Saman Hamid
It is dark you are all alone trying to figure out what to do. Food is running short; medicine may also not be available. Any minute now they may come knocking at my door taking me away and I may also become a missing person. The only difference between this and a standard zombie movie is the absence of zombies but there is presence of very real forces that are quite worse than any zombies.
As much as Indians try to portray normalcy by forcefully trying to open schools, since August 5th till date some 1.5 Million Kashmiris remain out of school. There is some pandering of a movie on the topic being made, perhaps the one thing Indians feel pride in boasting about. Decades ago the world stayed silent and the horrors of Ashwaltz are recalled. Imagine being killed just because you believe in a different God. The world seems to be rolling back when it comes to basic human rights. Each day Kashmiris cry in silence as Indians have stripped them of all basic human rights.
There used to be a time when individual interests lost out to humanitarian crises. Not anymore, the world who seeks billions in the trillions in the region seem to not pay any heed to the fact that they have illegally occupied a piece of land. The same place whose people are fighting for freedom for the past 70 years.
The counter ticks to more than 100 days as the world stays silent while those in power bombard other nations for as little as oil in the name of human rights or humanity. What exactly did India do in Kashmir? By revoking article 370, India stripped Kashmir of the so-called autonomous rights they gave to the region; its own constitution, a separate flag and freedom to make laws. Essentially the Modi regime has dared to do what the Indian people have allowed them to do by re-electing them. Half of Indian legal experts are divided even to the legality of the move let alone what the historians will say when they look back at these actions years later.
Will India get away with this though? Kashmiris have the will to be free running in their veins for hundreds of years, even before independence, Kashmiris wanted their right to live, what the Dogras tried to do never succeeded because the people did not change. If Indians think that trying to make Muslim majority areas Hindus will somehow curb this will for freedom they are sadly mistaken. No matter how hard one tries centuries of oppression and attitudes cannot be changed. This is exactly how revolts happen. If things were so normal Human Rights Watch and others will not raise red flags. A few weeks ago in Geneva, a spokesperson for the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), Rupert Colville acknowledged that an “undeclared curfew” had been lifted from much of Jammu and Ladakh regions within a few days but till date it is largely in place in much of Kashmir.
A key UN committee has recently passed a Pakistan-sponsored resolution reaffirming the right to self-determination for peoples subjected to foreign and alien occupation. It may seem small but this step re-affirms the fact that Pakistan is taking steps to fight the situation in Kashmir. It is only a matter of time when the small steps and will of the people of Kashmir will bear fruit.
