August 5, 2020 marked a year since the annexation of Kashmir through the abrogation of Article 370 by the Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi led BJP government. The Article 370 of the Indian constitution provided a special status to Jammu and the Muslim majority valley of Kashmir. It allowed the state of Jammu and Kashmir the autonomy of having its own constitution, flag and the freedom to make laws. It also permitted them to formulate their own rules relating to permanent residency, fundamental rights and ownership of property in the valley. However, the Indian government introduced a bill to strip the region of statehood and divide it into two centrally administered territories unilaterally suspending the civil and political rights of people of Jammu and Kashmir. The Indian government immediately imposed a strategically orchestrated communications and travel lockdown under strict curfew claiming that the situation remained normal in the valley.
Since then, Kashmir has faced an unprecedented year of lockdown and communications blockade as Indian forces further intensified ground aggression, heavy militarization and human rights violations. A report issued by The Forum for Human Rights in Jammu and Kashmir suggests that an estimated 8.8 million mobile telephones were suspended in Kashmir alone while 6,600 people including the political leadership and other influential people have been arrested so far.
The abrogation of Article 370 that is being hailed as “a new development journey in Jammu and Kashmir” by the Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, has ushered in a new phase of occupation which has been compared to Israel's settler colonialism. It is facilitating demographic changes, corporate exploitation, and environmental destruction in the already embroiled region.
2020 also marks 73 years of Indian occupation and the Kashmiri resistance in the state of Jammu and Kashmir. In addition to the continuing lockdown, the valley has endured years of Indian oppression, military brutality, mass murders and enforced disappearances. The conflict has left the women as half widows, women whose husbands have been disappeared but are not declared dead. They have been subjected to rapes and sexual violence for decades. Children and minors have been kidnapped at night, illegally detained, tortured and subjected to sexual violence in detention. Schools and other educational institutions still remain closed and have been transformed into army barracks.
The Jammu Kashmir Coalition of Civil Society (JKCCS) and Association of Parents of Disappeared Persons (APDP) recently released a bi-annual review of human rights situation in Jammu and Kashmir from January to June 2020. According to the report, there have been 229 killings in different cases of violence with extrajudicial executions of at least 32 civilians in J&K. Moreover, 143 militants and 54 armed personnel were also killed in various incidents. There have been 107 cases of Cordon and Search Operations (CASO) in Kashmir with approximately 50 properties destroyed under the pretext of hunting down militants.
Addressing a webinar on “Lockdown: Police, Power & Protest Around the Globe, Professor Ather Zia, a Kashmiri and an Assistant professor of Anthropology and Gender Studies at University of Northern Colorado says that the Kashmiri struggle has been on steroids since the last year. “What has been done is that there is a silencing in Kashmir. People are incarcerated, they are in detention, they have fear of detention; they have to sign bonds if they have to come out. Even the client politicians and collaborators of India are silenced in many ways,” says Ms. Zia.
The JKCCS & APDP bi-annual human rights report also suggests that approximately 450 people from J&K were still in preventive detention in numerous jails of India and an estimate of 106 prisoners booked under the Public Safety Act (PSA) were released in March 2020 while others still await their fate amidst the prevalent Coronavirus pandemic.
Throwing light on the Israeli style demographic changes in Kashmir, Professor Ather Zia draws parallels between India and Israel’s modus operandi in Palestine and Kashmir respectively. She says that the scenes and tactics are similar and there are similarities between arms and armaments used in the two regions. “Under the camouflage of Covid-19 and pandemic, they are stopping funerals of militants who are killed. You see those tactics, the detentions and they’re kind of expecting things that have already happened in Palestine kind of unfolding in Kashmir. They’ve already unfolded.”
The Kashmir conflict is a territorial conflict between India and Pakistan over the once princely state of Jammu and Kashmir. Both India and Pakistan claimed the entirety of the region after the partition of India in 1947. While India controls 55% of the region, Pakistan controls 30% of Kashmir and China as a third-party role controls the remaining 15% bordering the area of Ladakh.
The conflict over the region has claimed lives of thousands of Kashmiris. The situation in the Pakistani Administered Kashmir is directly affected by tensions at the line of control. Line of Control or LOC as it is commonly referred, serves as a de facto border between India and Pakistan. As a result of insurgency at its peak, the region has seen bloodshed and displacement since the 90s.
“My village got hit by Indian artillery fires and my mother passed away in that. She got hit and died at the spot." Dr. Tanveer Hussain Shah is a Doctor of Education at Suffolk County’s Dowling College and currently resides in Brooklyn. He lost his mother and another relative at one such cross border firing incident between India and Pakistan in 1998. Both countries were engaged in the Kargil war and many innocent civilians lost their lives.
“One of my cousins who was only 13-year-old got hit by an artillery fire and we were only lucky enough to find half of his body. We lost two other women in our neighborhood after which we had to move our place. We lived there for centuries and then we suddenly had to move to Rawalpindi, a city in the Pakistani territory. We have been living there since 1998 now.”
He says whatever happens in the Indian Occupied Kashmir, it directly affects lives in the Pakistan Administered Kashmir as well.
“Most importantly, they continuously live in trauma, in a phase of uncertainty as they don’t know what will happen tomorrow. It's the same situation across both sides of the LOC. So, whatever is happening over in the Indian Occupied Kashmir, there is always a fallout on the Pakistani side of Kashmir as well."
