Speaking out on Kashmir and Palestine in the US

By :Yasmin Qureshi

Washington, October 10 : The United States has become a battleground for both the struggles of the peoples of Palestine and Kashmir, for freedom from military occupation and for justice. Awareness amongst the US public is broadened as the repression of both struggles grows ever more violent, and meanwhile those wishing to stifle debate on these issues in the US resort to harassment and intimidation.

The same day that renowned activist and writer Arundhati Roy commented that "Kashmir was never an integral part of India," for which her home was later attacked, I was subjected to harassment here in the US while I spoke about the human rights situation in Kashmir. Though not threatened in the way that Roy was, what we both experienced were attempts to silence us. Forces sympathetic to the same right-wing ideology as those who attacked Roy mobilized their ranks by putting out an alert stating: "An Indian Muslim Woman is speaking about azadi [freedom] of Kashmiris and we should protest."

After my presentation at the main public library in San Jose, California last month, I was told by one member of the audience that "You are the very reason why we Hindus hate Muslims," and that comment was followed by many that were worse. I was called an extremist and told "Your presentation is a lie; this is India-bashing." The abuse I received will be familiar to those who have been on the receiving end of the backlash when speaking about the Palestinian cause.

Indeed, a week earlier, Palestinian author Susan Abulhawa was called an extremist by Harvard Professor Alan Dershowitz at the Boston Book Festival after she presented well-established facts about Palestine. He resorted to name calling and ad hominem attacks.

Israel and India are often represented in US media as bastions of democracy in the Middle East and South Asia, respectively. Supporters of the policies of both governments delegitimize any resistance or criticism and discourage revelation of the truth through intimidation and personal attacks.

Kashmir is the most militarized zone in the world with close to 700,000 Indian troops. According to Professor Angana Chatterji of the California Institute of Integral Studies (CIIS), between the years of 1989 and 2000, "In Kashmir, 70,000 are dead, over 8,000 have been disappeared and 250,000 have been displaced ... India's military governance penetrates every facet of life. ... The hyper-presence of militarization forms a graphic shroud over Kashmir: detention and interrogation centers, army cantonments, abandoned buildings, bullet holes, bunkers and watchtowers, detour signs, deserted public squares, armed personnel, counter-insurgents and vehicular and electronic espionage" ("Kashmir: A Time For Freedom," Greater Kashmir, 25 September 2010).

Because she has spoken out, Chatterji has become a target of right-wing Hindutva groups -- those espousing an exclusivist Hindu nationalist ideology in India that often denigrates and denies the legitimacy of non-Hindus in India. Hindutva groups in the US and India have attacked her because of her work tracking funding to Hindutva groups from the US after the 2002 pogrom of Muslims in Gujarat and more recently as co-conveyer of the International People's Tribunal on Human Rights and Justice in Indian-administered Kashmir. Chatterji told me: "I was threatened with rape by Hindutva groups in 2005. Since announcing the Kashmir Tribunal in April 2008, each time I have entered or left India since, I have been stopped or detained at immigration." Richard Shapiro, her partner and chair and associate professor at CIIS, was banned from entering India on 1 November 2010.

Hindutva groups try to scuttle any broader discussion about human rights violations in Kashmir, the conditional annexation by India in 1947 or right to self-determination by limiting it to the issue of the displacement and killings of the upper caste minority Kashmiri Hindu Pandits in the late 1980s and by insisting that Kashmir is not an international issue.

Similarly, Zionists seeking to draw attention away from Israel's abuses of Palestinians' human rights often focus exclusively on suicide bombings or the rule of Hamas. Their aim is to silence any discussion of the historic Palestinian demands for the implementation of the refugees' right of return, an end to the military occupation in the West Bank and Gaza Strip and equality for Palestinian citizens in Israel.

And the front line in the battle to influence US public opinion towards both the Kashmir and Palestine struggles can be found at the university campus.

