We should be aware that many Kashmiris living outside Kashmir are not necessarily free to speak out against India’s occupation & current onslaught since they have families in Kashmir who India can & certainly would threaten or endanger.
Genocide Watch, which monitors genocide & other forms of mass murder, has issued a genocide alert for Kashmir. They are not being inflammatory or alarmist since Kashmiri activists have long claimed India’s genocidal intentions for Kashmir & many journalists & commentators are now backing up their assertions.
I did not find Mehdi Hasan’s statement on Twitter about Kashmir to be impressive. He said: “I don’t have a view whether Kashmir should be part of India, Pakistan, or independent. That should be left to the Kashmiris.
“I do have a view on Kashmiris being shot, blinded, sexually assaulted, illegally detained, & cut off from the world – it’s an outrage.”
The equivocation in his statement is confusing since he is not usually one to mince words. Kashmiris have been fighting over 70 years to be independent from India so it is not going out on a limb or overstepping bounds to say you support their struggle for independence from India. On that issue, Kashmiris have long spoken loud & clear.
Photos from today’s #StandWithKashmir rally in Pretoria, South Africa:
(Photos from Shabnam Mayet)
Shabnam Mayet will be sending photos & more info from the Pretoria, South Africa #StandWithKashmir rally today at the Indian High Commission attended by about 500 people. This is a lineup of some of the posters that a group of activists made.
(Photo from Shabnam Mayet)
A Kashmiri friend messaged me from Delhi that he had just arrived from & would soon be returning to Kashmir. Before we were cut off inexplicably, he said he was scared because there were mass arrests in Kashmir. It wasn’t long before I found this media report confirming what he said. The Indian Army is going after the youth & that is very terrifying indeed, making the need for continuing protests imperative.
We demand the immediate, unconditional withdrawal of all Indian troops from Kashmir & the immediate release of all political prisoners!
When Indian media denounced the London protesters yesterday as ‘Pakistani thugs, hooligans & former terrorists’ who “threw eggs, glass bottles, shoes, plastic bottles of water, lighters, bananas, batteries, potatoes, hot coffee, their own placards, & apples,” no one could find any confirmation or evidence of that. But then we didn’t expect to. People who protest war, occupation, genocide are a serious, committed lot, not hooligans. Maybe Indian media meant this threatening-looking woman at the Tokyo #StandWithKashmir rally yesterday shaking her shoe as an insult at the Indian Embassy. The embassy staff must have been terrorized by her gesture of contempt.
Indian propagandists are truly a pathetic lot but then such tripe plays well with the crowd they’re appealing to. Know the type well from watching videos of Trump rallies. Nationalism is a low-brow ideology.
(Photo from Asif Mushtaq)
Micheal Clinton, who most of you know as a tireless Irish human rights activist even whilst he is battling cancer, has been blocked for three days for posting an article about the Rohingya in India. Being banned can be disorienting, especially if you use Facebook to campaign for the oppressed. So it would be good if you express support for him. It matters.
One of the Hindutva boys who used the laughing emoticon on a post about Kashmiri political prisoners, including Indian soldiers taking little kids away in the night, described himself as a ‘spiritual-seeker & proud Sanatani (orthodox Hindu) whose humor may be hurtful to liberals & seculars.’ Know the type well. Kind of like Jared Kushner. Even more like Ted Bundy.
If eight people supporting Kashmir on Twitter drew the fury of the Indian government, imagine their derangement over the thousands of #StandWithKashmir protests all over the world, from the 30 in McAllen, Texas to the thousands in London. There is nothing the Modi gang wants less than for Kashmiris to know a solidarity movement has converged & that they are no longer fighting their historic freedom struggle on their own.