A terrifying account of his torture by Indian troops while a small boy by Kashmiri Aahil Asif:

“In year 93 when I was still a boy, the BSF cordoned off our locality Maharaj Gunj. As usual announcement was made on loudspeakers to gather in Sokali pora near Mirwaiz Manzil Rajouri Kadal. I was naive, wearing school uniform & wasn’t aware of what horrible experience I was about to undergo. As all marched towards vacant area of Sokali pora, parade began in front Gypsy (small military jeep) which had informers inside to identify anybody (in most cases to save their own skin and apprehend someone to please their masters). It wasn’t in my wildest dreams that I will face hell soon.

When I stood in front the Gypsy, the sound of horn was heard and immediately my hell experience dawned upon me. My shirt was removed and I was blind folded, hands cuffed and feet tied. They kept me behind Gypsy till parade of people was completed. Seven more people were picked up. I was confused what crime I was picked up for. All of sudden they brought a Wanton, a small mini truck, and we were taken to Nowhatta BSF camp where the initial interrogation will be done.

The first person who was taken to interrogation room was the guest of our neighbour. They started his interrogation at 7.30 in the morning till 11.30. You can imagine what may go through a person’s mind when he knows he is the next one to be treated like that. We were in an animal slaughter house. I was hearing painful shrieks and shouts as they interrogated him. Totally unbearable. When they took him out, he was bleeding from cuts all over his body. I thought for a second he is dead, a walking Zombie.

Then I was taken in. I saw two officers (Kalia and Rajinder). Any of you who lived in downtown during 90’s will surely know these beasts. They laughed at me, I saw blood everywhere, blood stains on walls, and smell of human flesh. They stripped me naked and tied me with ropes. Electric wire was wrapped around my toes and private part. A single power touch which they gave us is equal to one thousand dog bites together. It was enormous pain and straight away bleeding started from my nose and mouth and yet they did not stop there. My left hand was cut multiple times with Razer blade and chilly was sprinkled onto the wounds. Barrage of sticks were unleashed. All I could wish or do is ask Allah to take my soul. Soon I fell down unconscious. They poured water on me, for me to regain consciousness to keep doing what they were doing. They kept asking me to hand over to them weapons and information about militants of my locality. How could a kid know all this? At least I did not. But they didn’t agree! My terrible interrogation continued .

Finally I decided to lie to them in order buy some respite in ruthless beating. I told them I will lead them to a hideout. It worked out. They brought additional forces to raid a house I mentioned as sheltering militants. I was taken to Aali kadal BSF camp and got more force. While I stay chained inside the Gypsy, I heard a voice of a little girl…. Mera bhai ko chodo woh be-gunah hai….. “leave me Brother. He is innocent.” She was none other than my beloved little sister. I never felt so emotional and helpless as I felt at that moment. Finally I took them to the house and they picked up one person namely Shakeel Ahmad who is mentally challenged . When he was brought out, he was accompanied by his sister. When she looked at me, she shed tears and told these beasts that I did the right thing to raid their house otherwise they would receive me in a shroud. When I heard these words, I folded my hands and asked for her forgiveness. She cried a lot after seeing me soaked in blood.

The BSF beasts realised I lied to them and I was returned to interrogation center and badly beaten again. Again I felt unconscious and remained so for few hours despite their attempts to get me back to my senses. A doctor was brought and he told them that I won’t survive if not taken to hospital immediately. I was released at night . My neighbours rushed me to Headwun hospital but doctors there told them to shift me to Soura medical institute. After treatment I started to recover but occupation pain will remain forever.

I don’t write this to gain sympathy or trying to be some sort of a hero. This is the story of hundreds of thousands of Kashmiris. I share it to record the atrocities of this occupation and give voice to thousands of others who have had similar or worse experience.

India can hold us to it by chains but it can never ever make us Indian. We are free in our minds and soon our bodies too will be Free. One way or other. InshaAllah!”

If there is one thing this siege of Kashmir has shown it’s what an invaluable role Kashmiris in diaspora play in educating & building solidarity. It’s also shown how absolutely useless most socialists are as they ‘go on with their doggy lives’, thinking deep thoughts, writing imponderable tracts, but indifferent to the suffering of humanity or the appeals of the oppressed.

