Trump says his visit to India is going to be the ‘biggest event they’ve ever had in India’. Indian independence from 190 years of British colonialism pales in comparison to the ‘Taj Mahal love story’ between Modi & Trump. The occupation & lockdown of Kashmir & the massive protests against persecution of Muslims don’t even register in his limited imagination. Anything that’s more than a foot from his pea brain doesn’t register in his imagination. And we’re expected to eat it & sing ‘hail to the chief’!

Media often cites the International Rescue Committee on questions related to wars. But human rights activists should vet every word & claim out of that organization’s mouth. The trustees, board of directors, & officers are a who’s who of war criminals including Kissinger, Madeleine Albright, Colin Powell, Condoleezza Rice. It should be called Kissinger’s charity & when he’s involved it likely serves less charitable purposes & more as a cover for CIA operatives & nefarious activities. They stick a few on the board like former UN human rights chief Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein in the same way the Nobel Peace Prize has a handful of human rights types among a roster of war criminals & genocidaires like Kissinger & Suu Kyi. The only one they’re missing in Pol Pot but he’s right up their alley.

In February 2017, I posted this video tribute by Kashmiri rapper MC Kash to Maqbool Bhat & Afzal Guru (who were both hung in an Indian prison) asking that their remains be released so they can be buried with dignity in their homeland. Today, I was informed this violates community standards because it praises or supports dangerous individuals. Dangerous defined as “terrorist activity, organized hate or violence, mass or serial murder, human trafficking, criminal or harmful activity”. One government’s dangerous individuals are martyrs & freedom fighters to eight million Kashmiris.

Maqbool Bhat said: “For us, azadi means not just getting rid of foreign occupation of our beloved motherland but also to remove hunger, poverty, ignorance & disease & to overcome economic & social devastation. One day we will achieve that. Azadi.” Is that statement what the censors find so dangerous? Because to most of us not steeped in Hindutva ideology, the only thing it endangers is a brutal, genocidal occupation.

Taj Mahal: a love story

By Mir Suhail Qadiri

An educational on Kunan Poshpora from Toronto For Kashmir:

Rollie Mukherjee remembers Kunan Poshpora:
*****

Trigger Warning: Do You Remember Kunan Poshpora?

The night of 23rd February 1991 will forever be haunting the people of Kashmir as one of the darkest and most brutal incidents of war crime. Over 300 army men raped over 100 women and tortured nearly 200 men through the night. Men were taken out and beaten, humiliated, electrocuted while the women, children (as young as 8) and old (even grandmothers) were brutally raped in their own homes.

The book “Do you remember Kunan Poshpora?” brought out by five women activists who grew up in the aftermath of the violence bring together records and testimonies from the horror of the night and the stigma, apathy, indifference that the survivors had to go though for decades and their fight for justice.

According to the survivors, “rape” is not the apt word to describe what was done to them; it was not rape – it was war. A war that did not spare minors, disabled women, pregnant women, mothers, grandmothers. House after house, had the same horror story of 5 to 6 army men barging in with guns and liquor bottles, separating the women and raping them at gun point. In some houses, one or two women and in some an entire household of women were brutalised, most in front of other women.

One of the survivors, who was in her advanced state of pregnancy gave birth to her baby with a fractured arm, three days after. Her father narrates how his grandchild became a part of war even before coming into this world!

While each testimony will shred our hearts to pieces, the worst was yet to come for these women. The army denied of any such incident, the government denied, the courts, and so did majority of Indians who called it a propaganda by militants. Despite their bloodied clothes and bruised and bite marks ridden bodies bearing witness to the dreaded night, they were questioned over and again and asked to produce more proofs.

It took 23 years for the Supreme Court of India to acknowledge that the mass rape did happen! But even till date the justice eludes..

Those who raped and tortured these women, men and children did it with impunity, as a part of their war tactics to occupy and subjugate the people of Kashmir, they did it in their uniforms and as many testimonies confirm, with their commanding officer just a few metres away shouting to keep the noise down!

As much as the Indian state, judiciary and defense forces would want to forget 23rd February and wipe it off their memories, the women of Kashmir refuse to let them go unaccountable. We stand with the women of Kashmir who have over the years been made to keep the memory of the traumatic night alive, who have survived, yet not been allowed to forget the tiniest of detials of the brutalities done to their bodies, their lives, their memories, as they observe today, February 23rd as Kashmiri Women’s Resistance Day! Pakistan and India people’s forum for peace and democracy forum for peace and democracy….@pipfpd

Source: https://antiserious.com/that-night-in-kunan-poshpora-33b48d?

#KashmirCaged
#StandWithKashmir
#EndOccupation..

Kashmiri women sing an uncompromising Kashmiri version of the Italian anti-fascist song “Bella Ciao”.

Remembering Kunan Poshpora: 29 years ago today, a special unit of the Indian Army entered the twin villages of Kunan & Poshpora, Kashmir. They took all of the men out of their homes where they tortured & assaulted them. About 100 women, from the ages of 13 to 80, including those with disabilities & those who were pregnant, were brutally gang raped. Mothers & grandmothers raped in front of their children, children raped in front of their mothers & grandmothers. There has never been justice for the men & women of Kunan Poshpora because rape is an orchestrated weapon of war in occupied Kashmir.

Kashmiri women have documented this monstrous human rights & women’s right crime & are leading the international struggle against armies using rape as a method of social domination in war & occupation. They have not ceased to demand justice from the Indian Army & government, including the prosecution of the 125 army personnel involved.

Commemorating Kunan Poshpora is not just to share the grief but to stand with those demanding the Indian Army answer for these crimes in a court of law, an international court if that is necessary.

“Every eye here has a tear which tells the gloomy tale of extreme pain and crippling sadness….
A Tear which has soaked every soul here….
A Tear which has drenched aspirations …
A Tear which has washed smile away…and,
Yet you brazenly brag about happiness all around here.”

–Kashmiri Tahir Khan Hamidi