This bereft Syrian man is Ismail Al-Hani. He lives in a refugee tent because of Syrian & Russian scorched earth bombing. Three of his children were killed in the bombing & he is holding up a Caesar photo of his fourth son who was tortured to death in Assad’s gulag. Imagine how it feels for him to be labeled a terrorist by thousands of erstwhile antiwar activists & socialists who joined with fascists, Islamophobes, & anti-Semites to vilify the Syrian Arab Spring in its uprising against the Assad police state.
Stand with Ismail Al-Hani & demand the immediate, unconditional withdrawal of all foreign military forces & mercenaries from Syria.
(Photo from several sources)
On June 20th, police arrested Naseema Akhtar in the Kulgam district of south Kashmir accusing her of involvement in ‘recruiting militants & arranging arms’ for them. She was arrested under the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA). Her family reports that the police raided her home & arrested her after setting up a military operation in the district. They were also hoping to arrest her daughter Rafeeqa who they have been hunting down since 2018 for alleged involvement in ‘terrorist’ activities. If the daughter was there, she eluded capture by the police. Naseema is also the mother of Tawseef Ahmed Sheikh, a militant killed by Indian forces in May 2018, & the sister of Abbas Sheikh who has been a militant since 2015.
Kashmir Civitas tweeted that ‘This is not an isolated case. People are being harassed, intimidated, assaulted & arrested everyday by Indian state forces in Kashmir. Houses are raided & ransacked all the time. It’s just that nothing gets reported because journalists have been badly silenced in Kashmir.” Many may be silenced by being harassed, intimidated, assaulted, & arrested but many continue to speak out & document the criminality of the occupation.
There needs to be an international defense case demanding the release of Naseema Akhtar & all Kashmiri political prisoners. We can participate by posting our protests against her arrest & demanding her immediate release.
(Photo of Naseema Akhtar from The Kashmir Walla)
When the J&K police & Indian Army special forces do their chest-thumping about taking out ‘terrorists’, this is who they’re talking about. Mohsin Khandwa was a 17-year-old kid who was identified as armed & dangerous & killed in the June 21st military operation in Zadibal, Srinagar which destroyed so many homes & killed a 13-year-old boy. The police reported that he joined the militancy on May 26th so according to them he wasn’t even active a month. His family contradicts the police because Mohsin was in jail during some of that time.
The police & army killed three young men that day–young Mohsin along with 18-year-old Shakoor Ahmad Lango & 24-year-old Shahid Ahmad Bhat. Not that they can be believed, but police said they recovered one AK-47 rifle & two pistols from the three young men. And with that pitiful arsenal they were considered a threat that required bazookas & other high explosive weapons? That required vandalizing, looting, & destroying several family homes amidst a deadly pandemic? That caused the death of a little boy from burns over 90-percent of his body?
There’s no certainty about the scale of armed resistance in Kashmir. There is certainty that it would not exist if there weren’t nearly a million troops, including entire regiments of special forces, to terrorize the civilian population.
May Shakoor, Shahid, & Mohsin Rest In Peace. Honor their lives by demanding the immediate, unconditional withdrawal of all Indian forces from Kashmir.
(Photo is Mohsin Khandwa)
Are Kashmiris saying that some, if not most, of these military operations to hunt down militants are contrived & false accusations? That there are no armed young people (or at least not many) & that the operations are solely a means to terrorize civilians?
Following the colonial-settler model of Israeli settlements, India has granted citizenship rights to about 25,000 to change the demographics of Kashmir.
‘From alcohol to prostitution, there’s nothing the Indian State won’t use as a weapon of war against us. The colonizer knows that a society that is materialistic or hedonistic cannot lead the struggle of liberation. Cultural imperialism precedes settler colonialism.’
–Ahmed Bin Qasim
Kashmiris are protesting the trafficking of drugs to their youth by the Indian Army & the establishment of over 60 liquor stores in cities & villages because they believe the Indian government is attempting to lure their children into addiction & subvert Muslim culture which bans alcohol. Even if you’re a boozehound & want ready access to whiskey, you know their fears are well-founded. It was a tactic employed against Native Americans, against the Black community, against South Africans, against Aborigines in Australia. Their opposition is not some kind of blue-nosed prohibition thing. It is to protect their children & their culture & should be supported 100-percent. Alcohol was banned in Gujarat, India in 1961 to honor Gandhi. It should be banned in Kashmir to honor the tens of thousands who have been injured, disabled, killed in their struggle for self-determination.