Journalist Majid Maqbool, briefly out of the blockade in Kashmir, eloquently writes:

“History shows that Kashmir has never been – and will never be – conquered or suppressed by force. The idea of Kashmir is bigger than all its enemies, and all the ruling regimes, past and present, put together. The idea of Kashmir has survived all military seiges, crackdowns, torture, pellet guns, PSAs., you name it. In the face of repeated, unrelenting blows, Kashmiris have developed a greater threshold for pain over the years, outliving the worst kinds of oppression, and all varieties of despotic rulers at the helm. I believe pain (daeg) in Kashmir has transformed into something else now. Resilience, for example, or rememberance! Pain, in a sense, can no longer be inflicted beyond a point; its inherent to the Kashmiri self.

The latest round of an unprecedented communication shutdown, internet blockade, and the siege and torture has failed to break the will of Kashmiris. Kashmiris have lost everything but not hope. Voemaed Che zinde, Umeed Baki hai… Hope cannot be killed or imprisoned, put under siege, or blinded by pellets. It survives even in darkness, outliving the darkest times.

If you’re a proud Indian – leftist, rightist, centralist, liberal, rich, elite, middle class, poor, etc – and just watching it all before your eyes, not that far from you, and staying quiet about the continued, decades long, and still ongoing, brutalization and denial of basic human and political rights of Kashmiris by your nation, there’s something wrong with you, and the idea of a nation you belong to, as well. And one day, when the structural violence inflicted on Kashmiris rebounds, hits your home, hits your loved ones, blinds your own kids, god forbid, you might want others – us, even – to speak for you. But by then, it might be too late. There will be no one to speak for you, to stand with you. Before it’s late, there’s still time to educate yourself about what your government – and most of your media – hides from you about Kashmir.

What can you do? To begin with, talk to ordinary Kashmiris who continue to live and struggle in a big, open air prison, surrounded by millions of troops and bunkers and military camps. Before it’s late, speak up and stand with the people of Kashmir, not with those who are drunk on power and it’s excercise on the powerless. Because nothing is permanent, not even suffering, and power doesn’t last long. Because you won’t be doing any favour to the people in Kashmir by speaking up for them and by standing with them; you’ll also, in the process, begin to restore your own humanity. You can’t end the suffering of people; you can atleast speak against, and question, the conditions and those who prolong the suffering. Because that’s the right thing to do. And that’s the least you can do. Because right now is the right time to break the silence. So speak up for Kashmir NOW and #StandWithKashmir.”

Protesters came out today in Kargil in the Ladakh region of Jammu & Kashmir against the abrogation of Article 370 & 35A. There isn’t going to be ‘normalcy’ in the region until India has withdrawn its nearly one-million troops & ceded to self-determination.

Berlin, Germany #StandWithKashmir rally, October 21st, 2019.

As long as the NY Times isn’t talking about terrorism in Kashmir, its reporting is relatively useful. But after Kashmiri activists on social media broke the news blackout, authoritative media like the NYT need to control the narrative in the same way they do the Palestinian struggle. That’s why in this piece on children whose parents won’t let them go school for safety reasons & as part of civil disobedience, the writers have to insert this complete rubbish: “Parents in the Kashmir Valley say they are terrified of sending their children out with troops everywhere and separatist militants on the prowl for trouble. The militants are demanding that civilians boycott work and school, and they have killed several people to assert their resistance to tightening Indian rule. This week, militants dragged construction workers onto the street and shot them, witnesses said, leaving five dead and one wounded. It was the deadliest single attack on civilians since Kashmir’s autonomy was stripped.” The NYT really wants us to believe ‘separatist militants are on the prowl’ & ‘dragging workers out of their homes’ when Kashmir has almost one soldier for every eight Kashmiris. In doing that, they take the emphasis off the occupation & create anxiety & a narrative about terrorism in Kashmir.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/31/world/asia/kashmir-school-children.html?fbclid=IwAR2Df_bYhjL91Rz9n1cEq61wu-_tCp59clFevF5e9sNsLKYAh4OvCGPN0Mk

Seattle, Washington #StandWithKasmir rally, October 27th, 2019.

It’s surprising this Israeli soldier even got one month jail time for murdering a Palestinian teenager. Palestinians are killed & disabled almost daily with no accountability from the Israeli Army. It’s called genocide.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/30/world/middleeast/othman-helles-killing-israel-soldier.html?

This post is from two years ago but it’s useful for laying out US policy toward Burma, including ending economic & military sanctions despite the Rohingya genocide. The US State Department is now objecting to the forced deportation of Rohingya refugees from Bangladesh to an uninhabitable island but if it really wanted to end that monstrous scheme it would cut $263 million in military aid to Bangladesh. Or even better, grant asylum to Rohingya refugees in the US until they have won the political struggle against Suu Kyi & the generals.

