Besieged Kashmir: Life remains paralysed for 23rd day
The people of the region have been suffering from immense difficulties due to communication blackout
SRINAGAR (Dunya News) – Modi-led Hindu nationalist Indian government’s imposition of stringent curfew, after abrogation of articles 370 and 35A of its Constitution through a rushed presidential decree on Aug. 5, entered its 23rd consecutive day on Tuesday.
According to Kashmir Media Service, the people of the region have been suffering from immense difficulties due to communication blackout and shortage of essential commodities including baby food and life-saving medicines.
As Indian authorities plan silencing the people of occupied Kashmir from holding demonstrations against the government, due to severe blockade, a famine-like situation has emerged as people have been facing severe shortage of essential commodities including baby food and life-saving medicines and occupied Kashmir represents a humanitarian crisis in all its manifestations. Hundreds of thousands of people are besieged and Jammu and Kashmir has become a big prison for its inhabitants.
Over 10,000 Kashmiris including hundreds of political leaders and workers have been detained. The jails and police stations have run out of space and many detainees have been lodged in makeshift detention centres. A hotel in Srinagar being used as a makeshift detention centre has been declared a sub-jail. Around 50 pro-India political leaders are detained in the hotel.
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Communication blackout exacerbates medical treatments
Hundreds of patients have been affected by the clampdown and communication blackout and more than 40 percent of patients have shown signs of mental illnesses due to the recent turmoil, said a psychologist Dr Aijaz in Srinagar.
Dr Aijaz said that restrictions such as those presently in place in Kashmir affect people’s routines, and lead to anxiety. A 16-year-old Mohammad Adil, after watching television, went unconscious in Pulwama when the Indian Home Minister, Amit Shah, argue about the special status of Jammu and Kashmir and since then been suffering from dissociative episodes, according to Dr Aijaz. “He has been suffering from depression since that time. He does not speak much either. He doesn’t interact with his parents, and gets extremely angry over small things,” said Dr Aijaz.
Adil is among hundreds of patients affected by the clampdown and communication blackout and house raids of Indian forces that have been in place in the Kashmir Valley.
According to Aijaz, over 40 percent of his patients have shown signs of mental illnesses due to the recent turmoil. “There are people who are not being able to talk to their relatives. Some are anxious after not being able to talk to parents or children living outside the Valley,” he explained.
“Patients from all parts of Kashmir, to avoid restrictions, arrive as early as 6 in the morning to Srinagar’s Shri Maharaja Hari Singh Hospital,” said Nazir Ahmad, an employee who checks patient cards. While the situation is grim in rural areas where at several places, chemists have shut their shops.
Our phone lines are dead and we are unable to contact our distributors in Srinagar to replenish our stocks. “There is panic among the patients. They are stocking medicines for months,” said Bilal Baba, owner of Medicare in north Kashmir’s Kupwara district.
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Fights erupt between police, Indian soldiers
The US-based news agency, the Associated Press, citing officers of Kashmir police has said that at least three incidents of fights between personnel of Kashmir police and Indian soldiers have taken place since India revoked Kashmir’s special status, leading to injuries on both sides.
30 Kashmiri police officers who spoke on the condition of anonymity fearing retribution from their superiors told the news agency that they have been sidelined and in some cases disarmed by New Delhi-based authorities. The Kashmir police force was shocked by the sudden presidential order earlier this month that stripped Kashmir’s special status, leading officers to feel spiritless, caught between the Indian security forces and the friends and neighbors who question their loyalties like never before.
“At the end of the day, we neither belong to our own nor are we trusted by higher authorities,” said an officer.
For years, Kashmiri police have been on the forefront of intelligence-gathering and profiling of activists and mujahideen fighting Indian rule.
“Days before Kashmir’s special status was revoked, tens of thousands of troops were deployed to the region. Authorities cut internet, cell coverage and even landline telephone service, leaving Jammu and Kashmir’s 12.5 million people unable to contact each other or friends and relatives outside the state.”
Officers described Kashmir’s sudden re-organization as a betrayal by the Indian authorities they had been serving at the risk of social alienation in their communities. Many of the policemen said their department-issued firearms were taken away from them days before Modi government’s order was presented in Parliament because authorities feared they could rebel.
At least three fights have broken out between Kashmir police and Indian soldiers since Aug. 5, leading to injuries on both sides, two police officers said. Some officers said they were unclear about their role as the region transitions from a semi-autonomous state to a federally administered territory.
In contrast to the Indian paramilitary soldiers manning a maze of checkpoints armed with assault rifles, shotguns, tear gas canisters and two-way radios, Kashmir police are only carrying batons.“It has been a leisurely job these days,” said an officer perusing a newspaper at a checkpoint. “We’ve become like clerks and helpers in the field for soldiers. Why should we carry weapons? After all, we too are part of this besieged society,” he said.
Tensions intensify
Each of the dozen or so entrances have been blocked with makeshift barricades of bricks, corrugated metal sheets, wooden slabs and felled tree trunks. Groups of youths armed with stones congregate behind the biggest obstacles. The aim: to keep Indian security forces, and particularly the paramilitary police, out of the area.
Soura, home to about 15,000 people, has become the epicenter of resistance to Indian government plans to remove the partial autonomy that was enjoyed by Jammu and Kashmir, the country’s only Muslim-majority state. The enclave, which has effectively become a no-go zone for the Indian security forces, is now a barometer of the ability of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu-nationalist government to impose its will in Kashmir after its dramatic move on Aug. 5 to tighten its control over the region.
The authorities have turned the valley, particularly Srinagar, into a military garrison by deploying thousands of Indian troops and police personnel in every nook and corner.
In Srinagar, troops and policemen are patrolling the deserted streets, lanes and by lanes to thwart any attempt of people to stage anti-India demonstrations.
The authorities also continue to impose information blockade as TV channels and internet links remain snapped and restrictions on media continue. Local newspapers even failed to update their online editions during all this period while majority of them could also not be printed due to curfew and other restrictions.
Markets and shops are closed while transport is off the roads since then. Local journalists complain that Indian forces do not allow them to perform their duties.
The withdrawal of the special privileges of Muslim majority Kashmir means residents of all parts of India can buy property and compete for government jobs and college places, raising fears that it will be flooded with outsiders.
Modi’s surprise move has increased tensions with nuclear arch-rival Pakistan after India committed gross human rights’ violations in the territory at the heart of more than 70 years of hostility between them.
PM Khan expresses solidarity with Kashmiris
On Monday, Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan said the United Nations had a responsibility to ensure that the people of Kashmir had the right to decide their own future through a referendum.
He called Modi’s intervention a “huge blunder” and said the risk of nuclear confrontation between the two countries meant the issue went beyond the immediate region.
“The responsibility today lies on the international community,” he said in a special televised address on Kashmir, adding that Pakistan would “go to any length at every forum” to press the issue.
He called on Pakistanis to stop work for half an hour on Friday as a mark of solidarity with Kashmiris.
“We as a whole nation give this message to the 8 million Kashmiris that we are standing with them,” he said.
Almost all Hurriyat leaders, including Syed Ali Gilani and Mirwaiz Umar Farooq, have been put under house arrest or in jails.
Political leaders and workers including even pro-India politicians like Farooq Abdullah, Omar Abdullah, Mehbooba Mufti, Ghulam Ahmed Mir, Engineer Abdur Rasheed and Shah Faesal have been detained.