"There is a well-orchestrated and funded campaign of intimidation and harassment by Zionist and Hindutva groups on campuses to target academics," says Sunaina Maira, Associate Professor at the University of California, Davis campus. Zionist academics tried to pressure the University of California, Berkeley to cancel an event last month titled "What Can American Academia Do to Realize Justice for Palestinians," organized by the Students for Justice in Palestine. In a letter to the school's chancellor, the groups urged him to withdraw official university sponsorship of the event and publicly condemn the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement against Israeli apartheid at the school's campus.

A similar attempt was made in 2006 by Indian American members of AIPAC, the powerful pro-Israel lobby, when they tried to cancel a panel titled "South Asian-Arab solidarity against Israeli apartheid" at Stanford University. The objective was to bring South Asians and Arabs together to take a unified stand against US imperialism and Israeli apartheid and speak up against the Zionist-Hindutva alliances. Despite the attempts by outside groups to stifle free speech, both these events eventually did take place on the campuses and were quite successful.

The attempts to silence those who speak out in the US are not the only thing that Kashmir and Palestine have in common. Both Kashmiris and Palestinians are struggling for justice and freedom against highly-militarized occupations. The recent protests by stone-throwing Kashmiri youth drew comparisons to the first intifada in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip.

And it is perhaps the linking of these struggles that those who stand in the way of freedom for oppressed peoples fear the most. Notably, Zionists and Hindutva advocates have adopted a similar Islamophobic language and worldview that considers any grievances or struggles by Muslims to be simply a cover for "jihadism" or "wahhabism" and thus justifies treating all such movements for justice -- however they are conducted -- as "terrorist."

While the situations in Kashmir and Palestine are not completely analogous, in recent years India and Israel have fostered political and military links, including arms sales, joint intelligence, trade agreements and cultural exchanges.

Historically India has been supportive of the Palestinian struggle. But in 1992 India established diplomatic relations with Israel and ties were further strengthened in 2000 when India Home Minister L.K. Advani visited Israel; Advani is considered the architect of the rise of the Hindutva movement in the 1980s and '90s. Today India is the largest buyer of Israel's arms and Israel is training Indian military units in "counter-terrorist" tactics and urban warfare to be used against Kashmiris and resistance groups in northeast and central India.

The repressive governments of both India and Israel enjoy a warm relationship with the the US. Bilateral defense ties between US and India -- based on the new strategic realities of Asia -- is one of the objectives of US President Barack Obama's current visit to India, according to the National Bureau of Asian Research (NBR), a Washington-based think tank. The US also gives $3 billion in military aid to Israel annually.

Such alliances between states, which aim to perpetuate injustice and maintain regimes that are rejected by those forced to live under them, underscore the need for education and solidarity among supporters of those long denied their freedom, equality and self-determination.

Those in the US who defend the status quo may resort to tactics of intimidation. But just as state repression in Kashmir and Palestine has failed to quell those struggles for freedom, those of us in the US concerned with justice in Palestine and Kashmir -- and the US government's role in each -- will not be intimidated into silence.

About the Author : Yasmin Qureshi is a San Francisco Bay Area professional and human rights activist involved in social justice movements in South Asia and Palestine. Her article on Kashmir, "Democracy Under the Barrel of a Gun," was published in June 2010 by CounterPunch and ZCommunications.

Why Kashmiris observe October 27 as Black Day!

by M Raza Malik
Kashmiris on both sides of the Line of Control and across the globe observe October 27 as Black Day and consider it as the blackest day in the history of Kashmir. This is the Day when India landed its army in Jammu and Kashmir, in total disregard to the Indian Independence Act and Partition Plan in 1947.

In order to change the demographic composition of the territory, Indian troops, the forces of Dogra Maharaja Hari Singh, and Hindu extremists massacred over three hundred thousand Kashmiri Muslims within a period of two months.

The Indian Independence Act and Partition Plan of 1947 had stated that the Indian British Colony would be divided into two sovereign states, India, with Hindu-majority areas, and Pakistan, with the Muslim-majority areas of Western provinces and east Bengal.

