As my long-suffering readers can see, I am attempting to catch up the past several months of neglecting my blog. Facebook does not make that process easy so there is a bit of a mangle in terms of the sequence of posts by date. That is because Facebook is erratic in bringing up archives & one must go over them several times. This concludes my posts from June 2020 although there may be a stray few which I catch in editing. I will commit to completing July, August, & September in the next couple of days. Thank you for your patience. That is, if any of you are still following the blog after such a long absence.

BDS4Kashmir tweeted this list of Indian companies which ‘are in cahoots’ with the Indian Army engaged in heinous crimes against Kashmiris.
Boycott these companies
Divest from them
Demand sanctions against them

A Kashmiri who I follow on Twitter tweeted, ‘I wish Kashmiri people were born black. At least today they would have hope that their lives matter.’ It’s a cynical comment unworthy of any Kashmiri since solidarity with the oppressed has been a hallmark of their own struggle. But it wasn’t meant to join the ‘all lives matter’ campaign negating Black political power so much as it was a statement of utter frustration that Kashmiris are sustaining genocide & there is no consistent & outspoken international campaign to defend them.
Their trauma & suffering under occupation are acute as they endure the most heinous crimes, including against their children. We cannot chastise Kashmiris for their frustration but must commit to building an international campaign to demand the immediate, unconditional withdrawal of all Indian forces from Kashmir. The onus is on us.

A preferred way for Hindutva creeps to harass Kashmiris on social media is with the smile emoticon on posts about Kashmiri trauma. When I kick their ugly asses to Blockland, I like to put a shit-eating grin on my face too.

Everything but the GPS coordinates:
“After seeing the #BlackLivesMatterUK protestors taking down the statue of slave trader Edward Colston, I am hoping they don’t find out about Mahatma Gandhi being a racist & hope they don’t find about his statue in Manchester located at Cathedral Yard, Manchester, post code: M3 1SX.”
–Tweeted by Mehran Khan مہران خان @mehrankhan89

The Kashmir Stories on Twitter are showcasing stories from the occupation to educate about its heinous & depraved character. They told the story today of a young mother named Saleema whose 17-year-old son Osaib Altaf Marazi was the first casualty of the August 5th, 2019 lockdown of Kashmir. She remains in a deep depression & silence grieving his loss. But her grief has been compounded by the trauma of how her son died & the fact that Indian authorities & the J&K police denied his death & would not issue a death certificate for four months. Whilst grieving, his family had to wrangle with the police & the courts for a death certificate. Despite the presence of one-million Indian troops enforcing the lockdown, thousands attended his funeral prayers. His grandmother Noora Begum said, “My Osaib was a budding flower. By shamelessly denying his death, is the government trying to say that he never lived? That he was never born?”
Osaib was a kid who loved to travel, to take selfies, & to play cricket. On the morning of August 5th, the day India abrogated Kashmir’s special status, he went with his friends to a field nearby his home to play cricket in the town of Palpora on the outskirts of Srinagar. Since the family does not have a TV & mobile, landline & internet services were shut down, they didn’t know about the lockdown or that Indian paramilitary troops were setting up roadblocks & checkpoints to enforce it.
At the cricket field, the boys were surrounded by CRPF paramilitary forces who began chasing them off the field. As they came to a footbridge over a river, CRPF troops coming from both sides of the bridge cornered them & in fear for their lives the boys jumped into the river. Young Osaib couldn’t swim & remained in the water holding on to something for at least twenty-minutes. The other boys who were present told the family that one of the CRPF guys hit his head & hands with a truncheon & he slipped into the water & drowned. That isn’t just a drowning. It’s murder.
For months, Indian authorities denied there were any casualties from the lockdown but Osaib & the grief of his entire family speak to the utter barbarity of the occupation of Kashmir. May our young brother Rest In Peace.
Video interview with Osaib’s father Mohammad Altaf Marazi on the death of his son:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=goL7RMQ9yEk

(Photo of Osaib Altaf Marazi by Safwat Zargar)

Ahmed Bin Qasim reports that Kashmiri political prisoner Hina Bashir Beigh who tested positive for corona came into contact with his mother & other political prisoners in Tihar Prison. The National Investigation Agency (NIA) had Hina in custody & according to Indian media reports knew she was infected when they shifted her to Tihar. Authorities do not know who within the NIA infected Hina with corona nor do they know who she may have infected in Tihar.
(Photo is Hina Bashir Beigh)

Indian nationalist media has a canned formula for reporting the almost daily hunt to kill military operations in Kashmir. They all have inflammatory headlines about the number of ‘terrorists’ killed but the articles include few other details. As they report it, they amass a joint force of J&K police & army special forces of the 44 RR and CRPF after a tipoff that there are militants in the area. The gunfight only begins when a couple terrorists open fire on the troops.
This is a photo from the military operation today in Pinjura village in the Shopian district. One has to be careful not to confuse it with the military operation yesterday in Shopian. We don’t know if there were militants in the area or not since the operations are so frequent that it would suggest Kashmir is riddled with guerrilla forces when it is not. In fact, these operations include aggressive house to house searches rousing Kashmiri families from their sleep in the middle of the night to harass them. That harassment is what these operations are about, not hunting down ‘terrorists’. They include razing homes & making civilians homeless (in the middle of a deadly pandemic, no less), killing livestock, killing civilians like little 13-year-old Basim Aijaz who burned to death a few weeks ago in the operation in Nawakadal, Srinagar.
Stand with Kashmiris & demand the immediate, unconditional withdrawal of all Indian forces from Kashmir. Go home, India, go home!
(Photo by Kamran Yousuf)

Nationalists are lynching Muslims in India for ‘dishonoring’ cows but the Indian Army is killing cows during hunt to kill operations in Kashmir. This poor animal was killed in the operation today in Pinjura village, Shopian. You don’t have to hold cows as sacred or with special powers to consider it monstrous to kill them in such a cruel way–first for the cows but also because families depend on them for milk.
(Photographer not yet identified, from the Twitter wall of Kashmiri journalist Anees Zargar)