Indian scholar Jairus Banaji on India turning Kashmir into a concentration camp:
The shameless subjugation of the Kashmiris should come as no surprise to all those in India and outside who know that the BJP government doesn’t give a f**k about the constitution of India, much less about legality, democracy or individual rights. But the curfew that is currently in force amounts to a crime against humanity under international law, since article 7(e) of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court includes, in the list of such crimes, “Imprisonment *or other severe deprivation of physical liberty in violation of fundamental rules of international law*”.
Doval has described the situation in Kashmir as one of “normalcy”. The architects of India’s national-security state think it is normal to live surrounded by tens of thousands of troops, to have barricades and check-points every few metres, to imprison people in their homes, to cut their communications completely, to try and keep them in the dark about what is happening, to make it near-impossible to access emergency services such as hospitals, etc., basically to live in a state of fear and isolation as if gathered in one vast concentration camp. One can only hope that one day Doval and his wretched ilk will have to face similar conditions.
A facebook friend commented that the annexation of Kashmir has been driven by “a desire to put Muslims in their place and have them crawl before their Hindu masters” (comment by Amitabha Pande). To this one might add that the true target of Kashmir’s subsumption into what is rapidly becoming a Hindu state is Article 35A, because that is widely perceived as a hindrance to “freeing” the resources of the Valley and to its unfettered economic exploitation (euphemisically called “vikas”) by powerful business interests linked to the present government.
As for parliament, it has been reduced to a fig-leaf for the exercise of naked force.