How does one act to fulfil these wishes, if one can not be merely content? A person may kidnap another to ‘teach him a lesson,’ or ‘demand money’ or  ‘ just kill him.’ This person then will be considered a kidnapper or a killer, as the case may be. A sane democratic government will hunt this person down and then put him on trial and then behind bars.

Q. But what if a state wants to do ‘all of the above’, and get away with it? What can the state do?

A. The state imposes a law and calls it Public Safety Act – an act that can squeeze the very air out of the public.

The Amnesty International has just released a report on this beautifully crafted law.

India: A ‘lawless law’: Detentions under the Jammu and Kashmir Public Safety Act.

Hundreds of people are locked up on spurious grounds under the Public Safety Act in Jammu and Kashmir every year. This report exposes a catalogue of human rights violations associated with the use of administrative detention under the Public Safety Act. It highlights how these run counter to India’s obligations under international human rights law. If India is serious about meeting these obligations, then it must ensure that the Public Safety Act is repealed and that detainees are released immediately or tried in a court of law.

Download the executive summary in English (pdf) or Urdu. The complete report can be downloaded here (pdf, English only).

What is this law?

The PSA happens to be a more punitive form of the DIA that was described by various National leaders including Mahatma Gandhi as draconian and a black law enacted by Britishers to suppress Indian freedom struggle.

After independence, Defense of India Act changed nomenclature in the year 1967 and is presently known as Public Safety Act, more precisely in Jammu and Kashmir as Jammu and Kashmir Public Safety Act-1978 with provisions and impunity almost similar to the act of British era.

Source

This isn’t the first instance that AI has spoken out against this law. It has been seen as a threat to human rights, since decades in Kashmir.

And, one may very well come to the conclusion that this law has become the favorite of Omar Abdullah. Summer protests have become a norm of Kashmir for the last three years, but the usage of PSA has only spiked during Omar Abdullah’s tenure.

It comes no surprise, considering that his IGP doesn’t think ICRC has any credibility.

Today a hunger strike is seen more as an attempt to make ones presence felt than a tool of non-violent protest, as it is made out to be. And our iconic Hunger Striker is Yasin Malik, who has once again vowed to go on hunger strike for human rights abuses and etc.

Why do these symbolic gestures result in nothingness?

Symbolic gestures are essential, but have to be an extension of

concerete actions, and not concrete actions in themselves. It appears hunger strikes and talks on deep rooted conspiracies are the only achievements constructed on the sacrifices people have been giving.

A researcher wanted some data on HR abuses that the APHC and approached them for it. The response, which I can not put here, would make you cry. The state of Kashmir’s struggle is a lot of rhetoric and lacks any real effort or hard work by the separatist establishment for Kashmir. ALl their work is directed back towards them. Mirwaiz travelled Central Asia for his PhD, but he would have had to travel a lot less, and would have had a lot more to show to the people, if his thesis was on Human Rights in Kashmir.

Talking is easy, it requires no effort, but recorded, verifiable data is essential to claim anything, words alone do not stand scrutiny. Geelani has been talking about International Criminal Court, but those courts do not take press releases as proof, and he needs to understand that. We should be thankful to organizations like AI and HRW for doing some of that work for us.

As Yasin Malik goes on yet another Hunger Strike, here is an interview you should view.

Also of interest is the google time line of Yasin Malik’s hunger strikes:

Between 03-06, Yasin Malik gave up going hungry (any ideas why?), but Mirwaiz (time line below) continued. A look at these two time lines shows the differences between these leaders and that it isnt the events in Kashmir that determine their actions, but their own personal agendas. One would have thought that the strikes would peak at the same time for both the leaders (assuming that they would go on a hunger strike for increased human rights abuses) but that’s not happening.

The state of Kashmir’s police

The man behind the killings of Kashmiris in the summer unrest, SM Sahai, nearly admits to the presence of torture camps in Kashmir in a BBC interview. In this interview he brushes aside the credibility of ICRC, as if it were the State Human Rights Commission, and calls ICRCs credibility an opinion of the radio host. If this is the attitude of the head of police towards ICRC, the only organisation in the world with a legal mandate on human rights, one gets a snap shot of how insignificant human rights and accountability are to the state, rhetoric not withstanding.

