Although there is hardly any media coverage of the Indian siege in Kashmir, especially in European & US media, there is a fair amount about the monstrous use of pellet munitions. That gives solidarity activists an opening for educational forums, panels, & rallies about the occupation.
Just because media doesn’t cover it, that doesn’t mean it has lesser importance. Media is also clammed up about most of the US wars. Silence is how it serves the Pentagon. Instead of war journalism, we get photos of a department store fire in Kabul, women taking a short cut through a cemetery in Kandahar province, Afghanistan. Instead of reporting on the occupation in Kashmir, we get photos of women’s prayer rituals. There is no reporting on Iraq, Somalia, Pakistan or Libya.
There was very little coverage of US & UK-trained forces in Bahrain using pellet guns on unarmed protesters but India’s use of them in Kashmir is so profligate & so extreme that it has actually broken the news blackout to some degree.
With contemptible false pity, a leading Indian military official said “We feel very sorry for them” for injuries caused to young people but said they would continue to use pellets as the “least lethal” option. He should be slapped with hundreds of criminal indictments including for targeting the young, for shooting at unarmed protesters, for causing permanent injury & death. The government of India should face an international tribunal for decades & tens of thousands of human rights crimes, of which pellet munitions are only one.
This is a FB wall you may want to follow about the book “Kashmir, Scars of Pellet Guns”, written by Kashmiri human rights activist Mannan Bukhari who has done extensive work around pellet munitions.