It is reported on Twitter that protests against the Citizenship Act in India reverberate with slogans for Kashmir. As one Kashmiri in India said, “So they wanted to Indianize Kashmir. Just wait and watch the Kashmirization of India now.”
Daily Archives: December 16, 2019
Two tweets about the brutal attacks by Delhi police on students at Jamia Millia University in New Delhi protesting the legalization of marginalizing & persecuting Muslims:
“Police has entered in Jamia Millia campus from all sides and is continuously firing tear gas shells. Many students and locals are injured. The whole area has been cordoned off. It is time we expose this anti-Muslim character of Delhi Police. Delhi Police must stop.”
–tweeted by Kawalpreet Kaur @kawalpreetdu
“These scenes of police brutality inside Jamia Millia are straight from the manual of Third Reich. Police barging inside the library, masjid and canteen to beat up students. Tear gas, pepper gas, stun grenades, lathis. Shoes and blood on the ground. Ye Elahi reham.”
–tweeted by Suaid Ahmad @SuaidAhmad
“My brother was an infant when he was detained alongside our mother. He is Kashmir’s youngest political prisoner, jailed at a time when he couldn’t spell his own name. In prison, when mother asked for baby-food, Indian authorities denied it, saying he wasn’t on records.”
–tweeted by Ahmed Bin Qasim
Did I mention that in my nun days at no time did anyone hassle me about my garb? With a bonnet & a veil on my head I had a lot more covering than a hijab. Some Catholic orders wear flying buttresses on their heads. When we were out in public, we were treated like rock stars, not vilified as bots controlled by men & religion. Women have the right to wear what they choose without being patronized as the ventriloquist dummies of husbands & imams.
The longer the siege in Kashmir goes on & the less the news coverage, the higher everyone’s anxiety levels go about what is happening to the remarkable people of Kashmir. India is hoping we’ll tire of the wait & go away. But India cannot hope to humiliate or exhaust the spirit of azaadi, of Kashmiri resistance & their struggle for freedom. We don’t know if we will ever meet our Kashmiri friends on social media again. But we want them, & quite frankly, we want India to know that we will never go away, that we will stand with Kashmir until the last Indian troop has been withdrawn & Kashmiris have finally won freedom & self-determination.
Deforestation, which is destroying the Amazon & many other regions, is a key feature of India’s ‘development’ plans for Kashmir. The occupation of Kashmir is an environmental issue.
https://www.thethirdpole.net/en/2019/12/12/kashmirs-forests-face-the-axe/?
Given the time I spend keeping up with several freedom struggles, I shortchange many important struggles that require attention. I also don’t keep up my work & Facebook wall as a 2020 US presidential candidate. In the scale of things, I think I’m making the right choices with my time & truly appreciate that without my promoting it, many of you continue to ‘like’ that wall.
This is a useful article (with limited political perspectives) about the toll the Indian siege against Kashmir is taking on India & Pakistan’s economies. One would think the devastation caused on the Kashmiri economy would at least merit mention. What’s useful about it is that India’s economy was already in a severe crisis before the siege. Part of the purpose of the siege was to strengthen India’s tanking economy by unbridled exploitation of Kashmiri natural resources. But militarism is an immense drain on the system. That doesn’t mean Indian capitalism will just collapse but that is why it is resorting to fascism. This reality is what makes the protests in India & the international protests in solidarity with Kashmir & against CAB & NRC of such monumental importance.
The protests in India against legalizing persecution of Muslims are extremely important internationally & in the struggle against the Islamophobic ‘war on terror’. They are linked inextricably & holistically to the struggle of Kashmiris who are in their majority Muslims. We cannot allow our attention to be withdrawn from the occupation but in our campaigning against CAB & NRC must integrate demands for the immediate withdrawal of troops from Kashmir & from everywhere else they are being deployed in India, including on campuses firing tear gas at student protesters.
News reporting from Kashmir is down to a trickle; most of us have no way of knowing what is going on. But in over four months of lockdown, we know the situation is extremely dire & we cannot relax our vigilance & attention. We should remember that one way antiwar opposition is thwarted is by news blackouts on the wars in Afghanistan, Yemen, Somalia, Iraq, Libya, East Timor, Sri Lanka, even Syria. We cannot be daunted by the overwhelming violence in so many countries but need to take a holistic approach, knowing all these struggles are interconnected militarily & ideologically. Our solidarity should unite in action all these struggles against war, occupation, genocide. That is why the most imperative political mission of our times is to rebuild the international antiwar movement. The forces to do that will be drawn from these struggles.
“When injustice becomes law, resistance becomes duty.”—Thomas Jefferson
(“Going on his statement his slaves would have been within their rights to rebel. It doesn’t seem he thought it through.” –Tony Dewberry)