Mary Scully
October 31, 2017
No one should get too excited about the US announcing it will withdraw military assistance from Burma because of the Rohingya genocide. It’s a cynical stunt like the European Union pulled a few weeks ago when it announced it would sever military ties with the Burmese junta. The EU already had sanctions in place against such ties & still several countries were courting Burmese military officials. Drawing a false distinction between the Burmese junta & Aung San Suu Kyi’s quasi-civilian government (fully complicit in the genocide), the US says it will withdraw military assistance from Burmese officers involved in the Rohingya genocide & withdraw invitations to Burmese military officials to visit the US. The question is raised: since the US already is supposed to have some restrictions on military sales to Burma, exactly what kind of military assistance will it be withdrawing? Why censure just the generals leading operations in Arakan state? Why not censure the entire junta & Suu Kyi regime holding demonstrations & rallies to whip the population into genocide fever? Why were the generals coming to the US? To visit the Grand Canyon? Or strategize with the Pentagon?

The Burma sanctions program began in 1997 when then president Clinton signed an executive order imposing sanctions because of Burma’s military junta. Since the US has a long history of bankrolling repressive regimes it’s not clear why Burma provoked sanctions. (That’s an issue which should be studied.) The sanctions were expanded in successive executive orders by Clinton & Bush & in laws passed by the US Congress. The most important from Congress is the Burmese Freedom & Democracy Act of 2003. The disputed issues laid out in the sanctions program were the Burmese junta’s use of forced labor & child soldiers, involvement in meth & heroin trafficking & in human trafficking, money laundering, religious persecution. At no place in these documents does the US call out the Rohingya genocide as a factor in its sanctions determinations. Of course the US was fully apprised through CIA operatives & surveillance systems of the persecution & eventual Rohingya genocide–long before the rest of the world became aware in 2012. US initiatives to end sanctions began in 2011 & went public with Hillary Clinton’s 2011 trip to Burma & Obama’s subsequent trips in 2012 & 2014. Obama’s 2012 trip took place only a month after the genocidal offensive ended with 90,000 Rohingya fleeing for their lives to Bangladesh.

Included in the labyrinth of sanctions were travel bans, restrictions on financial dealings with Burmese banks, a ban on Burmese imported goods (while US exports to Burma continued), a ban on investments in Burma, the end of direct military aid & the end of training military officers in the US. Also included in the sanctions were massive loopholes through which the US could move money to the junta under guises like human rights training or HIV programs. That would not be hard to do since the military regime controlled not only the government but the entire economy. As the Burmese freedom act of 2003 said, the junta “integrated the Burmese military & its surrogates into all facets of the economy, effectively destroying any free enterprise system.”

In October 2016, Obama signed an executive order terminating economic sanctions against the junta–though the US had begun ending them piecemeal as far back as 2011 in order to enter the bonanza opened up by neoliberal economics in Burma. Maybe not coincidentally, another genocidal onslaught against the Rohingya people began just two days after the termination of economic sanctions. Obama signed that order after nearly 120,000 Rohingya had already fled Burma in 2012 & in 2015 when thousands of fleeing Rohingya were left to drown in the Andaman Sea. The whole world knew a genocide was going on & the US ignored it. Between October 2016 & January 2017, another 95,000 fled a military offensive. Yet in June 2017 the US removed most military sanctions claiming Burma had stopped using child soldiers despite documentation to the contrary from the UN & Human Rights Watch & despite genocide.

US policy toward Burma is a labyrinth of lies. Despite wimpy protestations about the Rohingya genocide, the US has done nothing to end it. It would continue to play stupid except the educational work of Rohingya activists on social media & the current genocidal offensive have made the Rohingya people the center of politics to human rights supporters on social media. Our mission is to keep educating & extending support because the forces of reaction are mobilized to vilify & misrepresent the Rohingya people as terrorists to undermine solidarity. Our mission is to politically pressure these regimes to act to stop the slaughter so that the Rohingya people can win full human, democratic, civil, & refugee rights.

(Photo of Rohingya kids at Cox’s Bazar by Abir Abdullah/EPA)

“Between April 2018 and March 2019, 366,906 people received treatment in a government psychiatric hospital in the city of Srinagar alone – just under three per cent of the entire population of the state. And children are bearing the brunt of the crisis. The Kashmiri state government does not record the exact number of children being treated at any time. However, according to a study by IMHANS the number of children treated in the psychiatric ward of the Srinagar hospital almost doubled between 2016 and 2019, from around 17,000 to 30,000.

The human rights lockdown in Kashmir continues for nearly three months.

The crackdown is causing stress and anxiety in people, while also limiting their access to mental healthcare services.”

–Toronto For Kashmir