With the ongoing situation in Kashmir, members of the Kashmiri diaspora in the United States have not been able to contact their families back home due to communications restrictions. Since the valley was put under a lockdown in August, Kashmiris have been raising their voices globally to draw the world’s attention, but some would say in vain. Suemyra Shah is a Kashmiri lawyer from New York who works for “Stand with Kashmir”, a Kashmiri diaspora led independent group committed to stand in solidarity with the Kashmiri demands of their right to self-determination. Ms. Shah says she is extremely concerned about the situation back home.
“I do have a lot of family back in Kashmir. I haven’t been in touch with people directly because of the communication blockade. Despite the phone lines allegedly being opened recently, it has still been very difficult to reach people after many attempts. I have heard from them through people who have left Kashmir and have been able to call and been able to speak to. And then I know people are doing the best that they can but it’s really tough. The movement is completely restricted and the people are living in fear. It’s a climate of fear.” Ms. Shah says that their group came together to further the Kashmiri cause and educate the Kashmiri diaspora about it, especially after Indian government’s clampdown in the valley on August 5th, 2019.
Suhail Mir, a Kashmiri political cartoonist who now resides in New York says he has not seen his family either ever since he moved here last year. He says that his voice has been suppressed due to his take on Indian politics. “I use cartoons as an expression. No one in Kashmir has freedom of expression there, so you have to find ways to express yourself.” On being asked why he chose to become a political cartoonist; he says he chose it to show the suffering of his people in Kashmir. “I can’t be a hypocrite with my art, I want to show what’s going on around me, my family and friends,” says Mir.
Mr. Mir goes onto explains how him and his family particularly his father has been a victim of Indian repression. “We’ve only seen horrible things all our lives. They took away my father in curfew including all the men in the family. It is hard to see your father being kicked and punched by the army for no reason,” he recounts. “There is no accountability, they can kill you and nobody is going to do anything. There are brutal laws there like AFSPA (Armed Forces Special Powers Act) and PSA (Public Safety Act). They will throw you in the prison if you say anything against the government," Mir explains in a video interview.
The growing threat of Corona Virus has worsened the plight of Kashmiris as India grapples to fight the virus with limited facilities in Kashmir amidst the ongoing lockdown. More than 20,000 Coronavirus cases have been reported of which nearly 5,500 people remain currently infected. The locals say this lockdown is not much of a big deal because they have massively suffered such restrictive measures since 2016. The internet has been shut down since 5th August and only a bare minimum speed of 2G has been allowed in the region. With such sluggish internet speed, Kashmiris do not have access to news and health guidelines issued amongst this medical threat.
Moreover, footages of public beatings in Kashmir amidst Corona Virus lockdown have emerged suggesting India needs a pretext to exercise their control over the state. In response to the enforcement of brutal force by the Indian forces, The Amnesty International has said that Indian state machinery has become a larger threat than the COVID-19 pandemic. Indian forces have further intensified ground aggression under the pretext of hunting militants and insurgents in the guise of fake encounters. These troops frequently raid villages in large numbers, terrorizing the populace, and killing youth they suspect of giving aid to or being part of armed separatist groups. The subsequent destruction of civilian properties saw an uptick in the first six months of 2020 with approximately 48 cases during the Covid-19 lockdown. This has rendered many families homeless and without shelter. As of recently, a number of peaceful mourners at a Muharram procession were brutally fired at with shotgun pellets and blinded. Over 200 were detained and others arrested in the main city of Srinagar curbing their religious freedom. The violent incident occurred as Shia Muslims in the region observed Ashura marking the martyrdom of Prophet Muhammad (Peace Be Upon Him)'s grandson in the historic Islamic battle of Karbala.
The Kashmiri media continues to be at the receiving end of the pressure, intimidation and harassment by the authorities, with several incidents of beating and thrashing of journalists. Besides physical assaults, few Kashmir based journalists were also booked under stringent charges and cases were filed against them. According to a report published by Amnesty International India, journalists state that they “felt threatened, intimidated and coerced.” The Kashmir Press Club condemned the communications blockade and termed the restrictions “totally unwarranted and unreasonable aimed at gagging the Kashmir press.”
Moreover, the Hindu nationalists have spread a conflicting narrative of normalcy in Kashmir across the globe. Professor of television and interactive media at Hofstra University, Professor Aashish Kumar says people have complicitly participated in the media narrative that the Indian government is controlling and benefitting from. However, he rejects the steps that the Indian government has taken as a part of solution in Kashmir. “Kashmir is not going to be done with Article 370 until its people and the communities that live there can go about life as they used to without the fear of going out there and having to negotiate barricades and not being able to say what they needed to. So, it is not for me to speak about what the solution is but I reject the steps that the Indian government has taken as in anyway close to part of the solution.”
Moreover, the lack of internet and normal working conditions have hit the Kashmiri economy terribly. The Kashmir Chamber of Commerce and Industry reports that it has suffered a loss of over 5 million US dollars and lost an estimated half a million jobs since August 5th, 2019. As the crackdown on Muslims in Kashmir intensifies with each day, the after effects have reached in India itself with the introduction of Citizenship Amendment Bill and the saffronisation of India under the BJP led government rule. But as the long winters approach the valley again, Kashmiris and the state of their human rights sees no respite in the near future. The Kashmiris await justice.