Daily Archives: December 17, 2019
“Hope more people in India get to understand from their growing experience of protests that “stone-pelter” is a term used by the Indian State and media to demonise the unarmed protester in Kashmir. We saw how stones are being thrown either by “riot-control” cops at people, or by protesters prevented from protesting by the overwhelming force of armed police, as a civil form of defending their inalienable right to protest against tyranny.”
–Satyadeep Satya
Making Kashmir a territorial dispute between Pakistan & India is one of the most pernicious evasions & denials of Kashmiri self-determination ever invented.
It’s worth noting that the student protesters at Islamia College in Srinagar when the Indian journalist was attacked by police were protesting against India’s Citizenship Act. The spirit of azaadi is imbued with the spirit of solidarity.
If all you know about India is the movie “Slumdog Millionaire” & the IT revolution, you’ve been in for a rude awakening.
“The Fate of Murderers and Killers:
Jalil Andrabi—was a prominent Kashmiri human rights lawyer and pro independence political activist.
On March 8, 1996, Andrabi was detained in Srinagar by Major Avtar Singh, of the 35th Rashtriya Rifles unit of the Indian army. Three weeks later, Andrabi’s body was found floating in the Jhelum River; an autopsy showed that he had been killed days after his arrest. A case is pending adjudication in a Budgam court against Major Avtar Singh.
On June 9, 2012, Avtar Singh, 47, then living in Selma, California, killed his wife, 3-year-old Jay Singh, and 15-year-old Kinwaljeet “Aryan” Singh, and seriously wounded his 17-year-old son Kanwarpal “Chris” Singh with a handgun. He called police to admit the killings and then shot and killed himself. The surviving son had severe head injuries. He was taken off life support in Community Regional Medical Center at Selma and died on June 14.”
–Kashmiri Ashraf Bhat
This article is interesting for a whole lot of reasons: first, it’s one of the only accounts directly from Kashmir in the past month. It reports a current student protest in Srinagar, suggesting that nearly a million Indian jackboots have not cowed the spirit of azaadi & resistance. The journalist Azaan Javaid was assaulted by Kashmiri police in trying to cover that protest, an assault which took place in the presence of 30 to 40 other journalists & photographers. Since Kashmiri journalists are unable to work, those must be from international media.
Since Javaid was assaulted, we can be certain that other foreign journalists in Kashmir fear for their lives under the lockdown & may be unwilling to go into the streets to report any protests. India may not yet have adopted the US & Syrian model of embedding journalists with the military to train them as propagandists. But the presence of journalists in Kashmir suggests that India may be making it impossible for them to file stories (although they could fly to India to do so) or that international media is not publishing their reports in order to reimpose a news blackout.
India’s Gangster Act is not new but is now being enforced to prosecute “stray anti-social elements who incite violence & post comments that may disturb peace” on social media. This is a move toward shutting out Indian dissidents from social media, just as they shut down all telecommunications in Kashmir. The only way out of this stampede toward fascism is to unite the struggles of Indian Muslims, the oppressed castes, & other Indians to the struggle for Kashmiri self-determination. That’s not a pipe dream; it’s an imperative.
In contrast to Indian capitalism’s carefully planned & speedily executed colonial exploitation of Kashmir, there are the ideologues & politicians like Amit Shah shooting off their mouthes talking trash & insipidities that would make even the stinking corpse of Goebbels turn over in his grave. Maybe because it worked so well for Assad propagandists, he thinks dragging out the Muslim terrorist thing will persuade others that human rights in western countries are different than human rights in India. May he be reminded that human rights in western countries do not include refugees, immigrant workers, Blacks, Latinos, Native Americans, Indigenous tribes, minority ethnic groups, Muslims, & many others. This guy is a first class ass.
It’s just alarming how fast Indian capitalists are economically colonizing Kashmir. They’re moving in at a speed that suggests they’ve planned this out for a long time & Kashmiris must be silenced & repressed violently to effectuate their plans. That’s why the lockdown is so severe & complete.
This second article is how India is confiscating land for military use since they cannot hope to destroy Kashmiri resistance, no matter the degree of violent repression. So a strong military presence will be essential: https://scroll.in/article/946888/under-presidents-rule-jammu-kashmir-is-axing-1471-trees-in-designated-forests?
https://kashmirobserver.net/2019/12/12/land-identified-for-industrial-estates-in-jk/amp/?