India by landing its Army in Jammu and Kashmir violated the guidelines set for deciding the future of Hyderabad, Junagarh and Kashmir, three of the independent Princely States at that time, which were given the choice to either accede to Pakistan or India, considering the geographical situation and communal demography. It forcibly occupied the Hyderabad and Junagarh, which had Hindus in majority but their rulers were Muslims. Kashmir was a Muslim-majority state and had a natural tendency to accede to Pakistan, but its Hindu ruler destroyed the future of Kashmiri people by announcing its accession to India under a controversial accession document (Instrument of Accession). Many neutral observers deny the existence of such document with the argument that had it been there Indian government had made it public either officially or at any international forum.

It is a historical fact that if the partition was done on the principles of Justice then India had no land route to enter into Jammu and Kashmir but the so-called Boundary Commission, headed by British Barrister, Cyril Radcliff, that demarcated partition line, under a conspiracy split Gurdaspur, a Muslim majority area, and handed it over to India, providing it terrestrial access to the territory.

Right from the day one, the people of Kashmir did not accept India's illegal occupation and started an armed struggle with the total support of public in 1948, which forced India to approach the UN Security Council to seek help of the World Body to settle the dispute. The UN Security Council through its successive resolutions nullified Indian invasion and occupation of Kashmir. It also approved a ceasefire, demarcation of the ceasefire line, demilitarization of the state and a free and impartial plebiscite to be conducted under the supervision of the World Body. Although the ceasefire and demarcation of the ceasefire line was implemented while demilitarization of the occupied territory and a free and impartial plebiscite under UN supervision remain unimplemented till date. As a result of the demarcation, about 139,000 square kilometers area of Jammu and Kashmir remained with India while 83,807 square kilometers constituted the territory of Azad Jammu and Kashmir.

Indian rulers promised before the UN to resolve the dispute and provide the people of Kashmir with their basic right of self-determination, but later backed away from their commitments. India has been putting peace, security and stability of the entire South Asia at stake by demonstrating continued rigidity and stubbornness and not responding positively to the efforts made by the international community to settle the Kashmir dispute during the last more than six decades.

Disappointed at the failure of all the efforts aimed at resolving the Kashmir dispute through peaceful means, the people of occupied Kashmir launched a massive uprising in 1989 to secure their right to self-determination. This movement gathered momentum with the passage of time and pushed the Indian authorities to wall, forcing them to sit around the negotiation table with Pakistan in January 2004. The talks process continued till it was hampered after Mumbai attacks on November 26, 2008, when India without any substantive evidence laid the responsibility of these attacks on Pakistan and its intelligence agencies. However, Prime Ministers of the two countries, Yousuf Raza Gilani and Manmohan Singh after a meeting at Sharm El-Sheikh, on July 16, 2009, in a joint statement declared to resume the composite dialogue process to resolve all outstanding issues.

It is worth mentioning that Pakistan demonstrated considerable flexibility in the dialogue process by floating various proposals including demilitarization, self-governance and joint-management to settle the conflict over Kashmir, but India's intransigent approach continued to remain the biggest hurdle in making successful any effort made in this regard. The ground situation in the occupied territory remains unchanged, as the confidence building measures and the dialogue process could not provide Kashmiri people respite from the Indian state terrorism.

India has exhausted all its resources and means but has not been able to deter Kashmiris from continuing their liberation struggle. It has given a free hand to its troops and police to subject peaceful protesters to brute force. Over 70 people were killed only within a period of two months in 2008 when Indian police personnel resorted to indiscriminate firing to break up demonstrators in Kashmir. The Chairman of All Parties Hurriyet Conference, Mirwaiz Umer Farooq was placed under house arrest for two months to prevent him from addressing public gatherings. Liberation leaders including Syed Ali Gilani, Shabbir Ahmed Shah, Aasiya Andrabi, Nayeem Ahmed Khan, Muhammad Ashraf Sehrai, Masarat Alam Butt and Muhammad Saleem Nunnaji have been booked under the infamous draconian law, Public Safety Act to keep them away from the people. The troops have been setting new records of human rights violations by killing innocent people, arresting youth, disgracing and harassing women and setting residential houses afire with impunity.

