Let me be frank, those who think a bombing war between India & Pakistan is just what the moment calls for to strengthen the political position of Kashmiri self-determination have not thought that position through. It would allow India to introduce bombing, in the same way as Israel bombs Gaza, & would facilitate Indian genocide in Kashmir & the deaths of thousands of Pakistani civilians. The last thing we want is a war which would strengthen the view that Kashmir is a territorial dispute between India & Pakistan & would again make the Kashmiri struggle against India’s colonial occupation a matter of no concern. Calling for war squanders the opportunities opened by the powerful Kashmiri solidarity movement & would undermine the boycott of India.
It bears repeating that Kashmiris living or studying outside Kashmir are not necessarily free to speak their minds about the Kashmiri struggle because of concerns about the safety of their families. Indian politicians in the Modi gang have shown themselves to be vindictive & vengeful & would harm or threaten their families to silence Kashmiri voices everywhere. That makes it much more imperative that Kashmiri solidarity activists speak out by using social media & other forums to educate & mobilize, leaving no stone unturned. It is not a matter of noblesse oblige but an understanding that whither goes Indian fascism, so goes other nations heading in that direction. What happens in India won’t stay in India.
A reminder to like & share this page launching the cultural boycott of India. Some do not agree with a boycott of Indian consumer products but there is no reason not to support a cultural boycott which has proven to be very effective for BDS in supporting the Palestinian struggle.
https://www.facebook.com/BoycottIndia2019/?modal=admin_todo_tour
By threatening the ethnic cleansing of Muslims & Christians from India in the next two years, this leading politician from India’s fascist ruling party necessarily broadens the possibilities for building Kashmiri solidarity. We should take his statements & the actual facts of persecuting Christians to Christian churches & social action groups, many which have played a role in the antiwar movement. We can go knocking on their doors, asking them to #StandWithKashmir in defense of Christians & Muslims in India. This may be one of the BJP’s most recklessly stupid actions which can help build support for Kashmiris & for Muslims & Christians persecuted in India.
This is nine-year-old Burhan Fayaz at the funeral of his best friend Amir Nazir who was killed by Indian forces in a hunt to kill operation in the Pulwama district of Kashmir in March 2017. Burhan said, “Amir was like my brother. Who will I play with now?”
The image of Burhan’s inconsolable grief has become iconic, a representation of Kashmiri children living under occupation in the same way as the image of Phan Thi Kim Phuc, the nine-year-old Vietnamese girl running naked from a US napalm attack in 1972; in the same way as images of 3-year-old Syrian Kurdish refugee Aylan Kurdi who drowned in the Mediterranean in 2015 & images of 5-year-old Omran Daqneesh in shock after being pulled from the rubble of Syrian bombing in Aleppo in 2016; & in the same way as images of 16-month-old Mohammed Shohayet, the Rohingya infant who drowned with his 3-year-old brother & mother in the Naf River as they fled from genocide in Burma in 2017. Images of children are not published to exploit their grief but because they speak to our hearts more powerfully than all the political arguments in the world against war, occupation, genocide.
When Kashmiri human rights leader Khurram Parvez posted this photo in 2017, he quoted Pakistani poet Faiz Ahmad Faiz: “How many rains will it take to wash away the blood stains?” A Kashmiri poet wrote:
“Let the world answer his tears
Let the world watch his heart break
Let the world listen to his cries
Let the world see his innocence
Let the world know what he had lost”
Let Kashmiri solidarity try to answer this little boy’s tears since the Indian Army is incapable of mercy. Kashmiris no longer stand alone against genocide. We commit to Kashmiri children that we will stand with them so long as they are denied self-determination & human freedom.
(Photo by Waseem Andrabi/HIndustan Times)
Indian special forces are conducting war games at the Pakistan border. Does it seem again that India is attempting to provoke a military reaction from Pakistan?
Indian media reports there are 500 new military bunkers in Kashmir. Bunkers are military fortifications for munitions & artillery storage, for defense against an enemy force & protection from bombs. What happened to that ‘winning hearts & minds’ thing? Are one-million counterinsurgency troops that afraid of unarmed Kashmiri resistance?
A new friend launched into a long thingy against Sunnis & Shia, arguing that they are not true Muslims but rather a ‘perverted version of Islam’. Since I still can’t get the theological differences between Christian or between Jewish denominations, I don’t presume to understand those within Islam. What I do know is that colonial powers exploit theological differences, especially if there are class distinctions involved, to maximize a divide & conquer strategy. What I do know is that Khurram Parvez once said that in Kashmir, Sunnis, Shia, Wahabi, & others march together for azaadi. It’s likely India, with the help of its colonial allies, will attempt to maximize conflict between Muslim denominations & with Hindus in Kashmir, probably bringing up the Wahabi/Salafi thing. The last thing Kashmiris need now is someone who doesn’t get that & who wants to create a theological environment that greases the wheels for political exploitation. The ill-fated friendship didn’t last.
Israel has the same method of ‘winning the hearts & minds’ of Palestinians as India uses against Kashmiris beginning with assaulting & arresting women & children.
This is a mess of an article where the title contradicts the content. It isn’t certain who the news source is: “Apples of the Kashmir Valley rot due to terrorists, protests; trade shrinks to less than 10 per cent.” What do protests have to do with getting apples to market? Have the orchard workers all gone off to join the protests? Have they even been able to get to work with all the curfews? Or have they all gone off to join the handful of militants who are very unlikely to be operative since war-equipped Indian soldiers are standing every few feet?
Despite the title, the article actually does make it quite clear that the telecommunications blockade has devastated agricultural commerce in Kashmir, not protests nor non-existent terrorists. First because modern commerce is impossible without telecommunications & secondly because farmers & orchard owners do not want to do business with the Indian government.