We protested the Gujarat riots, the hanging of Saddam Hussein (who, as India’s ally and friend, always stood against Kashmir & Pakistan. 98% of the Iraqis won’t even know what or where Kashmir is). Global events or not, news or rumors, true or wrong, by our own free will or under the cloud of threats and warnings, with or without consequences for Kashmir, we have stood up for every invitation to protest by anybody and everybody who either is somebody or a nobody. We have emerged as one of the finest protesting nation in the history of the world. Kashmir, let alone the issue of Kashmir, might not be well known globally, but we have given the world the Islamic Rage Boy. In the early 90’s we went indoors for three months protesting against the suspension of government officers and demanded. We demanded revocation of their suspension by the same government we were up in arms against. We want freedom but we don’t want to pay for it. We spent 6 months (out of which 85 days were curfews) protesting one death after another and ready to shed more blood (as long as it was not of our own). We filled the streets with smoke when Pakistan lost a game of cricket; we shed our winter hibernation for better electric supply and were back on streets protesting the installation of meters. We do though lineup to pay the telephone bills. We want electricity (like so many other things) but we do not want to pay (like so many other things).

As confusing as reading this might be, even all the more complex is how corrupt and soulless leaders control every aspect of our lies, whether we agree or not.

We pelted stones after watching a movie. The screening of Lion of the Desert in the Palladium Cinema inspired us to protest. However, when the world protested, when people wanted to break the shackles of oppression and dictatorship, we slept. We turned a blind eye to the death of the Tunisian fruit seller who brought down two governments and maybe the cause of many more falling. Till Mubarak stepped down, the English media in Kashmir knowingly blocked out the news from Egypt. It appeared that the media wasn’t just gagged in Egypt but in Kashmir also. Stranger even was the fact that the champion of Islam in Kashmir, Syed Ali Shah Geelani was as quiet as was his black bearded counterpart Mirwaiz, who was touring Europe anyway. Geelani, always eager to issue statements condoning the US, the UK and Israel – had no words for Egypt.

All that changed within minutes of Mubarak’s fall. As if puppets controlled by a single thread, all vomited out nauseating comments on Egypt, its people and its army. Within minutes they appeared to have gained knowledge of the crisis in Egypt and had intellectual comments to dole out to the people of Kashmir. They had advice for the people & the government. They asked the people of Kashmir to be disciplined. Some of them failed to understand the joy of Egyptian people and wondered why the Egyptians were celebrating the handing over of the power to the army. The crocodile tear shedding politician said her usual words. However, they just failed to do one thing: they failed to look at their failures. They failed to understand that they are as useless as Mubarak was. They failed to understand that a fruit seller could bring a revolution nobody would have ever dreamed of.

Perhaps it is time for some introspection. That might be the only lesson to be learned from Egypt.

Egypt – this northern African country bordering Israel has the utmost strategic importance globally and remains the buffer for Israel against the rest of the Arab world. A peace treaty under the stewardship of a thirty year long dictator and a state of emergency were the highlights of this country for its people, for the rest it was all about pyramids and beaches. A secret army that controlled the people, opposition was unheard of. Egyptians were afraid, scared and thought the possibility of a revolution an impossibility. Egypt held interests from Tel Aviv to Tehran. People desired a revolution against their leaders, who only doled out corruption, control, poverty, and illiteracy. It was just a desire. This dream became a reality through the nightmare for Mubarak. Not in his wildest dreams would Hosni Mubarak, a man backed by the US and Israel, have dreamt being pushed out of power by the death of a fruit seller in Tunisia.

It happened. People’s power surpassed every ones imagination.

So, what has that to do with Kashmir? There are lessons for each one of us. Egyptians took the brave step of questioning all that was wrong, and stood by what was right. They gave no ear to assurances from the most powerful man in their country. They saw beyond the lies and understood it would be today or never. They understood that, in act and not in mere thought, more than we have ever understood. They understood a puppet is a puppet, no matter who backs him. Mubarak had US and Israel on his back and he had to bend down. India and Pakistan don’t even count among the league of these countries. We, in Kashmir protest for months, we get bullets for breakfast, as our leaders give breakfast lectures in the EU and the US. We fail to question our leaders, out of fear, out of pure reluctance, and out of the fear of being branded. A lot like the US president George Bush talked about the axis of evil – and being with us or against us, the people in Kashmir have become just like him. One can either be an Indian Agent or a Pakistani Agent – there’s no in-between, there are no gray areas. You question Geelani / Mirwaiz you are branded an Indian agent or a NC supporter. Criticize Omar, and then you are a revolutionary, a true Kashmiri. . There is enough of venom out there speaking against the mainstream politicians. I don’t like them, but at least they have the basic human decency of being honest about what they are. They are Indians and they believe in it and work for that state. Period. Today let’s question our leaders, the starting with the General Motors of Kashmir (Geelani and Mirwaiz).

