Monthly Archives: September 2020
While Indian nationalists are breaking their Chinese-made TVs, hanging effigies of Chinese president Xi, & throwing pissing parties over the confrontation in Galwan Valley, Indian occupying forces in Kashmir continue their endless hunt to kill operations vandalizing & destroying homes, & killing young men under the guise of fighting terrorism. Eight young men have been killed since yesterday in two separate military operations in Pampore & Shopian.
In the Pampore operation, two of the militants entered a nearby mosque to take refuge. The army set up a cordon around the mosque throughout the night & used tear gas shells to force them out claiming they maintained the sanctity of the mosque. They don’t bother to report how the young men were killed if the soldiers respected the sanctity of the mosque.
The Indian Army uses the excuse of hunting armed militants to justify these almost daily military operations with high explosive weapons in residential areas. There are no reports of wide-scale terrorist activity in Kashmir. The operations are primarily intended to terrorize civilians.
Stand with Kashmiris & demand the immediate, unconditional withdrawal of all Indian forces from Kashmir.
(Photo of confrontation in Pampore by Basit Zargar)
Atta Mohammad Khan died in January 2016 at the age of 75. He was the gravedigger in his village Bimyar, Chahal, near the Line of Control about 80 km from Srinagar. He was honored by Kashmiris when he died including by the Association of Parents of Disappeared Persons (APDP) which investigates the whereabouts of those forcibly disappeared & has documented 7,000 unmarked graves in several parts of Kashmir.
The APDP said, “Atta Mohammad was one brave Kashmiri who despite an atmosphere of militarisation & repression continued to speak truth. In the last 25 years of violent repression, Atta Mohammad in his village received 235 unidentified bullet ridden dead bodies, most of whom the armed forces claimed were militants killed in encounters. This included the dead body of a six-month old baby girl….Atta Mohammad was amongst very few people who came out in the open to testify as witness. He was perhaps the only grave digger who did not mind being identified by his name publicly despite being intimidated by the police. He was very keen that his testimony should have been used by the government for conducting a credible investigation into the phenomenon of unmarked graves in Jammu & Kashmir.”
In “Buried Evidence”, Atta Mohammad described his pain in preparing the bodies for burial: “I have been terrorized by this task that was forced upon me. My nights are tormented & I cannot sleep, the bodies & graves appear & reappear in my dreams. My heart is weak from this labour. I have tried to remember all this… the sound of the earth as I covered the graves… bodies & faces that were mutilated… mothers who would never find their sons. My memory is an obligation. My memory is my contribution. I am tired, I am so very tired.”
We should take a moment to honor Atta Mohammad for his contributions to Kashmiri & human freedom. May he Rest In Peace.
Atta Mohammad in his own words in ‘The gravedigger’s tale’: https://www.hindustantimes.com/…/story…
“The death of a very tired man’ about Atta Mohammad: https://www.thestatesman.com/india/the-death-of-a-very-tired-man-117794.html?
(Photo of Atta Mohammad by Yawar Nazir/Getty Images)
Ever since I reported about the brutal killing of 8-year-old Sameer Ahmad Rah in August 2010 by a pack of Indian special forces commandoes, I’ve been haunted by that little guy & by the terror he must have felt. I think about him all the time & I’m sure I’m not the only one. The violation & murder of a little boy is in a sadistic realm all its own. You never know what to do with the memory of that kind of human suffering. But we should pay tribute to one of the youngest victims of colonial occupation & keep his sweet soul in mind in building a movement to demand the immediate, unconditional withdrawal of all Indian troops from Kashmir.
May he Rest In Peace.
(Sameer Ahmad Rah by American artist Lori Dee Desgranges)
Someone has asked me to like an Indian cinema site on Facebook but I boycott Indian products, including films. Withholding my previous expenditures on Indian products like medicines, herbs, Ayurvedic products, foods, etc. will certainly not bring the Indian export economy to its knees but I’m one of many who simply will not buy Indian products till Kashmir is free. It should be understood that my problem is with the Indian government & nationalists, not with Indian people.
A Kashmiri friend was just given a warning for posting a photo of Burhan Wani–four years after Burhan’s death where 600,000 people attended his funeral prayers. My friend is in good company since in 2016 Syed Ali Geelani & other Kashmiri activists were permanently suspended from Facebook & several of us temporarily suspended for posting his photo or condolences. He’s the man whose name & face cannot appear on Facebook.
There are increasing social media posts by Kashmiris on drug trafficking to Kashmiri youth by the Indian Army. This morning Stand With Kashmir posted: “Colonial regimes make sure that intoxicants are widely available to native populations in an attempt to get people “addicted” and distract them from their political conditions. The Indian army has done this by making drugs widely available to the youth in Kashmir. Now, alcohol.”
That has analogs, including in the US extermination campaigns of Native Americans & in the US war on Black youth. It’s an extremely important issue which I hope many Kashmiris will address & inform us about.
This is a fascinating profile of Kashmir photojournalist Masrat Zahra by Asmita Bakshi: “I know I will not stop doing my work, especially at a time like this when the authorities are trying to muzzle journalistic voices in Kashmir.”