Can President Trump
end unrelenting repression in Kashmir? A sovereign Kashmir: Random thoughts- 279)
-Dr.
Abdul Ruff
_________
World today
is facing a lot of serious problems for which USA is the chief cause and even
instrumental. Two major issues- Palestine in West Asia and Kashmir in South
Asia - continue to derail peace momentum globally. Of these, genocides of
Kashmiris in Jammu Kashmir, being perpetrated by India, remain the crucial
problem that has not received the attention it does deserve.
Like Israel, India also puts pressure n world powers not to interfere in
Kashmir issue.
Similarly, Indian sources do not let any news paper or media publish anything
that supports the Kashmir cause or against Indian occupational crimes.
Clearly, upon enduring constant repressive and fascist methods by Israel for
decades of its occupation and proliferation of illegal settlement construction
operations in Palestine, Palestinians are on their way to gain full and
complete sovereignty from Israel by legal means as the UN has approved
Palestine as a defacto member and now all-powerful UNSC passed a resolution to
remove and end further Jewish settlements in Palestine.
For the first time in years since 1948 when Israel was imposed on Mideast, USA
as refused to use its veto to protect increasingly fascist Israel and defend
its occupational crimes and expansionist operations.
The establishment of Palestine sooner than later, thus, is a foregone
conclusion. President Trump, though plays politics not to offend America’s
close terror ally Israel, is reportedly supporting a soverign Palestine state
and two-nation solution in Mideast.
Probe of Indian
occupational crimes
A
recent civil society’ fact-finding report notes that the concentration of
security forces in JK is among the heaviest in the world. An estimated 700,000
Indian Army, paramilitary and state police forces watch over a population of
just 14 million. Literally every Muslim in Kashmir is under Indian military
surveillance and terror cum fake encounter target.
Trump needs to address the problems Kashmiris face under Indian brutal
occupation as Kashmiris face very similar problem as of Palestinians as its
neighbor occupies their nation Kashmir and keeps attacking and killing Muslims
there. Soon after the establishment of Palestine, USA should also take up the
issue of Kashmiri struggle for sovereignty back and ensure security of
Kashmiris Muslims as India, its military and media care only about security of
Hindus living in JK, supporting Indian case in Kashmir. Indian media want every
Muslims in Kashmir is killed if they don’t accept Indian brutality occupational
crimes in Kashmir as their ill-fate. India simply cannot accept any protest in
Kashmir.
The population of Jammu Kashmir, now India’s only Muslim-majority state,
confronts unrelenting repression by heavily-armed central and state government
security forces, including indiscriminate pellet-gun barrages, arbitrary and
repeated arrests, and deliberate blinding and killing of unarmed protestors.
As Kashmir is reeling under continuous demonstrations and regular curfews
imposed b the JK government to make life very difficult for the Kashmiris, last
month a volunteer group, led by Medha Patkar of the Narmada Bachao Andolan
(NBA) and Anuradha Bhasin of the Pakistan-India Peoples’ Forum for Peace and
Democracy (PFPD), visited Muslim dominated Jammu and Kashmir, formerly a
soverign nation but now India’s northern-most state for 10 days to study real
situation in the most militarized zone on earth.
The
expert report extensively documents widespread and shocking human rights
violations by the Indian state and blatantly criminal behavior by security
personnel.
For years, both the Congress and Bharatiya Janata Party as ruling dispensation
alternatively play mischief with Kashmiris. India’s Hindu supremacist BJP
government and its local partner, the J&K People’s Democratic Party (PDP),
responded with ferocious violence to the mass protests that convulsed the
Kashmir Valley during much of the summer and fall.
While India targeted Muslims only in its occupied Jammu Kashmir, it never
bothered about Azad Kashmir, the portion that is occupied by Pakistan, but of
course without nay brutality meanly because Kashmiris do not oppose Pakistani
occupation as a crime but a boon to protect themselves from Indian atrocities.
In late September, the BJP government in India, seeking to increase its Hindu
vote banks, plunged South Asia into its gravest war crisis in at least 15
years. Wanting to showcase its military prowess, New Delhi ordered illegal and
highly provocative cross-border raids inside Pakistan-held Kashmir ostensibly
in reputed retaliation for the September 18 attack on the Indian military base
at Uri, then vowed it would continue to impose an ‘unacceptable’ price on
Pakistan until all attacks on India from Pakistan ceased.