Geelani and Mirwaiz are no different than Mubarak. Both have been at the helm of affairs collectively for about half a decade now. That’s 50 years! And we continue to be scared of them and hold them sacred. Just because Geelani never budged from his position conveys nothing. Joining Pakistan, a country which its own people don’t want to stay in, is not the finest option today. Pakistan kills as many of its people through attacks in the Northern Areas as India kills in Kashmir. Both are recipients of the British Colonial Mentality. Religion has not changed Pakistan. It is no more a Muslim country than Egypt or Tunisia was. Dictatorships, corruption and poverty are its hallmarks. Geelani doesn’t even make the condition of joining Pakistan conditional on Pakistan being democratic. He criticizes Musharraf and in the same breath talks about the UN resolutions. What if India gave him the option of joining Pakistan if it is run by a dictator? Would he join it?

Geelani is a complex person. People who have met him say he has no charisma. Some very basic issues have seemed ground breaking for Geelani. Geelani wants to fight India, but at the same time he has been crying hoarse about the government targeting APHC (G) activists? Why shouldn’t the government do that? If you oppose the government, you should expect to be prosecuted for that. Let’s face it, it’s an occupational hazard, not unlike a person who joins the military knowing he may be shot dead one day. He should stop condemning the arrests of his comrades and be ready to sacrifice his people too, or are the sacrifices restricted to unarmed, non political people only? Is the only acceptable damage, the collateral? His age is getting in his way, as are his methods. He recently issued a calendar, highlighting the history of Kashmir. He stressed the need to know our history. If a leader thinks of this after a hundred thousand people are buried under five feet of earth, there must be something wrong with his leadership quality. I know of people who have tried to document Kashmir’s history for decades. They have no calendars to issue, no noise to make, but they understood a decade back, what it took Geelani a hundred thousand deaths to understand. Is there a single multimedia cell for his or any other organisation in Kashmir? No! The reason being they are too scared to let anyone else do the talking. He might snatch away their limelight. These leaders of ours are not fighting for the people but for their narcissist selves. Why does Geelani selectively protest a killing or a rape? Are all rapes and deaths not equal? The recent unidentified killing of two girls brought to the fore the shameful selves of our leaders. They were quite about it and suddenly a cascade of protests and condemnations comes out from their quarters. Not because they were aghast at the killings, not because the color of their blood was similar to the color of the Shopain double rape and murder, but because Omar Abdullah asked them to. Otherwise, these deaths, as so many others, would have vanished in thin air. They might have had a response if it was the summers – the economically most active season for Kashmir’s poor. The youth shot dead in Handwara died a silent death as well. The summer obsession with protests makes one wonder whether the separatists want the poor of Kashmir to stay poor, as poor people are easy fodder.

Having said that, sadly each death in Kashmir is cashed, be it the separatists or the mainstream. The separatists condemn and protest selective killings as do the mainstream politicians.

The UN is dead and old. I believe that even if one person dies demanding freedom that should be reason enough. A hundred thousand people dead for that, is a hundred thousand reasons for that. The UN tried all it could during the days when Joseph Korbel was the head of the UN commission on Kashmir. They failed. India’s and Pakistan’s treatment of the commission is well recorded and it is not rosy. Pakistan’s Sir Zafarullah Khan, worked hard to remove the ‘independence’ clause from the options. That was Pakistan’s role. Sir Zafarullah’s eloquence became a bane for us. Decades later, the UN will not invest the time and energy it did earlier, and let us accept it and move on. The UN resolutions are not a solution; they stopped being a solution decade’s back. The power of the people is enough. Why does Geelani, a champion of Islam, all of a sudden hook his hopes to a global body? He has to give a tele-conference a day after Mirwaiz says the UN resolutions are not a solution to discredit Mirwaiz & appease Pakistan. Do we have to wait another 50 years for the UN to act? What happens if the UN is dissolved? Do we lose the right to ask for freedom?

