This tire-burning protest was on August 20th, fifteen days after India imposed the blockade & martial law. If this is how defiant Kashmiris are under a curfew & lockdown, imagine the scale of their resistance if India dares to lift it.
(Photo by Waseem Andrabi/Hindustan Times/Getty Images)
This is a thoughtful article on the roles played by Shah Faesal & Shehla Rashid, two compromised Kashmiri political figures who previously collaborated or were equivocal about the Kashmiri struggle for self-determination. India is going to be grooming figures like this to preempt the uncompromising leaders of #azaadi, most of whom were imprisoned after the blockade. Grooming & paying off such leaders is how the US manages the occupations of Afghanistan, Iraq, & elsewhere where careerists become mortgaged to colonialism. None of the machinations will deceive many Kashmiris.
A quite good interview with Indian activist Kavita Krishnan on her investigative tour of Kashmir.
https://www.democracynow.org/2019/8/26/kavita_krishnan_india_kashmir_special_status?fbclid=IwAR22a-
Syrians in several towns & villages of rural Idlib & Aleppo gathered outside mosques & in town squares last Friday to condemn the carpet bombing by Syrian & Russian war planes since last April that has killed hundreds, injured thousands, & forced nearly 550,000 to flee from their homes. Their placards restated the demands of the Syrian Arab Spring uprising, in particular the overthrow of the Assad dictatorship & some denounced the silence of antiwar forces in support of Assad & Syrian & Russian bombing of civilians.
Stand with Idlib. Stop the bombing! All foreign military forces & mercenaries out of Syria!
(Photo of protest in rural Aleppo by Enab Baladi)
India probably hopes that if this barbaric blockade lasts long enough, media will move on to another news cycle, Kashmir will disappear from the headlines, Kashmiris outside Kashmir & Kashmiri supporters will tire of posting what little information we get, the #StandWithKashmir protests will end, & all the attention & furor will blow over. Piss their hopes away or file them under “fat chance.”
As we know from so much of the commentary, there are many who need to get up to speed on the history of the Kashmiri struggle for self-determination. There’s a whole library at the Jammu Kashmir Coalition of Civil Society website (http://jkccs.net) of reports & investigations they’ve done on forcible disappearances, torture, mass graves, & other such issues. We’ll keep posting those reports as well as articles on India’s use of pellet munitions, commentary from Kashmiri writers & journalists. There’s a lot of history for us to catch up on & we will keep posting it whether India likes it or not. They tried to silence the voices of Kashmiri resistance but they created an international chorus of solidarity. As has been said by quite a conservative journalist, ‘India has internationalized Kashmir’.
Suspected stone pelters are among the thousands being arrested in Kashmir. They are mostly fearless young working class kids but we’ve seen a lot of women stone pelters too. Under Israeli law, Palestinian stone pelters can be sent to military prison for up to twenty years, as there has been a massive crackdown on them in Kashmir. Many see stone pelters as provocateurs when they function more as a civilian defense guard for unarmed protesters. This is an article I wrote in July 2017 for the journal Kashmir Mirage where I lay out my view of the role stone pelters play, why India is arresting them, & why we must defend them as political prisoners:
Zionists in India are using the siege & blockade of Kashmir to strengthen their collaboration with Hindutva nationalists & create a mutual aid society for Indian & Israeli colonialism. There has long been strong support for the Palestinian struggle in India, including conferences & massive protests in their defense. But the anti-colonial movement against the occupation of Kashmir remains weak & fragmented when it would be one of the most important political developments for both Kashmir & India.
The reason for such weaknesses are never just moral failure or lack of commitment by activists but almost invariably reflect fragmentation & weakness among progressive political forces who initiate & organize these movements. Indian progressives have been influenced as much by Assadism & Stalinism as elsewhere which reflects a debilitating & generalized theoretical & political corruption. Overcoming this colossal failure begins with an analysis of the state of progressive forces, how they got to this point, & forging a new movement without the pernicious influences of Assadism & Stalinism which in their present incarnation are up to their eyeballs in Islamophobia & anti-Semitism.
(Photo is poster of event sponsored by Israel in Mumbai)
Children remain one of the primary targets, not accidental bystanders, in the murderous colonial occupation of Kashmir. Just as in Palestine.
The censorship & suspension of countless individual Kashmiri social media accounts is an old story. They’re among the most censored members on both FB & Twitter. But now it appears to some admins that they are also monitoring & restricting Kashmiri news walls.
As part of the campaign to post at least one piece per day about the Kashmiri struggle, you could go to some of those many pages to like & share some of their posts. If you need help finding them, let me know.
India didn’t occupy Kashmir with nearly a million troops to force their acceptance of colonialism nor certainly to ‘win their hearts & minds’. It did so because it knew it long-ago lost that battle so it proceeded directly to genocide & ethnic cleansing.