India plans concentration camps for immigrants & refugees:
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/17/world/asia/india-muslims-narendra-modi.html?fbclid=IwAR2Md5y-
We know that after the 2016 uprising in Kashmir, Kashmiri activists on social media, whose educational work helped to change the course of human history for their struggle, have been harassed, censored, & repeatedly suspended on social media venues. That includes 90-year-old independence icon Syed Ali Geelani who was permanently suspended from FB for paying respect to a man killed by Indian forces (whose name & photo cannot be shown without suspension but whose funeral prayers in Kashmir were attended by over 600,000 mourners). Often their accounts were just disappeared & all their hard work with it. One photojournalist with over 65,000 followers had that account & 20 other accounts he attempted to set up just deleted with no appeal process.
Even Kashmiris supporters were suspended right & left & en masse so that we had to have a petition campaign for reinstatement. It didn’t work. We were still locked out 30-days & several permanently lost their accounts & all their work. I’ve lost count but think I’ve had at least six 30-day suspensions for writing about Kashmir. Not inflammatory stuff. One time, just a simple declarative sentence that there were affinities between the Kashmiri & Palestinian struggles. Then we find out that India’s Home Ministry & top government officials are publicly lobbying to get Twitter to suspend the accounts of eight relatively unknown Kashmiri supporters for spreading ‘fake news’. Four were actually suspended.
Many of us came to know those Kashmiri activists on social media like they were next door neighbors. We looked to them for understanding, came to admire their power as polemicists, writers, & commentators, drew on their insights, savored their sarcasm & wit as we admired their fearlessness & commitment. I say all this because quite frankly, I am very much afraid for them. India felt deeply threatened by them, enough to repeatedly snap the internet, at one time for months, repeatedly get them thrown off social media, & now completely shuts down all telecommunications.
When we talk about demanding the release of all Kashmiri political prisoners, we may be talking about many of our friends & India should know that we take that very personally indeed. We will fight tirelessly that India make an accounting of its Kashmiris prisoners & release every one of them without harm or further harassment.
Indian media reports that 190 schools in the Srinagar school district will reopen next Monday. Would you feel safe sending your little kids to school with Indian troops armed to the teeth every few feet & known to shoot without provocation?
This article is not just about the impact of the military siege on Kashmiri healthcare but about the sanitation problems & other basic systems effected. You cannot shut a country down & expect basic services to function, let alone commerce. This may be part of the humiliation, bring Kashmiris-to-their-knees tactics of India but as Sanjay Kak pointed out in his interview, it is far more likely to generate more massive resistance to the occupation.
https://thewire.in/health/kashmir-lockdown-takes-toll-on-healthcare-medical-services?
“Appalling that activists of human rights group Rihai Manch, as well as Sandeep Pandey, Arundhati Dhuru etc were placed under house arrest to prevent them holding a peaceful #StandwithKashmir demo in Lucknow! SHAME. Showing empathy with Kashmiris is being criminalized.”
–Indian activist Kavita Krishnan who led investigative team to Kashmir & produced report “Kashmir Caged”
Kashmir Caged report: https://www.newcoldwar.org/kashmir-caged-a-fact-finding-report/?fbclid=IwAR2v51sxUNrPF-jWRZO56rkUVdBHGn94gpFJQQK4VNHVK7bFP21CU02ecyc
In video form: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=noD1dFVIRuQ&fbclid=IwAR2CLdNYEshooovcDb35-seIVUe5YANL9IYbOmskk8AJYh_q0wG-VSK1FQU
A quite brilliant interview with Sanjay Kak, a filmmaker in India & a Kashmiri Pandit (whose parents live in Srinagar) who has long written & spoken out cogently for the Kashmiri freedom struggle.
https://www.thequint.com/voices/opinion/article-370-kashmir-sanjay-kak-interview-militancy-pakistan?
Dalaa Khaldoon Bakir, a little girl killed by Syrian & Russian bombing of Idlib. The terrorist group she belonged to has not been identified by Syrian authorities.
May she Rest In Peace.
Demand the immediate, unconditional withdrawal of all Russian, Iranian, Hezbollah, & US-coalition military forces & mercenaries from Syria. Stop the bombing of Idlib.
This is an important article about the mass arrests of political activists & leaders in Kashmir. One wishes media would stop including Mufti, Abdullah, & Faesal among the political prisoners since they remain collaborators & are just positioning themselves to emerge as misleaders if India continues to hold the real political leaders of the Kashmiri freedom struggle. They’re the same ilk as Palestinian Mahmoud Abbas & incapable of leading the struggle for #azaadi.
It’s extremely worrisome that India will not release the names, actual numbers of arrestees, or where they are detained. The entire purpose is to behead & disorient the struggle for independence since forging an uncompromising, authoritative, capable leadership is extremely difficult. That’s why colonizers have always assassinated so many of our most brilliant & uncompromising leaders in the US, Africa, Latin America, Asia, the Middle East.
A central demand of our protests & campaigns, & hopefully a boycott of Indian products, must be ‘free all Kashmiri political prisoners’. It will certainly be a central demand for Kashmiris.
August 17, 2019 at 4 PM – 6 PM PDT
San Francisco Ferry Building
One Ferry Building, San Francisco, California 94111
A couple Hindutva guys posted Wikipedia entries on my wall (since deleted) about Kashmiri Pandits (Hindus) to discredit the Kashmiri struggle. Jimmy Wales, the owner of Wikipedia, is a Zionist who was honored by Israel in 2015 with a $1 million Dan David Prize for services rendered. That explains why almost everything Wikipedia has to say about Israel or the Palestinian struggle is worthless. That’s just as true of its entries about Kashmir. Nothing they say can be trusted except the geographical locations on a map. They should try not to make fools of themselves by citing Wikipedia as a source. They ought to try reading a few books by reputable, preferably Kashmiri, scholars.