Andleeb Abbas
The current crisis in occupied Kashmir is not just a political or geographical or socio cultural or geo-religious issue it is a humanitarian issue that for too long has been disguised as an ‘internal’ matter. Yes, the Line of Control is an internal matter; yes, the Simla Accord declares the Kashmir conflict be resolved bilaterally; yes, there is a historical legacy that needs to be changed; yes, it has legal and constitutional implications. But what makes it more than all this is the universality of the human issue that crosses borders, laws, accords, politics and economics; and that is the truth that not even animals are caged in without voice, food and medicines for over 30 days.
Finally, UN has put India on the list of 38 “shameful” countries which carried out reprisals or intimidation against people cooperating with it on human rights, through killings, torture and arbitrary arrests.
The annual report from UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres also included allegations of ill-treatment, surveillance, criminalisation and public stigmatisation campaigns targeting victims and human rights defenders. This shaming list is not even the beginning. India has been world’s best-kept secret on abuse on women, Muslims, Christians, Dalits, etc. The Kashmir blackout has made this secret spill out from the oppressed social crevices of Srinagar and other cities and horrified the world with its barbaric ugliness.
Life before the annexation of Kashmir was terrible for those in Kashmir and those not subscribing to Hinduvta. Mob lynching had become the greatest shame of India. The Tabrez Ansari lynching was just one of the most horrific examples of a nation bent on beating its own records of inhumanity. Tabrez Ansari, a twenty- four-year-old Muslim, was brutally attacked and killed by a murderous mob. This horror movie reality happened in June this year. Videos of the lynching clearly show how Ansari was tied to a telephone pole, after being accused of stealing a motorcycle. As he was being mercilessly beaten by the mob, he was forced by them to say “Jai Sri Ram” and “Jai Hanuman”. Last April, an Adivasi Christian was killed allegedly for skinning a dead ox. A farmer, Adranish Kujur, told the village of Jhurmo in Jharkhand that his 20-year-old ox had died in his field. At least 35 villagers went to carve it up. Minutes later, a mob, armed with rods and sticks, attacked them, claiming they had slaughtered a cow and killed him.
However what is happening in occupied Kashmir is not mob lynching but a bizarre torture massacre at the hands of sadistic Indian officials. A rights bodies report of Al-Jazeera “Breaking the silence” revealed revolting details about torture techniques employed by the Indian army to quash a freedom struggle. The 560-page report mentioned solitary confinement, sleep deprivation, and sexualised torture including rape, used as torture techniques against Kashmiris. Torture methods included electrocution, hanging from a ceiling, dunking detainees’ head in water (which is sometimes mixed with chili powder), said the report by Association of Parents of Disappeared Persons (APDP) and Jammu and Kashmir Coalition of Civil Society (JKCCS). During torture spells, detainees were stripped naked, beaten with wooden sticks, and bodies were burned with iron rods, heaters or cigarette butts.
The Genocide Watch, a US-based organisation, has already declared Kashmir and Assam as ‘red alerts’. This organisation exists to predict, prevent, stop, and punish genocide as defined in the Genocide Convention. There are ten criteria, including ‘extermination’ and ‘denial’, of genocide assessment. Kashmir has all ten of them.
Let us examine two of these criteria: Extermination - Since 1990, there have been at least 25 massacres. Denial - Modi and his party say their goals are to “bring prosperity” and “end terrorism”. They deny any massacres. No Indian Army troops or police are ever tried for torture, rape or murder.
India’s progressive secular image has been its main asset for decades. This portrayal has been done through astute cultural marketing where Bollywood has made a great contribution in showing a glitzy and modern India. The reality of the two top cities such as Mumbai and Delhi is shocking. The super-hit Hollywood movie “Slum Dog Millionaires” which showed the slums of Mumbai got a lot of bashing in India as it showed the reality of a city that the world hardly knows. But it is not just the infrastructural slums that are the reality but the socio-cultural slums that exist in the Indian society that are now being cracked open by the Modi obsession of Hinduvta and discrimination.
India is the most dangerous place for women in the world. The Thomson Reuters Foundation 2018 report ranks India to be the most dangerous nation for sexual violence against women, as well as human trafficking for domestic work, forced labor, forced marriage and sexual slavery. Delhi is termed as the rape capital of the world.
The typical reaction of Indian government to these reports is to deny, condemn and drown them through the most shrilly electronic media shows in the world. The typical reaction of the public is to believe in the superiority of their local media and become blindly ultra-nationalistic. With the Modi government clamping down on Kashmir and cutting all communication and access to ground reality, it is brewing a revolt that is going to be bloody and disastrous. A report by DW German channel claimed that security forces are molesting and harassing women. School girls and housewives have been previously raped as a rape as a torture and control weapon is used. Politicians and public are posting videos declaring them as beautiful objects now to be acquired, bought and possessed. As Arshie Qureshi, a Kashmiri researcher, says, “I feel objectified, I feel like a piece of land Indians will buy, I feel like a commodity”.
The shame not only lies with Modi or those who are buying in to this insanity of human degradation but also to those in the Muslim world, those in the western world and those in the world who see, hear, know, how men, women and children are being physically, emotionally and mentally ripped and raped and keep on being “stoic and sensible” about “that issue”. They are the biggest facilitators of crime. As Napoleon said, “The world suffers a lot not because of the violence of bad people, but because of the silence of good people”.
(The writer can be reached at [email protected])
