J&K governor Satya Pal Malik–about whom Ashok Swain said, “India doesn’t need political satirists when you have politicians like the Governor of Kashmir.”–actually said, “the medium of phone & internet is used less by us & mostly by terrorists & Pakistanis as well as for mobilisation & indoctrination. It is a kind of weapon used against us so we have stopped it. Services will be resumed gradually.”
Daily Archives: August 29, 2019
Muzaffarabad, capital of Pakistan-administered part of Kashmir, #StandWithKashmir student protest.
Syrian refugee children’s art in 2014. Is it ‘from the mouthes of babes’ or would we rather believe Assad propagandists who call these children “crisis actors” trained to play dead, traumatized, mutilated by bombs for al-Qaeda cameras?
Media often reports that Kashmiris living outside Kashmir are the ones protesting at #StandWithKashmir rallies around the world. On the contrary, what’s significant about them is that there are as many non-Kashmiris as Kashmiris, often from groups fighting their own freedom struggles but just as often unaffiliated human rights activists: Palestinian groups, Jewish Voice for Peace (an anti-Zionist group), Syrian Arab Spring protesters, Pakistanis, Sikh activists, human rights groups, Tibetan activists, immigration rights activists. Muslims, Christians, Jews, Sikhs all have a stake in #standingwithKashmir.
When Satya Pal Malik, who is an appointed Indian governor of J&K said, “It was necessary for the government to impose restrictions primarily to ensure that militants & terrorists are handicapped in their movements & don’t succeed to create fear and terror,” he was using Islamophobic ‘war on terror’ rhetoric to justify India’s barbaric siege & blockade.
By most reliable estimates, including from knowledgeable & respected Kashmiris like human rights leader Khurram Parvez, there were about 200, no more than 250, armed militants remaining in Kashmir in about 2016. Since the military crackdown on the 2016 uprising, India has been on an almost daily campaign of hunt to kill operations ostensibly to wipe out armed resistance. Though stone pelters & unarmed protesters often got the worst of these operations in injuries, deaths, livestock killed, homes vandalized & razed. According to figures from Indian officials & media, Indian occupying forces killed 213 Kashmiri militants in 2017, 222 in 2018, & 113 so far in 2019. That’s more than double the amount of militants that operated in all of Kashmir. Something’s not adding up to the truth.
Whatever one thinks about guerrilla warfare as an effective strategy, it is not armed militancy that the Indian Army is attempting to destroy in Kashmir. It is the considerably more powerful unarmed, massive popular resistance to colonialism & occupation, the undaunted demand for #azaadi that India is trying to destroy first through the occupation using pellet guns & hunt to kill operations & now through genocide & ethnic cleansing.
#StandWithKashmir
War criminals bonding at the G7: let’s hear another round of asking Trump to ‘mediate’ between India & Pakistan over the fate of Kashmiri self-determination. This encounter should have one of those gruesome image warnings to cover it.
With love to Pakistan 😉Take a moment to share your thoughts.#YourSpace
Posted by India Today on Monday, August 26, 2019
The official count from Indian authorities is that 36 people have been injured by pellet guns since August 5th when the siege & blockade began. Because of the report by an Indian TV news reporter who spoke to hospital staff in Kashmir, that figure cannot be trusted & is probably a gross underestimate. The Indian journalist was told by hospital staff that they were forced to turn away pellet injury victims, regardless of how serious the injuries (& they are never not serious) so that Indian authorities could keep the injury & death statistics low. People can’t even bury their dead because Indian authorities refuse to sign death certificates.
One of our chief demands is that India immediately cease the use of pellet guns in Kashmir. We would add ‘against the use of pellet guns on unarmed protesters’, but we know the Indian Army is shooting pellet guns indiscriminately, including at those just stepping out their front door.
https://www.kashmircrown.com/36-suffered-pellet-injuries-since-august-5-official/?
Zurich, Switzerland #StandWithKashmir rally, August 28, 2019.
This article is about the remarkable determination of Kashmiris outside Kashmir to contact their families under the blockade & siege. It’s absolutely heartbreaking to see families endure such a violent rupture of familial bonds but it’s part of the nature of genocide. Palestinians, Rohingya, Uyghur also know it well.