By Parul Verma:
In Kashmir, the police has already fired more than 1.3 million pellets, during the first 32 days of the Kashmir protest, said the Central Police Reserve Force. India’s state of geographical lust for Kashmir has no bounds, no ethics and definitely no sanity.
India’s militarised occupation of Kashmir is through unilateral force, for a unilateral geographical lust, thereby implementing a civil and state-sponsored militarism by unilateral action. The causalities of this geographical lust is at the cost of a common Kashmiri man’s mortal death. The ground zero troop presence in Kashmir is around 700,000 which constitutes one soldier for 17 Kashmiris, as mentioned by Khurram Pervez. The numbers not only reveal the abnormal lust for a geographical region, but also the deviated militarised systematised regime of the state. The regime not only preserves the insanity of the violence being committed on the Kashmiris rather but it also gives security forces a virtual immunity from the prosecution (AFSPA). The Indian forces in Kashmir have been involved in rape, torture, killings and detentions,with no noted legal consequences.
However, what is worth observing is that the use of contractual rigid military operations used by the Indian Army forces against Kashmiri natives, is similar to that of Israel Defence Forces. The structure of militarised operation of the Indian Armed Forces in Kashmir borrows its militarised strategies from Israel, the most common being the concept of ‘collective punishment‘ that aims to repress the resistance from the suppressed and to embed a sense of constant fear of facing mortal death or permanent disability if resistance emerges in the future.
Yossi Cohen, the national security adviser of Israel, met Rajnath Singh in 2014 along with his Indian counterpart Ajit Doval, and senior diplomats from the Ministry of External Affairs to discuss “common challenges” faced by the two countries and their solutions, emphasising his country’s “willingness to expand cooperation in all fields and in any level.” The aftermath of the meeting resulted in sophisticated weapons being introduced at the Punjab borders as well as in Kashmir.
Indian authorities started ‘Operation Chakravyuh‘ in July to strengthen the border shared with Pakistan in Jammu and Kashmir and Gujarat. The BSF plans to acquire hi-end sensors and cameras to secure the Pak border in addition to centralised control rooms being established. Approximately Rs. 18-20 crore will be spent in the first phase itself. What one is not being told by the mainstream media is the usage of pellet guns and other weapons is creating an inhumanitarian carnage. The psychological technique of collectively punishing the Kashmiri population has been the prime stratum. The concept has been borrowed by the Israel Defence Forces that operates with the same stratum, but on the occupied West Bank and Gaza populations.
Parts of Kashmir are under strict curfew as protests and violence rocked the Kashmir valley, two months after security forces killed rebel leader Burhan Wani and two other fighters in southern Kashmir. It has been a mayhem of bloodshed and injuries inflicted among the Kashmiri population as the tension is rising. Since the riot, police have been witnessed using pellet guns to subside the protest. Pellets guns penetrate the skin’s soft tissue and brutally damages it. Since the eyes have soft tissue, it becomes a vulnerable target that causes damage and might lead to blindness. Once fired, they don’t follow a definite path and can cause injury to any bystander or a protester.
“Pellet guns are inherently inaccurate and indiscriminate, and have no place in law enforcement,” says Zahoor Wani, senior campaigner of Amnesty International India. “Once it goes into the eyes, it rotates and destroys everything inside. Its physics. This is a high velocity body. It generates high amount of energy. The lens, the iris, the retina gets mattered up” explained Dr. Qureshi to the New York Times. Since the initiation of protests in Kashmir in July, more than 570 cases have been administered in Srinagar’s government hospital for the ruptured retina, caused by these pellets. This is the core soma of collective punishment, deliberately target the population violently rather than the accused individuals.
