/

Accidentally came across a Republican Convention meeting on CNN. I see dead people.

This drawing is by Rollie Mukherjee, an Indian artist who has stood steadfast with Kashmiri justice.

“this painting titled “unframed ‘histories’” depicts a Kashmiri woman with a mike. She is not a mute beautiful showpiece as represented quite often. She is a reminder of the horror & wounds they are made to exist with. She is a speaking agency, speaking aloud to the whole world & thus breaks the patterned “way of seeing” of the Indians. The kashmiri design in this painting acts as a trope for peace & unity on the one hand & on the other hand sneer at how its beauty is relished & their pains are cornered & erased.”

Some consider it autocratic & undemocratic to boot reactionaries who want to engage in discussion–so that when Indian nationalists or Zionists want to leave their rancid droppings, we should all listen as if we’re exchanging ideas rather than hostilities. That doesn’t represent a difference of opinion about how to achieve justice but of standing on opposing sides of justice.

There is nothing more important than building an anti-occupation movement in India & there are already forces assembled & mobilized in defense of Kashmir. Those are the people we want to talk & collaborate with. There are countless others of good will uncertain about India’s role in Kashmir because of media lies. Those are the people we want to talk with because justice matters to them. We see no value at all in swapping hostile repartee with Indian nationalists.

This isn’t a debating society. It’s a solidarity wall & there should be no confusion on that score. Let it be said for the umpteenth time, one of the arts of politics is knowing when to save your breath.

Just one of the many compelling reasons why freedom of speech must be fought for & defended on social media: the systematic international news blackout on India’s violent occupation of Kashmir. The occupation was going on for decades & millions of men & women of good will around the world did not know that until Kashmiri activists on social media began campaigning to expose it.

Kashmiris thought the world did not care about the barbarisms against them when it was that we did not know. Now we know & are beginning to understand & that is the beginning of mobilizing the international battalions of solidarity. Because we do care about justice for our Kashmiri brothers & sisters.

“An injury to one is an injury to all” is the international battle cry of justice & solidarity.