Eideard

Yes, there are parts of Kashmir that look just like my neck of the prairie
Daylife/AP Photo used by permission

A much-despised law that suspends basic rights and shields security forces from prosecution in the disputed province of Kashmir will be lifted in some areas in the next few days.

Omar Abdullah, the chief minister of the Indian-controlled portion of Kashmir, said in a speech to police officers that the situation in many areas of Kashmir had become peaceful enough to warrant removing the law, which is known as the Armed Forces Special Powers Act.

Human rights activists have long argued that the act, which gives government security forces wide latitude in areas where insurgents operate, has led to widespread abuses. The discovery of thousands of unidentified bodies in mass graves in the region this summer seemed to underscore the impunity the law allowed.

Security officers cannot be prosecuted for acts committed while on duty in areas covered by the act without permission from the Home Ministry, and such permission has almost never been granted, even in cases where rape and murder were alleged.

The law was put in place in the Indian-administered part of Kashmir in 1990, when the state was in the grip of insurgents — partly fueled by Pakistan — who sought to wrest it free of India…The insurgency petered out in the late 1990s, and the past few years have been largely free from armed struggle. But the act has remained in force and was a crucial catalyst for unarmed protests that have swelled in Kashmir almost every summer in recent years. Last year more than 100 people died in protests, most of them killed by security officers who fired into rock-throwing crowds.

But this summer was largely tranquil, and the state government has been slowly reducing the visibility of its security presence in the region, removing heavily armored bunkers and taking machine-gun-toting security officers off the streets.

Like many activists around the world who support the range of struggle from national liberation movements in earlier days, pro-democracy movements, nowadays – I sincerely hope the Indian government can make it past sectarian insurgencies to support full-blown democracy in a region long in the search for its own voice in governing.

This could be a start.

Graves marked by numbers in Kupwara district

More than 2,000 corpses, believed to be victims of Kashmir’s long-running insurgency, have been found buried in dozens of unmarked graves in the divided region, an Indian government human rights commission report has said.

The graves were found in dozens of villages on the Indian side of the line of control, the de facto border that has split the former kingdom between India and Pakistan for nearly 40 years. “At 38 places visited in north Kashmir, there were 2,156 unidentified dead bodies buried in unmarked graves,” the inquiry found.

Though campaigners and community leaders in Kashmir have long said such graves exist – and often provided extensive documentary evidence to back up their claims – the report is the first official statement confirming their existence…

Up to 70,000 people died in the 22-year insurgency in Kashmir, which pitted armed separatist groups, many backed by Pakistan, against New Delhi’s rule.

The worst of the violence occurred during the mid-1990s when a vicious struggle pitted thousands of militants against Indian security forces supplemented by locally-hired irregulars. Human rights abuses were routine with militants intimidating local communities and killing so-called spies while Indian authorities resorted to abductions, torture and extra-judicial executions on a wide scale. The graves appear to date from this period.

Kashmir is India’s only Muslim-majority state and the struggle rapidly took on a religious dimension. The victims in the mass graves had been buried by local communities.

Police originally described the bodies to villagers as “unidentified militants”. This claim is disputed by the report, local media said , which also calls for a forensic investigation involving DNA identification of remains…

A US diplomatic cable leaked by WikiLeaks and published by the Guardian last December revealed a briefing to the US embassy in Delhi by representatives of the International Committee of the Red Cross which described continuing torture and arbitrary detention by security forces.

Sigh. No government can mask anti-human practices for long. Time either proves accusations right or wrong – and governments which intend democratic practices, past, present or future had better learn to open the door to investigation.

The leaders of India’s main opposition Hindu nationalist party were stopped on Monday from traveling to disputed Kashmir to hoist the national flag, the party said, for fear of provoking violence in the sensitive region.

While the Bharatiya Janata Party said the plan to fly the flag in Srinagar, the summer capital of revolt-torn Kashmir, to mark India’s Republic Day on Wednesday, was a patriotic right, the government dismissed it as a political stunt ahead of state elections this year…

Officials in Kashmir fear that the BJP’s plan to hoist the Indian flag as a symbolic show of control over the region could reignite separatist protests in which more than 100 people were killed last year.

Does anyone believe the BJP cares who dies for their ideology?

India’s Republic Day has traditionally been a lightning rod for anti-Indian protests in the Himalayan territory of Kashmir which is at the heart of hostilities between India and Pakistan…A nervous calm prevails in Kashmir after last summer’s anti-Indian protests, the worst in two decades. Between June and November, young men and women had almost daily hurled stones at security forces on the streets.

Close to 50,000 people have died since the insurgency broke out in 1989. India accuses Pakistan of supporting the separatists with money and arms, a charge Islamabad denies.

Reality: India ended up with Kashmir by less than virtuous conniving between the Brits and loyal Raj flunkies at the time of partition. A leading candidate in the history of stupid political decisions.

Meanwhile, the BJP illustrates the long-term strength – and criminal hypocrisy – of populist, nationalist ideology. Welcome to the Tea Party, folks.

Daylife/AFP/Getty Images

With separatist leaders in jail, Indian Kashmir is set to vote Monday in a multiphase election that will test the legitimacy of New Delhi’s control of a region beset by independence protests earlier this year.

Thousands of troops will guard the vote in one of the world’s most militarized regions, which witnessed some of the biggest pro-independence demonstrations this year since a separatist revolt against Indian control in the Himalayan region broke out in 1989.

The troubled Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir, which has been the focus of two wars between the nuclear-armed rivals India and Pakistan since they won independence from Britain in 1947, is split among the disputed Muslim-dominated Kashmir Valley, the Hindu-majority Jammu region and Ladakh, which has a heavy Buddhist presence.

But all eyes will be on the Kashmir Valley, where the police killed at least 42 people this year when hundreds of thousands of Kashmiris took to the streets to call for freedom after 60 years of Indian rule.

Muslim separatist leaders, many sent to jail without trial in the run-up to the vote, have called for a boycott.

On Friday, thousands of Indian troops patrolled the snow-covered streets of Kashmir to prevent a planned demonstration by separatists. A strike had shops and other businesses in Srinagar closed in protest against the elections.

Any province or state where the majority population is prepared to boycott an election cannot have peace and prosperity after that election. There is no mandate. There is nothing more than an imitation of democracy.

They eschew violence, but are seething with anger. They are Indian Kashmir’s new generation of radicalized separatists who are proving a huge challenge to New Delhi by spurring the biggest demonstrations against India in two decades.

“The older generation is tired.” said Zaffar, a 23 year-old student in Srinagar, Kashmir’s summer capital, in a street under curfew where dozens of heavily armed police patrolled. “Our generation has understood what the problem is…”

Protests by hundreds of thousands of Kashmiris in the last month highlight how a younger generation who know little but war are taking the lead and radicalizing a separatist movement that had tentatively talked peace with New Delhi…
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