How the Indian occupying Army enforces the corona quarantine in Kashmir: 20 people who sustained pellet injuries (including a woman & one young man with pellets in both eyes) & four people with bullet injuries were admitted to hospital after protests near Pulwama against the killing of Riyaz Naikoo & the destruction of several family homes.
Stand with Kashmiris & demand the immediate, unconditional withdrawal of all Indian forces from Kashmir.

“My uncle is on a ventilator with Coronavirus in the hospital. He is old & has several co-morbid conditions. With internet & private phone services blocked in Kashmir, there’s no way to know how he’s doing. Father tries hard not to break down on phone. This is life in Kashmir.”
–Tweeted by Sameer Rashid Bhat @sameeric

“A lockdown within a lockdown. A siege upon siege. The silencing of Kashmir, in the midst of a pandemic, is terrifying.”
–Kashmiri writer Mirza Waheed

On February 23, 2020, 25-year-old Ahmaud Arbery was jogging in the Georgia town where he lived when two vigilantes seeing a Black man running assumed he was running from the scene of a crime. They hunted him down in their pickup truck & gunned him down with a shotgun. They claimed he resembled night video footage of a burglar in several house robberies in the area although there were no police reports of any such burglaries. In the eleven weeks since he was murdered, the police & district attorney have taken no action against the vigilantes & attribute their inaction to the corona lockdown, forgetting that the lockdown has only been in place less four weeks.
Georgia was among the first states to end the lockdown & those who demand justice for Ahmaud have been holding protests demanding prosecution of the assailants.
By all accounts, including moving testimony by his mother, Ahmaud was a kind, loving person & an athletic man. It is against the law for people to take the law into their own hands & form vigilante teams to hunt & shoot down suspects like animals & it is particularly dangerous when the suspect is Black & the vigilantes are white supremacists. May he Rest In Peace whilst we demand justice for this unspeakable & racist crime.
#StandWithAhmaudArbery & demand his murderers be brought to justice.
(Photo is Ahmaud Arbery)

One day, Omar Abdullah tweeted that it was ‘unbelievably cruel & retrograde’ to extend the detention of Mehbooba Mufti in five-star spa-like conditions. The next day, he tweeted that ‘Riyaz Naikoo’s destiny was decided the moment he picked up the gun & adopted the path of violence & terror’. Actually, Riyaz Naikoo’s destiny was decided by the Indian occupation & when he watched his young friends get hauled off to torture centers of decidedly less comfort than Mufti’s luxury accommodations. Every time Omar opens his mouth to speak, the entire world loses something of its intelligence quotient.

Many report that violent protests erupted in Kashmir in response to the gunning down of Riyaz Naikoo. Don’t they mean that the Indian Army attacked unarmed protesters who were throwing rocks at armored vehicles? In an occupation, the violence always comes from the oppressor army. Our language should reflect those actual power relations.

(Posted May 7, 2020)

Just found out that none of my posts appear on Twitter even though they have long been set to automatically transfer. I’m not crazy for the gestalt of Twitter since discussions are more like pissing contests so I use it mainly for news. I felt immense pride when India demanded Twitter suspend my account but was glad when Twitter didn’t. Now I’m wondering if they found another way to curtail free speech. Not to be daunted, I will simply post directly.

(Posted May 6, 2020)

The NY Times published an article today on the gunning down of Riyaz Naikoo which called his death one of the most significant recent victories for Indian troops in India’s dispute with Pakistan over Kashmir. It suggested that the struggle for independence is ‘leaderless’ now that a leading figure in armed resistance has been killed & said Kashmiris have ‘often supported a brutal fight for independence’. How many idiocies can you pile into one article?
Riyaz Naikoo was home visiting his sick mother when the Indian Army received a tip that he was in town. They set up a cordon & bombarded the town with heavy artillery for several hours, destroying several homes, terrifying unarmed residents, & killing Riyaz. How can such brutality & cowardice be considered a significant victory especially when thousands of outraged, unarmed, & entirely fearless protesters later came out to bombard army vehicles with stones? How can the NY Times continue to subordinate the Kashmiri freedom struggle to a fictitious narrative about Kashmir being a disputed territory between India & Pakistan when one million troops occupy & perpetrate violence against Kashmiris & are not amassed on the Pakistan border?
Guerrilla warfare is a minority political perspective within the broader Kashmiri freedom struggle. There are tens of thousands of activists protesting, organizing, writing, campaigning against human rights crimes, against forcible disappearances, against incarceration & torture (including of young children), against mass rape as a weapon of occupation. What about those activists? Are they left leaderless & floundering now that India has engaged in another incident of brute force? Get real.
As for Kashmiris supporting a brutal fight for self-determination, how can the writers talk such rubbish after the 2019 lockdown, after all the arrests & torture of kids, after Kunan-Poshpora, after over eight thousand forcible disappearances, & thousands of mass graves with unidentified bodies? What is so brutal about Kashmiri popular resistance to all that? Stone pelters? A handful of armed militants?
The NY Times did not report on the Kashmiri struggle until compelled to by Kashmiri activists on social media as a way to get ahead of the narrative. Its primary concern is not Kashmiri self-determination but protecting US economic, military, & political relations with India. Its reporting will reflect that.
Speaking of a brutal fight, this photo from May 14, 2019 is Indian paramilitary soldiers vandalizing bikes outside a college in Srinagar where students were protesting the rape of a 3-year-old girl..
(Photo is by Pulitzer prize winner Dar Yasin, posted May 6, 2020)

You don’t have to agree with the strategy of guerrilla warfare to join Kashmiris in honoring the life of Riyaz Naikoo who was killed today in a hunt to kill operation in his hometown. He was cornered & killed by Indian occupying forces while visiting his mother who was ill. He had been a mathematics teacher who turned militant after being traumatized watching his friends get hauled off to torture centers. Before the onslaught of extreme violence by the Indian Army, he didn’t see the other options to armed militancy. He once said, “Occupation bullets do not make a distinction between civilians & fighters, nor do its prisons.” He could be an armed militant or an apolitical civilian but the Indian Army makes no distinctions when it comes to dispensing violence.
His death has set off protests in Pulwama with many young protesters going after army vehicles with a barrage of stones. Many have been reported injured. There are videos of families within their homes cowering on the floor from the rain of army bullets. India has responded by suspending all internet & phone communication & the massive deployment of troops.
Stand with Kashmiris & demand the immediate, unconditional withdrawal of all Indian forces from Pulwama & from all of Kashmir. May Riyaz Naikoo Rest In Peace.
(Photo is Rihaz Naikoo, May 6, 2020)