Shame on channels that try to use Army relief work in flood-hit J&K to justify AFSPA and Army deployment there! Shame on attempts to use humanitarian work to justify inhumane crimes... I am just seething after a phone call from Times Now that asked if I would participate in a debate on how AFSPA and Army were needed in Kashmir, as proved by the relief work the Army is doing there. I said Shame on you and refused. I also asked them if this means AFSPA and permanent Army presence would be ok in, say, Uttarakhand, since the Army did relief work there as well? How low can one fall - to exploit a natural calamity and peoples tragedy in the face of floods, to justify all that Kashmir has suffered at the hands of armed forces and paramilitary - the disappearances, the mass graves, the rapes, the firing on school boys and youngsters on the streets and in funeral processions...and the total failure of any accountability or justice in custodial killings and rapes... Kashmir is facing a natural calamity now. Yes. But the flood of custodial killings and rapes, the flood of tears from eyes of mothers of disappeared Kashmiri youth, is a man-made calamity, one in which the Indian State perpetrated in OUR name, in the name of Indias citizens... If we can feel a spark of human empathy for the flood-affected people of J&K now, we should all ask ourselves if we felt any empathy for the families of thousands who lie in mass graves today, or those of the boys killed in firing by police and paramilitary on the streets... The relief work for the man-made, State-made calamity is yet to begin. When can we, the people of India, begin that much-needed relief work in Kashmir, to bring a semblance of truth and justice about the crimes committed in our name, to end the endless siege and daily humiliation there? Hats off to the Army personnel for their courageous rescue work - be it in J&K or Uttarakhand or anywhere else. But shame on us if we tell ourselves that relief work gives the same Army a licence to commit custodial killings and rapes with impunity....
Posted on: Wed, 10 Sep 2014 12:42:13 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015