Black day

Today marks four years of the Modi government’s draconian step of revoking the special status of Indian Illegally Occupied Jammu and Kashmir (IIOJK), which led to one of the darkest chapters for innocent Kashmiris in the internationally recognized disputed territory. On August 5, 2019, India under Modi scrapped Article 370 in Indian-Occupied Kashmir, and since then the Modi junta has been treating the Kashmiris as if they have zero rights by altering the demographic structure of the disputed territory. That the Modi government never had any love lost for the Muslims of India is no secret and that they could not even tolerate that there can be a Muslim-dominated territory even in a region it has forcefully occupied led the BJP to do away with Occupied Kashmir’s special status. This was not unexpected and something that the government of Pakistan had been cautioning against for years, especially after Narendra Modi became the prime minister of India. Unfortunately, the international community has turned a blind eye to the plight of the Kashmiris because of its economic and geo-political interests related to India. International human rights organizations and Pakistan have been raising the issue of grave human rights violations and the arbitrary arrests of journalists, politicians, human rights defenders at every forum. Kashmiri human rights defender Khurram Parvez has been in jail since November 2021. The UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention (WGAD) recently called for his immediate release and called his detention “arbitrary”. Even then the Modi government continues to operate with impunity because the international community, including the Western world and the Middle East, have not done anything except pay lip service.

The Modi government is eyeing a third term in government after the next general elections in India and this is why we have seen incidents like Manipur getting swept under the carpet by the BJP government. Women being raped and paraded naked should have been a moment of shame for any government but for the Modi government, it was yet another incident that justified violent means for the BJP government. The horrible incident where an Indian Railways security guard targeted Muslims and shot dead a colleague and three passengers on board a train is being seen by the Muslim community in India as one of the last nails in the coffin of so-called secular India. The murderer could be seen in one of the videos as saying that “if you want to live and vote in Hindustan, it’s only Modi and Yogi” – basically telling Muslims in India that only Hindutva hardliners like Modi and Yogi are the future of India. The recent anti-Muslim violence in Haryana also points to the fact that India is now practically unlivable for its religious minorities. In Occupied Kashmir, things are even worse; from the use of rubber bullets that have blinded hundreds of children to the regular cell phone and internet blackouts, India has repeatedly humiliated and immiserated the Kashmiri people.

Pakistan has recently once again talked about normalizing relations with India but the Modi government has responded with its usual spiel of ‘terror-free environment’ even though Pakistan has done everything in its power to not react to provocation by the Indian authorities under the Modi government. The only ‘terror-free environment’ that is needed is one in Occupied Kashmir, the terror being spread by the occupying Indian forces. The reality is that no matter how much more violent Indian forces get, the one thing they are unable to do is break the spirit of the Kashmiri resistance. For every provocative act of wanton criminality from India, the resistance to the occupation becomes stronger. Pakistan’s job is to continue to stand in solidarity with the Kashmiris and push their case at every available forum, even if it seems as if the world would rather avert its gaze from the ugly reality in Kashmir.