FIRST THISNG IS THAT I HATE ARMY WHO IS DEPLOYED IN HEAVEN KASMIR
with army jawans it is a must to teach the enemy a lesson. the
lessons are usually carried out by SPECAAL OPERATION GROUPS who are beyond the purview of Law or a simple enquiry. So needless of say that why we have witnessed a large scale disaappearances of Men in Kashmir, eliminated without trail often.
A HoD of Kashmir University , a close friend, was picked once by Army in Anantnag and released after three days, that too because he managed to arrange a meeting with a senior officer in Bahinal prison who accidentally hapened to listen to his request, and was subsequenlty released. .Normally, it is the angry Jawan in uniform who controls the street or an area and decides on the spot about the the person in sight. Rape is one such lesson.
I was once myself caught by Army jawans in Srinagar, it was cufew
time, and even after showing my I.card i was punished to perform Murga ( chicken ) and then made to run.. The 'run' word those days meant to shoot the runner from behind and label him as offender of curfew or a terrorist etc.
The men in uniform are supposed to be orderly, a friend in kashmir
told me once, while he agreed that militants usually come from weired backgrounds and can do many bad things,.But, unfortunately Army record in kahmir is very very poor in this regard,
Those who use the media filter to try to understand what is happening
in Kashmir should realize they're looking at a shadow play. A curtain
lies between events and us. What is played out on the screen depends on who manipulates the sources of light.
Last summer, the Valley was overwhelmed by several months of
unprecedented non-violent public protest. It was triggered by the
complicated Amarnath land issue, but on the streets the people were
saying "Hum kya chahte? Azadi!" We are hearing this again this summer,
triggered by the rape and murder of two young women from Shopian in
south Kashmir. Only the stone deaf could miss the cry.
Between these two summer uprisings came the Assembly elections of
December. As everyone braced for a boycott, people did turn out to
vote. This surprise turnout was presented as nothing short of a
miracle and we were informed that this was "a vote for Indian
democracy". Those who wondered why people who had braved bullets only
a month ago should suddenly queue up to vote were reminded that
Kashmiris were an unpredictable, even contrary, people.
In fact, there is a frightening consistence about the Kashmiri chant
for decades: "Hum kya chahte? Azadi!" Protests have begun for all
sorts of reasons but they are a manifestation of the simmering anger
always close to the surface.
The current round of protests were given a head-start by the
distinctly amateur vacillations of the state chief minister, not least
his puzzling shifts on what may have actually happened to Nilofar, 22,
and her sister-in-law Asiya, 17, on the night of May 29.
Well-intentioned though he may be, Omar Abdullah seems very badly
advised, or else possessed of a political death-wish.
In its election campaign the National Conference made a point of
underlining that it was seeking a mandate for development, for bijli,
sadak, pani. It made no claim to settling masla-e-Kashmir or the
Kashmir issue. But once the elections were over, they went along with
the Indian establishment, which trumpeted the turnout as a decisive
mandate in India's favour. The inability of Omar Abdullah's government
to reach out to the people of the Valley in the past fortnight is a
timely reminder of the dangers of that delusion. In just a little over
10 days, the protests have damaged the patina of normalcy that the
election 'success' painted on a deeply troubled situation.
In the middle of all this, but almost buried by events, the J&K police
announced the arrest of Constable Nazir Ahmed of the India Reserve
Police battalion for allegedly raping a minor girl in Baramulla in
north Kashmir. (They admitted the constable was a former Personal
Security Officer of Ghulam Hassan Mir, legislator and former
minister). Days after the incident, a scuffle between the families of
the victim and the policeman led to the tragic killing of the victim's
grandmother.
Both incidents of the past fortnight must be placed next to one from a
few years ago, when the infamous "sex scandal" led to huge protests,
bringing Srinagar to a grinding halt. That was a tawdry tale of the
sexual exploitation of vulnerable women, including the prostitution of
minors. It was on a massive scale, with the involvement of politicians
, senior bureaucrats, police and paramilitary officers. The scandal
exposed the ugly networks of power and oppression, which prop up the
structures of control in Kashmir. It also laid bare the vulnerability
of women all over the Valley, prey to the brutal arrogance unleashed
by 20 years of intense militarization and unbridled power.
It's a good time to remember that the acquisition of land for the
Amarnath yatra was only the spark that set off last summer's protests.
But the real fuel was widespread resentment about the fact that
thousands of acres of agricultural, orchard and forest land is under
occupation by the army and paramilitary forces, housing their feared
camps and cantonments and vast logistics bases. The Kashmiris'
behaviour then turns out to be underpinned by a fairly straightforward
political reason: we don't need to delve into their fragile 'psyche'.
This week, the lights behind the curtain are being moved around to
give the illusion of change: the CRPF's duties are to be handed over
to the J&K police. If true, this will need massive local police
recruitment and give a disturbing new twist to the Indian government's
promise of employment to young Kashmiris. (However, from the
Establishment's point of view, a policeman in every home may well be a
solution to Kashmir's troubles.)
But this change of guard will not alter the lives of ordinary people.
They do not care if the oppressive figure of the soldier wears the
uniform of the Indian Army, its paramilitary forces, or is their
neighbour in brand new fatigues. Such shallow transformation is not
new: people remember the 'disbanding' of the dreaded Special
Operations Group, which was simply merged into regular police
operations; or the highly public way in which the CRPF replaced the
BSF in Srinagar, leaving the countryside in the Army's iron grip.
This summer's protest is not just about the rape and murder of two
women, the violation of human rights, or even the repeal of some
draconian law. The shadow play must not distract us from the real
issue, which is the extraordinary and intolerable militarization of
Kashmir.