Mirwaiz is our globetrotting leader. He should have been the foreign minister for India or Pakistan. That would suit him very well. Photo exhibitions in Geneva, breakfast speeches in the US & UK, shopping in Dubai is what our smart, yet unemployed, leader does. Opening offices all over the world for Kashmir cause is his dream, though we already have well funded Kashmir Center in London, Kashmir American Council in the US, Kashmir Center EU in Brussels, Kashmir Scandinavian Council in Norway, and Kashmir Canadian Council in Canada. The need for more or even what the existing ones have achieved baffles one. But, yes why not. The APHC website created by APHC (M) group once carried a critical article on APHC from my blog in their press release section. The lesser said about their media management, the better. He used to be late for meetings in London, as he would be busy buying video games, today he might show up on time in an Armani, but he has nothing to show for Kashmir. His wardrobe is one of the costliest in Kashmir. He could have helped built a robust human resource base in Kashmir and why not, he controls admission to professional colleges in in Pakistan, Turkey, Malaysia, and some other OIC countries, meant for the children of martyrs. And yes none of the recipients are children of martyr’s and strangely all the recipients are usually blood relatives of each other.

There is yet another face of Kashmir, the latrams, bitta karates and nalkas of Kashmir (noms de guerre of Kashmir’s fighters). Mushtaq Zargar (aka Latram) a local downtown goon, was made to head Al Umar Mujahideen, the armed wing of Mirwaiz headed Awami Action Committee. A criminal, to put it simply, was released by India in the Kandahar hijack deal. There are people people who would think of him and other similar people as visionaries but those people are (hopefully) an insignificant minority – whose only reason to worship these people is family, political or monetary ties. Other than that, the silent majority hates them. People sighed relief when he was arrested. It is said he was involved in the murder of Abdul Ghani Lone and also planned assassination of Mirwaiz Omar, for talking to India. Once when Al Umar Mujahideen called a strike in Kashmir, they threatened to burn any vehicle that is seen on the roads. Indeed, the strike was successful.

Another militant turned separatist Javid Nalka (Nalka literally pipe in Kashmiri) was either an employee with the Water Works Department or a former petty thief who would steal water pipes. Doesn’t matter, his drunk goons once ransacked the office of a leading Kashmiri newspaper for failing to publish their press release. Yes, India loves them too. Bitta Karate, set free by Indian courts, has accepted on camera killing tens of Kashmiris Pandits. He roams free as Afzal Guru remains behind bars for a crime he never committed.

The mention of these people and their background is not to undermine active goons or water-pipe thieves, but a reflection of their understanding and their capacity to actually give a direction to the struggle and since we are stuck with them it is no wonder we are still struggling.

And to end, let’s talk about Yasin Malik. This person aspiring to be a model, is busy roaming India with his trophy wife and gets thrown out from most of the places he is visiting. And that, that alone, nothing else, makes him say that BJP is pushing the Muslims of India and the youth of Kashmir back to arms. That sickens me.

We have stayed quite too long, just like the Egyptians had, it is time for us to wake up and smell the coffee before it is too late. If Tunisia and Egypt could do it as one people without any leaders to lead, we too can. Let us stop worshiping our leaders and for once believe in ourselves.

Viva la revolution.

Ah! Kashmir: so near yet so far!

Kashmir, the dream of a Free Kashmir, remains so near yet so far today, as it did 5 years ago. It is near, for every Kashmiri breathes it and feels the pain of this geographical piece of land called Kashmir. These words may appear poetic, but they are not. The pain of Kashmir is felt, just like a cut by a sharp knife. This pain is as much physical as it is emotional. The images of Kashmir embedded in our memory are not, as most Indians might think and want to believe, of honeymooners, neither are they of a Kashmiri boatman selling shawls by the banks of Dal Lake. The images are of death. They are frozen in memory forever. When I think of Kashmir, two images flash in front of my eyes: of a dead body flowing down a river & another image of blood oozing out of a young man who lay and was shot in front of me. At that time my age was less than the fingers on my hands. Their faces I may not recall, but those images will remain fresher than the morning dew in my mind. Nothing has changed, and nothing will, for a long time to come. History is being repeated in Kashmir every single day. Young bodies plunge to their death in Kashmir – a paradise, I call home, but remains a hell to most of its inhabitants. There are a select few others in Kashmir, for whom it continues to remain a gold mine, what it should have been for all the 6 million inhabitants of the valley. Treading over the graves of a few hundred thousand, and the hopes and aspirations of millions, bothers them not. And, if they weren’t enough, as if Kashmiris needed a cherry on the cake, a breed of new Kashmiris, are seeing themselves as saviors of Kashmir, for they think they possess the knowledge to do so. However, Knowing that (facts and information) does not always mean one knows how (the ability to do things). However, we all tend to believe that if we know that, we know how! Seeing being literate as being educated and being knowledgable, leads to fallacies. Very rarely do people, who possess the understanding to see the differences in these three, tread this earth. This is just another pain Kashmir has had to suffer through the decades. Every other thinks he knows what is right for Kashmir, and they mostly consider the opinion of the uneducated majority, not worth a pinch of salt. Sheikh Abdullah thought so, as does Geelani.

