As many as 120 Kashmiri men, women and children have been killed and scores others injured by the Indian security forces in occupied Kashmir since June this year in a bid to suppress their renewed and determined protest against illegal Indian occupation of their motherland. The protest demonstrations had erupted after a 17-year old student was shot dead by the Indian security forces. The Kashmiris are, in fact, braving the strict shoot-on-sight curfews to focus to the international community their inalienable right for freedom from Indian subjugation and to vent their anger against their unabated brutalization by the Indian occupation forces. India has since deployed army in cities and towns across the Kashmir valley following massive anti-India protests on September 11 when tens of thousands of Kashmiri men, women and children marched through Srinagar. At least eleven people were shot dead two days later as Police fired on the protesters amidst escalating repression and violence. Another ten were killed in the subsequent week.
The state government has imposed repeated dawn-to-dusk curfews rendering daily life in the valley miserable as stone-throwing youth are being subjected to indiscriminate firing by the security forces. The repression has, however, fueled the freedom movement with youths going from throwing stones to storming police stations. Indian forces’ brutalities have exposed New Delhi’s hoax that its security forces are acting only in self-defence to restore order. So much so in late August Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh was compelled to concede that there is need to find a better way to maintain order. But the repression continues unabated despite Singh’s statement. India is maintaining half a million or more security forces in occupied Jammu and Kashmir, which has a population of barely 10 million, making it one of the most heavily policed and militarized regions in the world.
Despite 63 years of India’s oppressive rule over Jammu and Kashmir, New Delhi has failed to address the Kashmiris’ grievances about its failure to respect its international commitments made in the UN Security Council to allow them their inalienable right to self determination. India has, in fact, dragged this issue deliberately over the decades on one pretext or the other. Pakistan has persistently tried to seek negotiated settlement of the Kashmir issue, but India’s obduracy to keep Kashmir under its yoke has blocked any progress on the issue. In fact, the two countries have held several rounds of talks to address the issue in keeping with the aspirations of the Kashmiri people, but have practically remained at square one due to India’s insincerity and non-seriousness. India’s claim that Kashmir is its integral part is not only illogical and in utter disregard to the its commitments in the Security Council as well as the ground realities of the prevailing situation in occupied Kashmir. Had it been so, there would have neither been any need for New Delhi to deploy over half a million security forces in the valley nor had it faced the determined resistance from the Kashmiri people as is evident from the periodic massive protest demonstrations including the current one against Indian occupation.
The fact of the matter is that ever since illegal and immoral landing of troops in Srinagar in 1947 in violation of the Indian Partition Plan, all its tactics to win over the Kashmiris have totally failed. The stick and carrot policy pursued by New Delhi has, in fact, backfired as is amply clear from the unprecedented supreme sacrifices being rendered by the Kashmiri people to throw away the shackles of Indian hegemony. To defuse the situation in the valley, India’s ruling Congress party has made only a ritualistic offer to talk to ‘all groups and individuals’ in the state who renounce violence, but it continues to cover up the fact that the great preponderance of the violence has been perpetrated by state security forces themselves through brutalization of the Kashmiri people. Chief Minister Omar Abdullah has unfortunately displayed a mixture of political paralysis, incompetence and ruthlessness in the face of street protests. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has conceded that there is a ‘trust and governance deficit’ in Jammu and Kashmir, but has not elaborated on how his government intends to overcome it. To date, his government has advanced no proposals to allay the anger and frustration of the Kashmiri masses. The situation in the occupied Kashmir has turned so ugly that even US President Obama has asked India to create peaceful environment in the region if it aspires for the permanent UN Security Council slot. He has also expressed concern about the prevailing security situation in the Kashmir valley owing to its difficulties in Afghanistan, where Taliban’s resistance to US occupation of their motherland remains unabated.
Pakistan has repeatedly tried to make India understand that the periodic incidents of violence and terrorism in India are the direct result of its security forces’ repression in occupied Kashmir and its own refusal to fulfill its commitments to let the Kashmiris decide their destiny through a free, fair and impartial plebiscite. It’s, however, unfortunate that New Delhi continues to be adamant to recognize the truth of the situation. Pakistan is not involved in the violence in the valley. It’s, in fact, the obvious consequence of brutalities being inflicted upon the Kashmiri people. India has to recognize that there can be no peace in the region without resolution of the Kashmir issue. And the sooner it does so, the better it would be for Pakistan, India, Kshmiris and the region as a whole. It has not succeeded in either stifling the will of the Kashmiris for freedom in the past six decades nor would it succeed in future.
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