When
the 25-member fact-finding group visited Kashmir between November 11 and 20,
the Indian and Pakistani armies were mounting massive military barrages across
the Line of Control that separates Indian- and Pakistan-held Kashmir,
effectively blowing apart the shaky truce that has prevailed between the rival
nuclear-armed states since 2003. Kashmiris on both side of LOC feel heavily
terrorized.
Turning
point
India
for years has adopted different strategies to silence Kashmiris from raising
objections to Indian military misrule of Jammu Kashmir but has failed. New
Delhi could not successfully use its government in Sri Nagar to work for
Indian cause in the region. But military misadventures have harmed Indian
cause of continued occupation of Jammu Kashmir.
Even
after seeing the secret graveyards in Kashmir, revealing what has happened to
those Kashmir Muslims who fought against military of India and imposition of
extra military laws to give a free hand to the state killers in
Kashmir, Kashmiris continue their struggle for sovereignty.
The worst
and strongest ever Kashmiri national protests erupted following the July 8
‘encounter killing ’by summary execution by India, which cannot tolerate any
opposition from Muslim leaders for state repression and murders, of a
21-year-old leader of an Islamist, Kashmiri separatist insurgent group, the
Hizbul Mujahideen. Rattled by the size and tenacity of the protests, the BJP
government blamed them on “Pakistan-supported ‘terrorists” and ratcheted up
pressure on Washington and Islamabad.
Its aims were two-fold: to draw attention away from the popular protests in
J&K and their brutal repression at the hands of the India state forces and
fanatic media and to compel Pakistan to end all logistical support for the
quarter-century long insurgency in Indian-held Kashmir.
The
‘civil society’ fact-finding report notes that the concentration of security
forces in JK is among the heaviest in the world. An estimated 700,000 Indian
Army, paramilitary and state police forces watch over a population of just 14
million. The fact-finding volunteers traveled to the Kashmir Valley districts
where the recent protests have been most widespread and gathered much evidence
of the violence and humiliations that the Indian military and state police have
imposed on the local populace. Moreover, because of the legal immunity granted
the state police under the JK Public Safety Act (1978) and the army and
paramilitary forces in Kashmir under India’s notorious Armed Forces (Special
Powers) Act, they can and do act with impunity.
The
report states ‘unarmed and symbolic protests in Kashmir have been met with
sustained attack by the Indian army, police and paramilitary, including with
the use of pellet guns, (chili-based) PAVA shells and firearms. Several deaths
have been caused by targeted killings of unarmed civilians by armed forces even
in the absence of protests or demonstrations.
The volunteers further found that most pellet-gun wounds have been above the
waist, indicating that security forces have deliberately sought to blind and
kill protesters. ‘Most deaths we came across’, say the volunteers, ‘have been
caused by injuries waist-above, without any warning fire. Deaths and injuries
caused by pellet guns too are all above the waist and preponderantly at eye
level causing blinding or long-term ophthalmic damage.’
Indian security forces invariably justify their violence by dubbing its victims
as ‘anti-national.’ In fact, this is a catch-all phrase that Prime Minister
Narendra Modi and his BJP government routinely employ against persons or organizations
expressing even sympathy with the victims of the state repression in Kashmir.
The report documents how families that pursue legal remedies against the
security personnel responsible for the killing of their loved ones are
subjected to raids, repeated arrests and even torture from the out-of-control
security establishment.
Casualty counts vary, as the government is trying to cover up the scale of its
repression and families often fear informing authorities that a member has been
injured for fear of reprisals. But close to a hundred civilians have been
killed since the protests erupted in early July. Many thousands more — the
J&K daily Greater Kashmir claims 15,000 — have been injured.
Collective
punishments, including destruction of property and animals and revenge attacks,
akin to those Israel’s security forces mete out to the Palestinians, are the
norm in Kashmir. The fact-finding report bears witness to this: ‘In the towns
and villages where there were killings by the Indian Army, police and paramilitary,
we met with ordinary people who narrated a cycle of search and seizure raids
following killings, and of indiscriminate firing, including at funerals and
memorial gatherings. In several of these instances the Indian Army, police and
paramilitary broke windows and destroyed household goods, livestock, and food
rations in peoples’ homes.’
