Fifteen-year-old Zaid Fadl Qaysia was shot to death & four other young men were injured this morning by Israeli occupying forces who raided the Al Fawwar refugee camp near Hebron in the West Bank. It is common for Israeli forces to raid refugee camps & villages as a strategy of occupation & genocide. Young Zaid was standing on a rooftop watching the raid on the camp when he was shot in the head & killed.
Palestinian solidarity has been impacted by Assadism & has been quiescent at a time of escalating genocide & ethnic cleansing. Because of its political affinities with the anti-colonial struggle in Kashmir, both freedom struggles can be considerably strengthened by integrating them in solidarity activities, as many are already doing.
May our little brother Rest In Peace.
(Photo is Zaid Fadi Qaysia, posted May 13, 2020)
May Mehrajudin Shah, the young civilian man in Budgam, Kashmir shot dead today by Indian occupying soldiers, Rest In Peace.
Demand the immediate, unconditional withdrawal of all Indian forces from Kashmir.
Yesterday, I thought about my countless, actually thousands of FB friends who campaign for human rights for Kashmiris, Palestinians, Rohingya, Uyghur, Syrians, Afghans, Yemenis, Somalians, Iraqis, Blacks, Latinos, Native Americans, refugees & realized how honored I am to know you all. I include of course Kashmiri, Palestinian, Rohingya, Uyghur, Syrian, & other activists on the front lines of oppression. My life is enriched a kazillion times by your commitments & work.
Two Indian special forces stationed in Anantnag, Kashmir committed suicide this morning. One left a note saying “I am afraid I may have Corona.” The fact that one million soldiers were deployed in Kashmir without being screened speaks to the barbarity of the occupation & the reckless disregard of civilians–just as we see with US-NATO, Iranian, Russian, Syrian, Saudi, Burmese military operations.
Someone has asked me why I write so much about Kashmir since I am not Kashmiri. When Kashmiri activists first asked me to study & write about their struggle, I didn’t know one thing about it, including where Kashmir was on a map. It became clear to me in studying that it was a monumentally important freedom struggle but when I began writing about it few other non-Kashmiris were & fewer knew anything about the struggle. Many probably thought it was our particular hobby horse, a way to stand out amidst all the causes on social media. But as human rights activists, we aren’t that venal or self-aggrandizing. We wrote about it because of its singular political importance & power.
Given the importance of India in international politics, the violence of its aggressions in Kashmir, & the power of Kashmiri resistance, the Kashmiri freedom struggle is now center stage in international politics & has become recognized as such. It is an anti-colonial struggle that resonates powerfully with the struggle of Palestinians & is part of the political struggle against the so-called ‘war on terror’ which involves all the issues of war & genocide. All of us must understand its complexities & find a way to stand in solidarity. That is the simple answer to why I write so much about Kashmir along with my commitment to building an international solidarity movement comparable to that for the Vietnamese. All the other hundreds of activists who campaign for Kashmir, Palestine, Syria, the Rohingya, Uyghur, & against wars know exactly where I’m coming from.
Israeli & Indian military officials portray stone pelters as antisocial lawless elements & have imposed draconian sentences on them. A Palestinian stone pelter can be sentenced to 20 years in prison; in Kashmir, they are detained & often tortured under the Public Safety Act. Most in both Palestine & Kashmir are working class young men & boys who function as civilian defense guards for protesters against heavily armed troops.
This August 2019 photo by Pulitzer winning photojournalist Dar Yasin shows two young guys in Haal village south of Srinagar at the funeral procession/protest of a teenage boy. There’s no criminality or bravado evident in these young men. It’s clear they’re exhausted by the predations of occupation & by the losses they face on a daily basis. Israeli & Indian officials try to draw parallels between stone pelting & terrorism but the real terrorism is that of occupation, using heavy artillery, pellet guns, snipers, tear gas, & live ammo to engage in destruction of homes & property, mass rape, forcible disappearances, extrajudicial killings, mass arrests especially of young men. Stone pelting to draw off the occupying armies from shooting down unarmed protesters is the self-defense of the oppressed & has nothing in common with terrorism.
Stand with Kashmir. Stand with Palestine. They have a right to defend themselves by any means necessary.
(Photo by Dar Yasn/AP)