The concept of collective punishment is not an unfamiliar process of handling protesters. Israel is often accused of bombarding, detaining and shooting the Palestinian population rather than the individuals involved in protests. Since 2000, Israel has had military operation lasting a few weeks every few years. The operation started in response to the rockets fired by the Hamas towards the Israeli cities. But instead of targeting Hamas, IDF initiated a operation that targeted the Gaza population as a form of the collective punishment. An investigation by the United Nation concluded that Israel had used both “disproportionate force” and “collective punishment” against the population of Gaza, and stated that it had committed “actions amounting to war crimes and possibly crimes against humanity.” The cause of the operation was said to be the firing of rockets by Hamas but as witnessed, Israel bombarded and created an inhumanitarian havoc on the Palestinian population rather than targeting Hamas.
Both Kashmir and Palestine have become the victims of the geographical lusts of India and Israel, respectively, that has resulted in the humanitarian crisis in the region with the most frequently used psychological tool of the military occupation being the collective punishment. But, as the death toll rises, the voices of the dead of the Kashmiris and Palestinians manifest into a resistance with a new voice – only stronger than the last.
HeemanshuSinha
however, while eulogizing those favoring freedom, lets also take a moment to reflect on the systematic purge of the minority Hindu population from the Kashmir valley..they were also local residents who were flushed out by a similar set of people… why not also speak about the wrongs that have been done by both sides? why such a unilateral one-dimensional analysis only?
Also, food for thought.. since most youth commentators of these days were not even born then they may not realize this: Kashmir was peaceful, and indeed a heaven on earth, right upto the mid-eighties.. why not spend some time researching why 40 years of peace were there if azaadi was all people wanted?
sai mouni
Your article is too one sided actually no, its blind sided. I don’t care about Palestine but Kashmir I do.Just to be clear I am not being insensitive to the pain of the people of Kashmir. From what you say above it sounds like you want the borders to be demilitarized with no protection against all that comes from cross border. I don’t know where you are from but definitely you would have heard of terrorist attacks on Indian soil and yes we have proof that they are from Pakistan since we caught more than one terrorist to prove it. If you call Indian forces stationed over there as lust by the Indian government then what will you say about Pakistan sending in troops and militants over to cause disturbances and social unrest. Most of the terrorists groups in Kashmir are head quartered in POK( Pakistan Occupied Kashmir In case you didn’t know). And it was Pakistan that invaded Kashmir in 1947 not India.The links below are for your general knowledge. You will need it as a journalist.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hizbul_Mujahideen
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kashmir#1947_and_1948
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-south-asia-14933247
And the one you call a rebel is a terrorist. The reason he is a terrorist is because he is a part of Hizbul Mujaheddin which is a designated terrorist group by a lot of nations and primarily because they kill people. You might say the Indian army does the same but the situation where the army kills people is different. You should read articles about Hitler and Tiananmen Square. Maybe you will gain insight about what true military abuse is. Even a mom hits her children when they are out of line. Force is required for peace I guess. The use of force can be justified when mobs are unruly and cause social, economic and violent unrest. It was the Indian armed forces that saved thousands of people during the Kashmir floods and that was last year in case you did’nt know(am sure they don’t have mood swings). Maybe you should ask the Mujaheddin next time.
The Indian government does things to protect its citizens and that’s about it because Kashmir has no economic assets such as oil, gold, etc to occupy out of lust unlike Baluchistan where people are killed in thousands every year and kept underdeveloped to extract resources. You should also search for POK and Baluchistan related articles. You will only see articles relating to exiled personals and about human rights abuse in these regions. You as a journalist can go to Indian Kashmir( Kashmir signed the instrument of instrument of ascension when Pakistan invaded) freely but will be denied permission to go POK from the Pakistan government.
Human activists are not ready to see that the victims are causing the trouble to begin with. Khurram says a lot of people died. Yes they did. They died because a small part of the population tried to physically abusing and kill the forces that protect them during peaceful and hard times, and tried to make life miserable for the masses.And they did that because a terrorist was killed by the Indian forces. Only four districts is where the unrest is the rest of the valley is relatively peaceful.
What else can the armed forces do other than use arms such as pellet guns to keep themselves alive and at the same time keep peace. Even they are human. After all they are outnumbered 1 to 17.
Maybe you have a better solution and I hope its more sensible than your article.