Blogging all these years, has been a difficult learning process. Blogging about Kashmir here since 28th December 2005, has been emotionally draining in many ways. It is difficult to write down what you see, hear and live through every day of your life, and pushes you deeper into an abyss. Before I began writing here, I had another blog, which saw the light of day in 2003, but as almost happened to this blog: I gave that up, for it was getting tougher and tougher to write. The only time when I thought joy and Kashmir were linked was when I created a blog on blogspot sometime in 2001, but it never went beyond a single post on nun chai and Kahwa (the Kashmiri teas)! Perhaps, writing about joy and the nice things in Kashmir did not feel right, and I lost that blog too, as I did my will to write. It was a time of evolution for me: I was trying to understand Kashmir, its past and the present that I grew up in. There were contradictions I had to deal with. There were times I had to question who I should feel for? My pain, or the collective pain of Kashmir? Answers to some of which I have not yet found and may never ever find.

This pursuit of understanding Kashmir, took me to the most random bookstores in the most random locations. At one time I could spot the word Kashmir from a mile, something that irked my friends a lot. Three books I would like to mention, K.H. Khurshid’s book came by after a long wait, but it was worth every bit of it. It had some rare photographs of Jinnah in Kashmir, and almost brought together, K.H.Khurshid’s family. The toughest book to find was Aatish e Chinar, Sheikh Abdullahs biography. It took me to places in Delhi that looked scary and shady. It even pushed me to ask people to check at the offices of National Conference in Srinagar, of course to no avail. They did not even possess a copy in their library! A friend found a copy in Urdu in Rawalpindi, talk about irony. It was my handicap with Urdu that prevented me from asking him to speed post it (assuming that the postal services would let it through). Years later, an academician found an abridged version in a university library in the US, and emailed me a scanned copy. Given the wonderful download speeds of BSNL in Kashmir back then, I could never get my virtual hands on it, and to this day it stays faithfully in my inbox. I am assured it gathers no dust. Perwez Dewan’s two-volume book on Kashmir, Jammu and Ladakh was the most easy to come by, the most costly, and the most useless. It appeared to be a compilation of Kashmir Gazettes, to which he should have had easy access, being an IAS officer. The only places he appeared to budge in with his opinion was when he presented as fact, his opinion, that most Muslim religious sites in Kashmir, were actually Hindu. Something the RSS does very well. And he also had discovered another Holy Cave. This blog also put me in touch with a lot of professors, graduate students, and journalists. Students from Columbia and the Ohio universities in the US referenced this blog for their thesis, and surprise, found it be very helpful. This blog even made it to the recommended reading list of a University of Leeds programme.A book referenced this blog. It got mention in the Kashmir Observer and also on a recent feature on The Week. One of the best emails I ever received was from an American journalist, who said that she found the blog spiritual. My review on Fanaa, showed up on the top of google results back then! My own commitment to anonymity, prevented me from meeting any of these people. But, it did at least give me an idea, that this blog, is being read and taken seriously. When professors favorite your blog and find it knowledgeable, that becomes an academic approval of sorts, and your care all the less for the threats in your inbox. And, to be honest, it feels good, not for self praise, but for the fact, that people are concerned and do want to hear you out.

And to end I should mention why I remain anonymous. Being anonymous has a lot to do with my understanding that Kashmir owes a lot of its miseries to personalities. These personalities have manipulated and run over Kashmir. I do not want to claim to be a spokesperson for Kashmir, when I am not. It does not befit me to talk about atrocities in Kashmir, as I sit in an air-conditioned room, and raise my own stature. It is not difficult to make others feel, that you are wanted, I do not want to do that. Years back a politician approached me with promises of all the support I wanted. That was the last time he wrote to me. To rise above ones self is an easy term to use, but to actually do that, is difficult. Narcissism is a disease, that can afflict easily, and you wouldn’t know it before you are fully consumed. I do not want even an iota of it. So, I shall continue to be anonymous, till perhaps something in the future makes me think otherwise, but I will continue to write when I can, what I can.

'They Call It Paradise, I Call It Home'

Untitled, Undated.