Manchester, UK #StandWithKashmir rally, August 31, 2019. This movement is not going away.

This piece from Restless Beings, a UK human rights organization, will be of great value in understanding what the Indian government is doing in its northeast state of Assam where it just made two-million citizens stateless. It is via Mabrur Ahmed, a representative of Restless Beings, who just gave a brilliant presentation at the South Korea conference about the character & organization of the boycott of Burma called by Rohingya activists & their supporters.

https://www.restlessbeings.org/assam-crisis/?

This is an outstanding comparison of the differences between international & Indian media reporting about Kashmir. Let its power speak for itself.

Sheffield, UK #StandWithKashmir rally, August 31st, 2019.

There is a report today that armed militants shot & killed a shopkeeper in Srinagar for keeping his shop open. Since there are war-equipped Indian soldiers every few feet & checkpoints all over the city where pedestrians are continually frisked & where even ambulances can’t move freely, it is highly unlikely that militants carrying even small arms are able to get about the city, let alone get away after shooting a shopkeeper. That report should be filed under “Lies the Indian Army tells about Kashmiris.”

The Indian Army is going to try the same malignant divide & conquer crap in Kashmir that the US & European colonial powers have done for decades in the Middle East, with Iraq being the matrix & very training ground. Using collaborators & undercover operatives, they will attempt to foster dissension between the different denominations of Islam & between Muslims, Sikhs, & Pandits. Kashmiri human rights leader Khurram Parvez once pointed out that in Kashmir, Sunni, Shia, Wahabi, & other religious groups march as one against the occupation. Not if the Indian Army can help it. Divide & conquer will be their fundamental strategy. The primary force against that is the experience, judgement, brilliance of Kashmiri resistance, both its activists & leaders. It won’t be that easy because Kashmiris will not willingly be played against each other & know the score from seeing divide & conquer played out in Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, Yemen, & elsewhere.

UPDATE: Satyadeep Satya took the fun out of this story completely by showing that the “War & Peace” book was not the one by Tolstoy but “War & Peace in Junglemahal” by Indian journalist Biswajit Roy.
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A man was called before the high court in Mumbai to defend why he had Tolstoy’s “War & Peace” in his home–what the judge called ‘a book about war in another country’. The prosecutor found it incriminating evidence along with other books & CDs because “The title itself suggests it has something against the state.”

One man on Twitter responded: “Most people have War & Peace in their homes because they have been trying to finish it for 10 years.” I myself have been trying for over 50 years.

Any official agency that goes beyond silence about Kashmir to ‘taking notice’ or ‘expressing concern’ will focus their concern solely on India & Pakistan resolving their ‘territorial dispute’ over Kashmir so there won’t be a nuclear war. The emergent Kashmiri solidarity movement brings together the only ones making concern for the safety & well-being of the Kashmiri people the entire focus of our concerns. We cannot underestimate our importance to the Kashmiri struggle now that they are forcibly silenced. Nothing will be the same until we hear their powerful voices again.

“The only clear and present danger to the lives and freedom of Indian citizens are the rulers of India. To support their plans against Kashmiris and the ‘illegals’ of Assam is to stand against all peoples of the subcontinent.”

–Indian activist Satyadeep Satya

The European Union Commitee of Foreign Affairs in the European Parliament has a meeting scheduled this Monday to exchange views on Kashmir. Wow, that’ll really get things going! Some European governments will go from complete silence/collusion to ‘taking notice’, ‘expressing concern’, tsk-tsking in India’s direction against any reckless behaviors in their fascist takeover of Kashmir that already involves mass arrests, targeting children, rapes & sexual assaults, forced imprisonment in homes, indiscriminate use of pellet guns & rubber bullets, torture, disappearances & kidnappings. The EU may even get a naughty finger involved.

That’s why we know the emergent Kashmiri solidarity movement is the most vital, if not the only, defense the Kashmiri people have right now & cannot be underestimated. Without us, India would have a free hand to act without anyone even ‘taking notice’ of ‘expressing concern’, just like they did colonial rule in Kashmir for nearly 70 years.

Keep #StandingWithKashmir