By Robert Fantina, World BEYOND War, August 6, 2023
Remarks on August 5 on Kashmir Institute of International Relations webinar.
Good day.
I am pleased to be here today with this distinguished panel, as we observe the most recent tragedy to befall the people of Kashmir: August 5, 2019, when the Indian government abrogated Article 370 of its constitution. We know, of course, that this article granted Kashmir some limited self-government, but the repression that the Kashmiri people now experience is nothing new, although it has worsened since 2019. It is difficult to believe that conditions for the people there could be any worse than they had been for decades, but that is the case. This situation is one of the most brutal, if not the most brutal, examples of settler-colonialism in the world today.
When discussing human rights in any context, I often refer to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. This milestone document was adopted by the United Nations General Assembly in 1948, and among the many countries that have since ratified it is India. However, ratification and implementation are far different.
Kashmir has long been the most occupied place on earth, with an official count of one soldier for every 30 civilians; however, that is a number from 2020, the most recent figure I was able to locate. But with large numbers of Indian soldiers flooding into the country in the last four years, that ratio is certainly no longer accurate. Even, however, assuming it is still accurate, that is a tremendous number of foreign, occupation soldiers to be in any nation.
I have, in the past and in other places and mediums, documented Indian violations of all the articles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The violation of these rights has obvious negative impacts on the socio-economic status of Kashmir, and the political status of the nation and its citizens. I will mention a few of them today.
Article 13 has two components, as follows:
- “Everyone has the right to freedom of movement and residence within the borders of each state.
- Everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and to return to his country.”
Today in Kashmir, the passports of some Kashmiri journalists and activists have been suspended. These suspensions are for no other reason than that these various activists and journalists have dared to criticize the brutal occupation of their country.
This also violates Article 14, which also has two components; the first is as follows:
- “Everyone has the right to seek and to enjoy in other countries asylum from persecution.”
With passports revoked or suspended, this right is removed. And the limited times that the Article allows for the revocation of this right does not apply in these cases. The second component of Article 14 reads:
- “This right may not be invoked in the case of prosecutions genuinely arising from non-political crimes or from acts contrary to the purposes and principles of the United Nations.” The activities of journalists reporting Indian atrocities can in no way be seen as ‘non-political crimes’. They are not ‘crimes’ in any sense of the word.
The violation of Article 13 is related to the violation of Article 19, which reads as follows:
“Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.” The journalists and activists I mentioned a moment ago were expressing their opinions, and have been severely penalized for doing so.
Revocation of passports is hardly the worst fate awaiting journalists and activists who dare to speak out against India. Syed Shujaat Bukhari, editor of Rising Kashmir, a daily Kashmiri newspaper, was assassinated in 2018. Writing in the Al Jazeera Journalism Review, in May of this year, journalists Adil Amin Akhoon and Khalid Bashir Gura wrote the following: “His death confirmed to many what they already feared – that being a journalist in Kashmir can be deadly. Indeed, just one year later, the situation would become critical when India repealed Article 370 which had previously granted self-governing status to the region. Fearing mass protests, the government ramped up the internet blackouts it had already been routinely imposing on Kashmir and intensified its practice of detaining any journalist who dared voice dissent.”[i]
Those two journalists interviewed several other journalists for their article, most of whom did not want their names used. They reported this: “All of those who spoke to us on the basis of anonymity, claim that the state is using a mix of harassment, intimidation, withholding of advertisements, surveillance and online information control to silence critical voices and force journalists to resort to self-censorship in order to remain safe.”[ii]
So in order to save their own lives, journalists must self-censor what they write. Journalists everywhere should be able to report and interpret facts without fear of any reprisals, but in Kashmir, this is definitely not the case.
Another example of the violation of this right is the recent removal from the Master of Arts in English curriculum of the University of Kashmir and Cluster University of the poetry of Agha Shahid Ali and other work that the new, Indian-mandated education policy of Jammu and Kashmir has determined “propagates secessionist ideology”[iii].
Article 20 also has two components; the first reads as follows:
- “Everyone has the right to freedom of peaceful assembly and association.”
Freedom House’s report from 2022 on Kasmir summarized the situation there: “The region’s autonomous status was revoked in 2019, and what had been the state of Jammu and Kashmir was reconstituted as two union territories under the direct control of the Indian central government. The move stripped residents of many of their previous political rights. Civil liberties have also been curtailed to quell ongoing public opposition to the reorganization. Indian security forces are frequently accused of human rights violations, but few are punished.”[iv]
One of the civil liberties quelled is freedom of assembly, and Freedom House’s report on that topic in Jammu and Kashmir from 2022 is telling. “Freedom of assembly is frequently restricted during times of unrest. The authorities often reject requests for permits for public gatherings submitted by the separatist APHC (All Parties Hurriyat Conference). Separatist leaders are frequently arrested prior to planned demonstrations, and violent clashes between protesters and security forces are not uncommon.”[v]
The second component of Article 20 is this:
- “No one may be compelled to belong to an association.”
With India’s so-called Independence Day approaching on August 15, Kashmiris are being ‘encouraged’ to take pictures of themselves and their families waving the Indian flag. While this may not specifically compel them to ‘belong to an association’, it does seem to force them to participate in an association they want no part of.
This action does, however, violate Article 15, another article with two parts:
- “Everyone has the right to a nationality.”
- “No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his nationality nor denied the right to change his nationality.”
By abrogating Article 370 of its constitution, India violated both components of this Article of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. By being ‘encouraged’ to take pictures of themselves while displaying the flag of India, they are, in a sense, being forced to endorse Indian’s repression of them.
Article 23 has four parts, but we will only look at the first one:
- “Everyone has the right to work, to free choice of employment, to just and favourable conditions of work and to protection against unemployment.”
At the present time, millions of Kashmiris are out of work, replaced by Indian nationals. All the major administrative and government jobs formerly held by Kashmiris are now held by Indians. A report from the Kashmir Times from April of this year stated that unemployment in Jammu and Kashmir is a shocking 23.1%[vi], and this is probably under-reported.
I have not related all the ways in which the brutal Indian government violates all thirty articles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights; doing so would require days of discussion. But despite all this, the Indian government attempts to convince the world that everything in Jammu and Kashmir is fine; in fact, better than before the abrogation.
Writing in The Wire, however, Arfa Khanum Sherwani reports this, in response to India’s portrayal of life in Kashmir:
“The people of Kashmir, though, paint a very different picture – in which silence, fear, rising prices and unemployment have taken over the region.”
This is the situation in Jammu and Kashmir today. This is what the people there have to contend with: repression, fear, arbitrary arrest, sudden death. Most of the world seems to be ignoring this situation, which puts the onus on us, to publicize these atrocities, and advocate for these innocent victims. There is an old cliché that asks: “if not me, who? If not now, when?” The time is now, and the obligations is ours.
Thank you.
[i] https://institute.aljazeera.net/en/ajr/article/2204#:~:text=The%20brutal%20murder%20of%20Syed,point%20for%20journalists%20in%20Kashmir.
[ii] Ibid.
[iii] https://kashmirobserver.net/2023/07/20/agha-shahid-alis-poetry-removed-from-kashmir-university-curriculum/
[iv] https://freedomhouse.org/country/indian-kashmir/freedom-world/2022
[v] Ibid.
[vi] https://kashmirlife.net/jk-unemployment-rate-soars-above-23-in-march-314471/#:~:text=SRINAGAR%3A%20In%20a%20shocking%20turn,Monitoring%20Indian%20Economy%20(CMIE).