The troops have killed over ninety-two thousand Kashmiris, widowed more than twenty five thousand women, orphaned more than one hundred thousand children and molested or gang-raped around ten thousand Kashmiri women during the past 20 years. The whereabouts of thousands of innocent Kashmiris, disappeared in the custody of troops, are yet to be made known while hundreds of unnamed graves have been discovered in the occupied territory, which are believed to be of disappeared Kashmiris. This whole mayhem is being carried out with the protection of draconian laws, by virtue of which any person can be killed or put behind the bars without any accountability.

The All Parties Hurriyet Conference sources made a shocking revelation recently that in line with a new scheme, Indian troops were killing innocent Kashmiri youth in fake encounters in the areas near the Line of Control after arresting them from different parts of the occupied territory. According to the APHC sources through these killings India wanted to mislead the international community by propagating that Kashmiri youth were trying to enter Indian occupied Kashmir after crossing over the Line of Control.

The Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, Asia Watch and other international humanitarian organizations in their regular reports over the unabated rights abuses in the occupied territory have been raising their concern. Even the European Union Parliament during its session in Strasbourg on July 10, 2008 unanimously passed a resolution calling upon the Indian Government to urgently conduct an independent and impartial probe into the issue of discovery of mass graves in the territory. It also strongly condemned unlawful killings, enforced disappearances, torture, rape and other human rights abuses, which have been taking place at the hands of the occupation troops in Jammu and Kashmir since 1989.

It was yet another exposition of India's callousness that the Prime Minister, Manmohan Singh on India's Independence Day, this year, tried to hoodwink the international community by stating that the elections in Kashmir had rendered the freedom element irrelevant. To protest this unrealistic statement Kashmiri people observed crippling strike on August 22. Pakistan's Foreign Minister, Shah Mehmood Qureshi while addressing a meeting of Kashmiri leaders on September 4, 2009 in Islamabad categorically emphasized that the elections in Indian occupied Kashmir could not be a substitute of Kashmiris' right to self-determination. He reaffirmed his country's moral, political and diplomatic support to Kashmir liberation movement. The mammoth anti-India protest demonstrations, participated by millions of people in Indian occupied Kashmir, last year, should be taken as Kashmiris' referendum against the Indian illegal occupation of their soil.

These are the reasons that why Kashmiris observe October 27 as Black Day. The observance is intended to send a loud and clear message to the international community to take cognizance of the miseries of Kashmiri people, help stop human rights violations in the occupied territory and play its role in bringing about a solution of the Kashmir dispute in accordance with Kashmiris' aspirations. It is also aimed at calling upon India to read writing on the wall, accept the ground realities and come forward with a realistic approach to settle the dispute for the larger interest of the people of the region.

(The writer is working as Senior Editor at Kashmir Media Service, Islamabad, and can be reached at razamalik849@yahoo.com) 

IRAN to US: It’s No Pride to Possess 5,000 Bombs!

New York, 23 October: Iran President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has again stole the limelight when he warned that passing tougher UN sanctions against Iran would shut off all chances for diplomatic engagement between Iran and the United States and would not prevent Iran from pursuing its nuclear program. Speaking at a news conference in New York on Tuesday, Ahmadinejad added that it was “no pride” to the US to confess of possessing 5000 bombs.
 
“Experience has proven that sanctions cannot stop the Iranian nation,” Ahmadinejad told reporters at a hotel across from UN headquarters, where a month-long nuclear treaty conference was in its second day. “While we do not welcome sanctions, we do not fear them either,” he said. “It seems to us that the structure of the Security Council is undemocratic and unjust, and is unable to bring about security. ... This Security Council will completely lose its legitimacy.”
 
Ahmadinejad called the US disclosures Monday about its previously secretive nuclear arsenal “a positive step forward,” but one that still raises questions. “It's no pride to possess 5,000 bombs,” he said. “Now, how can you have the trust of a government that announces 5,000 bombs after 60 years?”
 
Ahmadinejad argued any new sanctions would mean that US President Barack Obama had given up on his campaign to engage Iran diplomatically.
 
“We feel that the US government will be damaged, more than us, by those sanctions,” he said. “It's very clear that if the United States starts another sanctions (regime) against Iran, it means that it's the end of Mr. Obama's effort. It means Mr. Obama's submission. It means no change will occur.”
 
