Interview with Kashmir writer Mirza Waheed on India’s siege in Kashmir:
Daily Archives: August 18, 2019
The Indian occupying army fighting terrorism in Kashmir: 5-year-old Muneefa Nazir in hospital after a paramilitary soldier hit her in the eye with a stone from a catapult.
(Photo from J & K Today)
It’s time to start an economic boycott of India. India exports approximately 7,500 commodities to about 190 countries. In 2018, those exports to the US alone amounted to $6.3 billion. We know all the arguments against economic boycotts; we’re heard them since the boycott of South African apartheid & are fighting legal & political battles over BDS against Israeli apartheid. Yap yap yap about hurting the working class from those who don’t understand how capitalism works or who gains from international trade. It sure isn’t sweatshop workers.
To my mind, it’s time to launch an economic boycott of all Indian products sold to consumers. Maybe we can’t impact the sales of petroleum products, iron & steel, machinery, ships & marine equipment, or biochemicals. But we can have a massive impact on thousands of products sold in shops in every city around the world. Spices, herbs, Ayurvedic medicines, emollients, & oils, perfumes, pharmaceuticals, foods, clothing, books, Bollywood films, jewelry, electronics, rice & grains, textiles, automobiles.
We shouldn’t just stop buying but should notify store owners that we are boycotting their products until India withdraws its troops from Kashmir & releases every single Kashmiri political prisoner. We have to mean business when it comes to this boycott because protests have to be backed up with economic pressure. Will we alienate Indians? Not those who support the Kashmiri struggle. They want support in building an anti-colonial movement. Israeli Palestinian supporters are among the most committed to BDS.
It isn’t economic boycotts that make the lives of Indian or Israeli workers miserable but the billions wasted on militarism. The US borrows from Social Security, steals from Medicare & Medicaid, reduces food stamps & social services, & lets its roads & bridges collapse to pay for its constant & many wars. Israeli & Indian soldiers, who are mostly working class, return to civilian life suffering PTSD from the hell they’ve inflicted on Palestinians & Kashmiris. US antiwar veterans have written the book on what their involvement in war, occupation, & genocide has done to them.
If you care about the working class, that should include the Kashmiri working class who have fought for over 70 years against colonialism & occupation. If you’re going to cry crocodile tears for the working class, cry for them. Meanwhile, it’s time to support them & Indian workers against militarism by boycotting all consumer goods from India & making sure the export shops, health food stores, Amazon know that the boycott will prevail until India withdraws its troops from Kashmir & releases all Kashmiri political prisoners.
At least 4,000 were arrested just in the first 13 days of the military onslaught, held under the Public Safety Act which allows imprisonment up to two years without charge or trial. Most have been flown out of Kashmir to prisons in India & none have been identified by name or where they are imprisoned.
India is out to mercilessly crush the resistance in Kashmir with the assistance of Israeli, Russian, French, & US arms. Protests demanding India’s immediate, unconditional withdrawal & the immediate release of all political prisoners must continue or one of the most important freedom struggles of our time will be set back & the scorched earth model of genocide (used against Kashmiris, Palestinians, Rohingya, Uyghur, Syrians) will become the model for all humanity struggling against tyranny.
India plans concentration camps for immigrants & refugees:
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/17/world/asia/india-muslims-narendra-modi.html?fbclid=IwAR2Md5y-
We know that after the 2016 uprising in Kashmir, Kashmiri activists on social media, whose educational work helped to change the course of human history for their struggle, have been harassed, censored, & repeatedly suspended on social media venues. That includes 90-year-old independence icon Syed Ali Geelani who was permanently suspended from FB for paying respect to a man killed by Indian forces (whose name & photo cannot be shown without suspension but whose funeral prayers in Kashmir were attended by over 600,000 mourners). Often their accounts were just disappeared & all their hard work with it. One photojournalist with over 65,000 followers had that account & 20 other accounts he attempted to set up just deleted with no appeal process.
Even Kashmiris supporters were suspended right & left & en masse so that we had to have a petition campaign for reinstatement. It didn’t work. We were still locked out 30-days & several permanently lost their accounts & all their work. I’ve lost count but think I’ve had at least six 30-day suspensions for writing about Kashmir. Not inflammatory stuff. One time, just a simple declarative sentence that there were affinities between the Kashmiri & Palestinian struggles. Then we find out that India’s Home Ministry & top government officials are publicly lobbying to get Twitter to suspend the accounts of eight relatively unknown Kashmiri supporters for spreading ‘fake news’. Four were actually suspended.
Many of us came to know those Kashmiri activists on social media like they were next door neighbors. We looked to them for understanding, came to admire their power as polemicists, writers, & commentators, drew on their insights, savored their sarcasm & wit as we admired their fearlessness & commitment. I say all this because quite frankly, I am very much afraid for them. India felt deeply threatened by them, enough to repeatedly snap the internet, at one time for months, repeatedly get them thrown off social media, & now completely shuts down all telecommunications.
When we talk about demanding the release of all Kashmiri political prisoners, we may be talking about many of our friends & India should know that we take that very personally indeed. We will fight tirelessly that India make an accounting of its Kashmiris prisoners & release every one of them without harm or further harassment.