In several villages and towns they visited, the armed forces, during their
search and seizure operations, routinely destroy the local electricity transformer
or sub-station, denying the entire village or locality access to electricity.’
The mass character of the protests in the Kashmir Valley have given the lie to
the Modi government’s claims that the opposition to Indian rule is simply or
mainly the product of Pakistani intrigue and ‘Pakistani-sponsored terrorism.’
The Kashmiri separatist groups supported by Islamabad were in fact taken by
surprise by this summer’s eruption of mass protests.
The
report describes the widespread popular disaffection with an Indian state that
has repeatedly violated JK’s special autonomous status within the Indian Union,
imposed ‘presidential’ or central government rule, rigged elections, and for
decades resorted to mass repression, including ‘disappearances’, torture and
summary executions. ‘From common people’, says the report, ‘we heard articulate
accounts of what they have faced from the Indian state and, in particular, of
the sustained attack on their democratic rights from 1989 onwards. The failure
of the Indian state and every government since independence to address the
political sentiments of Kashmiri people is a source of both hurt and enormous
resentment.’
Indian
parties speak in one voice against Muslims
The
Modi government’s violent repression of the popular protests in JK has been
politically aided and abetted by the opposition parties, including the
Stalinist Communist Party of India (Marxist) and its Left Front.
Interestingly, all of them unequivocally defend the right of the Indian
bourgeoisie to rule over Kashmir, have helped in the cover-up of the atrocities
being carried out by Indian security forces in Kashmir, and have hailed the
provocative military strikes that Indian Special Forces troops carried out
inside Pakistan in late September.
India bases its claim not on the support of the Kashmiri people, but on the
document of accession to the Indian Union signed by the last member of the
British-backed Hindu princely dynasty that ruled Jammu and Kashmir.
India
claims its prerogative to kill every Muslims in occupied Kashmir who refuses to
accept Indian occupation. The reactionary character of the false
Indian-Pakistani dispute over Kashmir is exemplified by the legal basis of
their respective claims to ‘undivided’ Kashmir i.e., to all of the territories that
had belonged, prior to Partition, to the British Indian Empire princely state
of Jammu and Kashmir.
Pakistan’s claim is based on the reactionary ideology that underlies the
Pakistani state: Kashmir is rightfully Pakistan’s because it is a majority-Muslim
area contiguous to the Muslim ‘homeland’ in the subcontinents northwest.
Kashmiris, besieged between these two illogical claims, have been the target of
both Indi and Pakistan.
Shockingly, the ruling as well as opposition parties are together when it comes
to attack Muslims either in India or Kashmir or anywhere in the region.
Observation
As a
mere formality, India continues to claim ownership of Jammu Kashmir and
reiterates that Kashmir is an integrate part of India.
The Kashmir tragedy and the reactionary military-strategic rivalry between
India and Pakistan with which it is inextricably enmeshed are the outcome of
the reactionary communal Partition of South Asia. In 1947, South Asia’s
departing British imperial overlords and the rival factions of the ‘national’
bourgeoisie divided the subcontinent into an expressly Muslim Pakistan and a
predominantly Hindu India.
While
the India ruling class and its state machinery have repressed the people of
Jammu Kashmir, the Pakistani corporate lords have run roughshod over the basic
rights of the people of Pakistan-held Kashmir and systematically sought to
manipulate the Kashmir question for its own profit ends.
The
democratic rights of the Kashmiri people will be secured and the threat of a
catastrophic nuclear war between India and Pakistan lifted only through a joint
struggle of the common masses of the subcontinent to put an end to capitalist
rule and establish genuine the Socialist regional system. That could help end
blood bath in the region, in Kashmir, end terror attacks, open the way for the
improved governance for the causes of people.
Notwithstanding the pressure tactics from Indian government being applied
directly and through its former rulers UK and US government directly as a
so-called strategic partners in terror machinations, and through the Zionist
criminal regime, one hopes President Trump would rise to the occasion to help
and save the remaining Kashmiri Muslims by forcing both India and Pakistan to
allow the Kashmiris to have rebirth of Kashmir to exist as a soverign nation in
South Asia.
Meanwhile, Indian and Pakistani governments and political calls need to
consider the normalcy of the region that is being harmed by the nuclear race
and LOC conflict, usually fanatic Indian media mischief to promote state
arrogance towards Muslims and Kashmir.
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