Kashmir News Weekly Roundup: 4/2-4/9
Exclusive:
Indian occupation forces staging attacks, killing civilians to earn rewards
Police on last Wednesday said that resistance fighters arrested on May 19th last year have fled from custody at Baramulla police station. As per the police, the fled fighters, identified as Maroof Nazir and Shahid Showkat, are now launching attacks against the occupation forces and carrying out multiple successful operations.
However, local civilians believe that the two are being framed to be killed for rewards. A local claims, “they are civilians and were arrested by the police from their homes. Now they are just blaming them for false-flag attacks to increase the reward on their head. They stage attacks and blame them on civilians already in their custody to increase their kill value. Then one day, they take them to a location, stage a gunfight and then kill them in fake military encounters. They do this to earn medals and rewards.”
Locals see the incidents as an illusion created by the police to make an excuse for killing civilians under police custody and faking a story to be presented to the public.
Exclusive:
Indian government-backed businesses are attempting to take over Kashmiri ventures
Business tycoons backed by the Indian government are approaching Kashmiris and attempting to entice them into various “commercial transactions” as the Indian government continues to rob and plunder resources in the occupied region. The goal of these agreements in the settler-colonialism project in Kashmir is to extract assets and destroy the resources that sustain the region’s economy. This is done by using substantial investments from Indian businesses. Its underlying logic is that of the elimination of the Kashmiri Muslim race and religion.
An Indian party visiting occupied Kashmir and staying in a resort owned by a private hotel owner in Pahalgam recently offered to renovate it for five crore rupees. The owner stated that the party guaranteed him the reconstruction clearance even though the authorities in Kashmir had prohibited them from any renovation work for the previous ten years. “The party claimed to have deep contacts in the Indian government and direct relations with Ambani’s,” the owner added. He said, “they even provided unconditional financial support without any sort of agreement and guaranteed to bring in additional business to the hotel.”
Interestingly, among the assets that have lately been identified for outsourcing to Indian companies are the Pahalgam Club and the huts/cabins maintained by JK Tourism in Patnitop.
Exclusive:
Indian police begin a purge of social media in Kashmir detaining users
More than thirty Twitter users have been detained for interrogation in the past week for sharing their opinions about the Indian government on social media. At least eight persons, including two young girls and a disabled person, were detained and held inside the police station for several hours, according to one of the users who communicated with us.
“After being detained by the authorities in 2019, I no longer published anything on social media. But this time, they interrogated me about previous tweets I posted in 2018. I’ve now deactivated my profile,” the user stated.
In Indian Occupied Kashmir, the government has cracked down on all forms of free speech and action. Anybody who tweets something critical of the government faces harassment, intimidation, even arrest. While social media is now being scrubbed, conventional media is regulated and controlled. Facebook and Twitter have been made to censor most Kashmiri content that amplifies voices speaking out about the ongoing war crimes committed by the Indian government in Indian Ocuupied Kashmir.
Exclusive:
Kashmiri-Indian collaborators hired by the occupation to silence dissent on social media and promote false narratives
Junaid Mir and Tauseef Raina, who were in the US to speak at various Hindutva-sponsored events, are on a rampage to silence all the resisting voices in occupied Kashmir. After receiving backlash from local Kashmiri social media users in occupied Kashmir, they have been making efforts to identify and harass them using various Israeli and Indian oppressive techniques. Some social media users have received letters from Indian Twiter that their accounts might get suspended. Twelve of these users were abducted, interrogated, and tortured due to their posts that countered the false narratives being pushed by Junaid Mir and Tauseef Raina.
The Indian army, the current Hindutva Modi regime, and the Kashmiri Pandit diaspora back Mir and Raina alongside many other hired agents like them who are used to peddle propoganda about the situation in Kashmir to create a false image of normalcy in Indian occupied Kashmir. The push for these publicity tours and events, organized by the Indian authorities, have increased, particularly since the unlawful revocation of Articles 370 and 35A, and in anticipation of the upcoming G20 summit to be hosted in India this year.
In addition to the two aforementioned Kashmiri collaborators, who maintain direct communication with India’s upper echelons of Hindutva leadership including Narendra Modi, Amit Shah, and Rajnath Singh, there has been an emergence of several female collaborators such as Darakhsha Andrabi and Tasleema within the occupied region. These individuals, who cloak themselves as social activists in Kashmir, are being exploited as pawns by RAW and the Hindutva leadership to project a false depiction of the ‘return of normalcy in Kashmir.’
News Updates:
Exclusive:
185 Indians have purchased land in JK in the last three years
According to information released by the Indian government on Wednesday, 185 outside colonizers from India have purchased land in the disputed territory of Jammu and Kashmir in 2020, 2021, and 2022. Nityanand Rai, the Indian Union Minister of State for Home, informed the Rajya Sabha in a written response to a query that only one individual purchased the property in 2020, 57 people did so in 2021, and 127 people did so in 2022.
He said that according to data supplied by the imposed administration of Jammu and Kashmir, 1,559 Indian enterprises, including international corporations, have currently invested in occupied Jammu and Kashmir.
This alarming trend of outsider colonizers purchasing land in Jammu and Kashmir, combined with the influx of Indian enterprises and corporations investing in the region, underscores the occupying Indian government’s ongoing efforts to establish a settler colonial project in Kashmir and to alter the demographics of the region.
Exclusive:
NIA files fake charges against educational trust in Kashmir
On Tuesday, the National Investigation Agency of India falsely accused Al-Huda Educational Trust, which has affiliation with the Jamaat-e-Islami, of providing “claimed terrorist finance.” India has been repressing Kashmiri educational organizations to deny people access to education by citing ‘terror funding’ as an excuse.
The NIA, in a statement, said that the Jamat-e-Islami (JeI) was designated an unlawful organization in 2019. “In September 2022, the NIA, responsible for looking into the outlawed organization’s ongoing suspicious operations, filed a complaint against JEI. It conducted many searches in Jammu and Kashmir and conducted comprehensive investigations before filing the chargesheet in the NIA Special Court, JK.”
JeI is a political and religious organization that has played a pivotal role in the fight for Kashmir’s freedom and self-determination, and has significantly impacted the region’s resistance movement. India has been targeting JeI by pressing serious charges against its members under the Public Safety Act (PSA) and Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA) after banning the organization.
The most recent amendment of the law, the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Amendment Act, 2019 (UAPA 2019), has made it possible for the Indian Government to designate individuals as terrorists without following any formal judicial process.
Exclusive:
Another Kashmiri youth goes missing from India’s Punjab
In the northern Indian city of Ludhiana, a young Kashmiri man from the Kupwara area of North Kashmir has gone missing. Firdous Ahmed Peer, a native of Kupwara’s Muqam Dardpora Kralpora neighborhood, has been missing since February 17th, 2023 and his family is unsure of his whereabouts.
The mother and sister of the missing teenager and other family members showed up at Press Enclave Srinagar to draw media attention to the situation. “He had traveled to Ludhiana with a friend and was employed there in a hotel. Firdous has been unreachable since February 17th, according to the hotel management,” one of the family members said.
Another family memeber claimed that Ludhiana police didn’t treat the situation appropriately. “We frequently went to the Ludhiana police station, but the men in uniform are not paying serious attention, and no attempts are being made to find our missing family member,” he claimed.
Kashmiris in India have frequently been the victims of hate crimes because of their religion, ethnicity, and support for Kashmir’s independence from the Indian occupation. Unsurprisingly, when such incidents are reported to the authorities, locals are routinely met with indifference and apathy, with little to no action being taken to address or remedy the situation.
