Report from the 120th day of Kashmir caged: Kashmir Media Service (KMS) reports that during the on-going four-month siege & lockdown, 38 Kashmiri have been killed, including two women & three young boys; 853, mostly protesters, have been injured critically by pellet guns, teargas shells, live ammo; occupying troops molested, abused, or humiliated at least 39 women after home invasions to kidnap & arrest children. KMS reports that at least 11,401 leaders, activists, & other have been arrested & remain in jail although human rights lawyer Parvez Imroz estimates the figure as closer to 20,000 & even as high as 30,000. Friday prayers at Jamia Masjid in Srinagar have been shut down since August 5th although the gates were often locked by the Indian Army many times long before that.

Telecommunications remain shut down, most shops, offices, & business enterprises are closed, partially by a resistance boycott, & the schools remain empty of students & teachers. The suffering of Kashmiris under such conditions is incalculable, especially the trauma sustained by children locked down like in an open air prison.

The occupying army has made so many restrictions on international journalists that little photojournalism has recorded these conditions & is not available, even in major media. This photo by Kashmiri photojournalist Junaid Bhat is from this current lockdown but it could just as well have been taken in 2016 or even earlier. Such is the barbaric character of the occupation.

(Photo by Junaid Bhat Photographer)

Stalinists are trying to make hay out of the large group of protesters in Hong Kong protesting in support of Trump & the US by singing the American anthem while waving the American flag. The protests in Hong Kong which have gone on for several months & include well over a million people have of course attracted anti-communists as they have every other political current. If anti-communists linked up with the protests for democracy, that’s their right since they also denounce repression by the central government of China. But anti-communism or idiocy about Trump & the character of the US government do not define the character of the Hong Kong movement.

The Hong Kong movement goes back a long way with annual protests demanding justice for the massacre at Tiananmen Square; honoring & demanding justice for Chinese democracy leader & labor activist Li Wangyang who was likely murdered by the Chinese government in his hospital bed after being released from 21 years in jail for organizing a memorial for the victims of Tiananmen Square & posting a call for a general strike to support them; & protesting Chinese repression in Hong kong, most recently the attempt to extradite political prisoners to the Chinese gulag.

Any attempts to portray the Hong Kong movement as reactionary, antisocial, violent, & entirely anti-communist are the work of the political grifters who portray the Assad regime as the second coming of Jesus.

The struggle of Dalits & other oppressed castes is one of the most important in the world & I have not written sufficiently about it to reflect that importance. But there are many Dalit & other anti-caste activists who do & they can be followed on social media. This article was posted by Gogul Nath R. but there are many walls dedicated to education & agitation against caste oppression.

https://www.thenewsminute.com/article/17-dalits-killed-mettupalayam-how-wall-built-discriminate-crushed-them-death-113405

This is an educational event for Kashmiris in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Protests have subsided but educational events are now going on around the world in order to build the solidarity movement for Kashmir.

https://www.facebook.com/events/540892043417466/

This is a powerful review by Kashmiri Basharat Shameem of a novel by award-winning novelist Shahnaz Bashir, a university teacher of journalism & creative writing in Kashmir whose writings have been compared to Russian writer Anton Chekhov. Bashir said of “Half Mother”, “In this strife-torn valley, I have always been tormented by feelings of indefinite & eternal uncertainty. “The Half Mother” is an outcome of those feelings.” The book was written a few years ago, around 2014, before the momentous 2016 uprising that was so brutally repressed by the Indian Army.

https://www.newsclick.in/half-mother-story-women-under-siege-kashmir?

Documentation of Russian war planes bombing civilians in Syria: the international antiwar movement is in a state of total collapse for supporting this. A new antiwar movement must be built that is rooted in antiwar principles.

https://www.nytimes.com/video/world/middleeast/100000006818506/russia-bombs-syria-civlians.html?smid

“It is beyond hypocrisy and shamelessness:

When rapists and rape apologists are your national heroes,
When genocidal manics are your diplomats, and
When advocates of brutality are your Army chiefs”

–Kashmiri Ashraf Bhat

The NY Times published a piece showing photos by US soldiers stationed in Iraq & Afghanistan. They were all the comradery, brothers in foxholes kind of thing, a glorification of militarism so ubiquitous after WWII but done in by the antiwar character of the US Army in Vietnam. The piece is completely cynical since there is almost no news coverage of the several US wars, especially in Iraq & Afghanistan.

The statements about Kashmir coming from the EU, Sweden, Angela Merkel, Jeremy Corbyn are not impressive but cover a multitude of concessions to Indian colonialism. Half-assed statements shaking the naughty finger at India for the occupation are worthless when they’re not backed up with sanctions, when they make the conflict a territorial dispute between India & Pakistan & omit the Kashmiri struggle against colonial occupation, when they are used to whitewash substantial trade, defense, scientific, academic deals with India, or when they are used to pander to Hindutva voters in the UK.

Governments have issued similar kinds of meaningless statements about Palestinians, the Uyghur, & Rohingya & they haven’t done one damn thing to back those statements up. They still do business with Israel, China, & Burma as they will continue to do business with India. They don’t deserve praise for such compromises when genocide is at stake. Our measure should be human rights principles & the demands of Kashmiris, not the expediencies of governments.

Scene from the occupation: it’s not hard to imagine the extreme discomfort & fear this Kashmiri woman in Bijbehara felt as she walked past these paramilitary soldiers. Women not only fear for their own safety when the occupying army ogles, harasses, intimidates, & uses rape as a weapon of occupation, but they fear for their children who are being targeted & lest their husbands, brothers, fathers be arrested.

StandWithTheWomenOfKashmir

Demand the immediate release of all political prisoners & the immediate, unconditional withdrawal of all Indian forces from Kashmir.

(Photo by Mukhtar Khan/Associated Press, October 2019)