Afia Ambreen
Indian security forces have killed four rebel fighters during a gun battle in Indian Occupied Kashmir with two of the dead former police officers who had defected. The firefight took place in Pulwama district, where India intensified security operations after a suicide attack killed 42 paramilitary troops in February. The killings were brutal, unacceptable and violated international law, but at this stage ought they to be termed shocking? Such is the calculated brutality and political mindlessness in India-held Kashmir that the further escalation of violence security forces shooting live ammunition into protesters at the site of an alleged encounter with Kashmiri fighters resulting in the deaths of at least seven civilians cannot be regarded as a criminal aberration or a sudden catastrophe. It is much more.
Indeed, the strong reaction by the OIC has indicated that the killings in the Pulwama district of IHK could have rippling consequences across the international community. As reported in the Indian media itself, five of the at least seven civilians killed by Indian security forces were teenagers; the other two were in their late 20s and reported to be the sole breadwinners of their families. The tragedy of youths killed, maimed, injured, disappeared, tortured and arbitrarily detained in IHK is known to anyone willing to observe India’s murderous and repressive policies in IHK.
While the mass protests by students across occupied Kashmir show that every section and segment of the Kashmir society is actively involved with the ongoing freedom movement, the use of force by Indian forces’ personnel on peaceful protesters depicts that each and every voice against India’s illegal occupation over Jammu and Kashmir is being stifled through military power. It is unfortunate that instead of respecting the aspirations of the Kashmiri people, the extremist BJP-RSS government in India is hurling threats to the Kashmiri protesters. Jan Sena, an extremist Hindu organisation and an off-shoot of Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, has even announced to send over one thousand Hindu priests to occupied Kashmir to assist Indian forces to counter stone-pelters. Political observers in Srinagar have described the development as alarming because the RSS had planned to carry out massacre of Kashmiri youth through their trained militants.
India has miserably failed to suppress the Kashmir freedom movement despite killing hundreds of thousands of Kashmiris during the past over seven decades. The incumbent Indian government led by Narendra Modi is hell-bent to completely merge Jammu and Kashmir in India and change the Muslim majority of occupied Kashmir into minority. It is using its judiciary to abrogate Article 370 and Article 35-A of the Indian Constitution to pave way for giving the citizenship rights of Jammu and Kashmir to the Indian citizens. Indian designs to change demography of Jammu and Kashmir are intended to influence in its favour the results of a referendum whenever it is held in the territory.
As such, the move is against the very purpose of the relevant UN resolutions. India is also using its investigating agencies like National Investigation Agency (NIA) and Enforcement Directorate (ED) to implicate Hurriyat leaders, activists and pro-freedom people in false cases to force the Kashmiris to surrender their just cause. Unfortunately, the international community, particularly the UN, is turning a blind eye to India’s actions in Kashmir resulting in the continued sufferings of the Kashmiri people.
It is a reality that New Delhi is suppressing the Kashmiris’ ongoing freedom movement through military might. However, despite using all brutal tactics, Indian forces’ personnel have failed to subdue the freedom sentiment of the Kashmiris and they are very much determined to continue their struggle till they achieved their cherished goal of freedom from Indian bondage. India should acknowledge the fact that its brutalities have failed to suppress the Kashmiris in the past and would meet the same fate in the future as well. It should address the real issue of Kashmir by fulfilling its promise of giving the people of Jammu and Kashmir their right to self-determination.
The world community also must take cognizance of India’s brutal and undemocratic actions against the Kashmiris particularly pro-freedom leaders and initiate measures to settle the Kashmir dispute in accordance with the aspirations of the Kashmiri people to save them from the Indian cruelties.
Until now, the world community has largely been willing to ignore the plight of the people in IHK. Kashmir is a disputed region and recognized as such by the UN; Pakistan has a legitimate interest in what happens in the whole of the Kashmir region.
The international community must take note not just of the recent violence in IHK, but the overall pattern of illegal control that the government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi has attempted to extend in the disputed region. The world’s attention must turn towards the violence India is perpetrating in IHK. The international community has leverage with India; it must use it as a moral imperative at this time.