Concerning a possible Israeli attack, Ahmadinejad said that Israel would pay a heavy price if it attacked Lebanon or Syria which he said are capable of bringing the Zionist entity “to its knees.”
 
“Israel can't do anything against Iran … However, as far as Palestine's Gaza, Lebanon and Syria are concerned, we will fully defend them and support them,” Ahmadinejad said. “Lebanon and Syria are already capable of confronting Israel to bring it to its knees,” he added.
 
The Iranian president reminded reporters that the Zionist regime was defeated by Hezbollah alone. “It is obvious that it would face the worst defeat if” it attacked Lebanon and Syria. He called Israel a militaristic state imposed on the Middle East by the West and said it would self-destruct if it launched any new wars in the region.
 
Arab countries sought also to turn attention to Israel on Tuesday as delegates from 189 countries debated how to stem the spread of nuclear weapons. On the second day of the month-long meeting at the United Nations, Arab countries reiterated calls for a nuclear-free Middle East with criticism of Israel's unacknowledged nuclear arsenal and failure to sign the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.
 
Jordan's Foreign Minister Nasser Judeh expressed frustration at the lack of progress on implementing a nuclear-free Middle East, a goal that was declared in a resolution of a previous meeting of NPT signatories. He said that Israel's failure to sign the NPT and allow international monitoring of its nuclear program "renders the NPT a source of instability in the Middle East."
 
Egypt has proposed that this 2010 NPT conference back a plan calling for the start of negotiations next year on such a Mideast zone. The proposal may become a major debating point in the month-long session.
 
However, the Israeli UN mission declined to comment on the specifics of the conference, but told The Associated Press that Israel's stance on nonproliferation continues to be that an accepted political solution for comprehensive peace in the Middle East should first be reached.
 
“WHERE IS BUSH TODAY AND WHERE ARE WE?”
 
In an interview with the Boston Globe on Tuesday Ahmadinejad urged Obama to avoid siding with more hawkish voices in the US against Iran. "He should be very careful not to get entrapped in the web laid by radicals around him," he said. "If he can't resolve the impasse with Iran, do you think he can resolve the problems with Iraq, Afghanistan, and Palestine?" Ahmadinejad asked, adding that sanctions "will mean the end of his opportunity to improve world affairs."
 
“Mr. Bush used to pass resolutions against us. Where did it go? Where did it take him? Where are we today and where is he today? Iran is still advancing, and he is gone,” Ahmadinejad stated.
 
Ahmadinejad also told Al Jazeera on Tuesday that he and Barack Obama would have to refrain from "acting too hastily" if the two sides are to reach agreement on the impasse. "For example, the resolution presented to the IAEA [International Atomic Energy Agency] against Iran in the presence of Mr Obama was a very negative, hasty action that had very negative repercussions in Iran," he said. He was referring to a November 2009 resolution adopted by the UN nuclear agency that criticized Iran for defying a UN Security Council ban on nuclear enrichment. The resolution also rebuked Tehran for secretly building a uranium enrichment facility near the city of Qom. "The resolution was not based on any legal or lawful framework but surely a politicized act ... It reduced public confidence in the negotiation process in Iran."
 
The NPT is formally reviewed every five years at a meeting of treaty members — which include all the world's nations except India, Pakistan, Israel and North Korea, all of which either have confirmed or are believed to have nuclear weapons.

Abdul Qayoom Ganai of Pampore

Srinagar : The Jammu and Kashmir High Court Bar Association has called for a two day Kashmir Bandh beginning tommorow. Accarding to a spokesman of the Bar, the call has been given to mark protest against the alleged custodial killing of top ex-militant commander Mr. Abdul Qayoom Ganai in Pampore. The International organisation viz Amnesty International and Asia Watach have been called upon to use their good offices to shop such killings in Kashmir.

As the body of the deceased reached his home town in Nambalbal, Pampore, thousands of people including women and children defying  restrictions staged massive pro-freedom and anti-India demonstrations. Later, thousands participated in the Nimaz-e-Jinazah of  Abdul Qayoom Ganai and his body was laid to rest in the local graveyard early morning. (Writer-South Asia)