Arifa Jana Revives Old Craft in Kashmir

By Nusrat Ara

WeNews correspondent

Monday, May 21, 2012

The quality and export of Kashmiri rugs have declined, but one young woman is putting pride and decent wages back into the traditional craft. In a region where such female entrepreneurship is a rarity, she says training makes all the difference.

 

SRINAGAR, Kashmir, India(WOMENSENEWS) — Arifa Jan began making namdas, rugs created from felted wool, when she knew that the traditional craft was at a low point.

Just 10 years earlier, 98 percent of the namdas that were produced in Kashmir were exported, Jan says. But since then, this had fallen to 2 percent.

“This was a huge decline,” she says.

Jan became interested in namdas during a research project on declining crafts while getting her master’s degree at the Craft Development Institute in Srinagar, Kashmir’s summer capital.

She learned that conflict for two decades in Kashmir had steadily damaged business and hurt the product’s quality. An artisan working with the traditional wool would earn the equivalent of $1 to $2 a day. That couldn’t support a family, so the artisans began using cheaper materials.

“The artisans were then mixing cotton with local wool,” she says. “The quality suffered, and this made the namdas less durable. They also used local dyes, which made the color bleed when exposed to water.”

Exports began to plummet.

As part of her research, Jan was required to introduce innovations to increase the marketability of Kashmiri namdas. So instead of using local wool, she used 100-percent merino, a type of sheep prized for its wool quality. She also used dyes free of azo compounds, a chemical used in dyes for its vivid colors, so they wouldn’t be harmful or bleed.

“You can hand wash our namdas,” she says. “They won’t lose their color. You can even vacuum them, things you can’t do with the ordinary namda you find in the market these days.”

For embroidery, she opted for a superior thread and a style called crewel, often used on curtains.

Reviving Patterns

She also revived patterned namdas, in which patterns are cut from felt of different colors and then combined in a felt base. She experimented with these patterns and with various types of embroidery on these namdas.

Jan prepared 300 namdas as part of the project. In 2010, she took some of her work to a handicraft exhibition in New Delhi.

“It was a sellout,” she says. “I had taken 60 namdas with me, and I sold them all. And the response was so good.”

After the exhibition, Mohammad Saleem Sofi, a pashmina artisan and trader, was impressed. He decided to lend Jan the equivalent of $970 to start production. Gulshan Nanda, chair of the Crafts Council of India at the time, also became a backer. She offered to lend Jan $2,800 to start production.

 

With this funding, Jan recruited workers and doubled their wages.

“I have seen how hard they work and how little they are paid,” Jan says. “They should get paid well. Only then will the crafts survive.”

Since childhood, Jan had dreamed of venturing into business. Born to illiterate parents, she obtained her bachelor’s degree in commerce at the University of Kashmir with the goal of starting a business in the future.

“I studied commerce, thinking I will start a business of my own one day,” she says. “But at that time, I had no idea that I will work with namdas.”

Jan’s form of success is unusual in Kashmir, where nearly 70 percent of young females surveyed reported that gender discrimination deterred them from pursuing entrepreneurship, according to a 2011 survey conducted by the Start-up Kashmir Youth Entrepreneur Development Project, an anti-poverty group.

Promoting Entrepreneurship

The Jammu and Kashmir State Women’s Development Corporation implements various governmental schemes to identify and promote female entrepreneurs.

“We have got tremendous response from women regarding entrepreneurship,” says Nahida Soz, the corporation’s managing director.

Since the organization focuses on disadvantaged groups, employment is always a challenge.

“It is challenging to make these women self-reliant as they belong to a low socio-economic background,” she says. “The women are not qualified or skilled. But the women of Kashmir are well-versed in various handicrafts, and there is a lot of potential.”

The organization trains women and gives them credit to start their projects. It also helps the women market their products by organizing fairs to ensure income generation.

Jan says her own training has given wings to her dreams. Even though her main focus is on namdas, she is already on the path of diversification.

Together with Sofi and another artisan, Farooq Ahmad Ganai, Jan has started Incredible Kashmir Crafts, a venture that makes namdas and other items, such as embroidered canvas bags, tops, pashmina stoles and shawls, cushion covers and wall hangings. Their focus is on design and innovation, as well as the preservation of Kashmiri handicrafts.

“We have been experimenting with various weaves and designs in pashmina,” Sofi says. “The pashmina we are using is all handspun, and everything we deal in is handmade.”

He says this is unique, as machines have doomed local handicrafts.

And Jan’s not stopping at diversification of quality goods and fair wages for artisans. She also wants to start an organization for women working with handicrafts, especially women in difficult situations as a result of the region’s conflict.

Kashmir recipe: pass the buck

 

SANKARSHAN THAKUR, Telegraph

New Delhi, May 24: They talked, but they didn’t, or couldn’t, talk enough. They’ve signed off recommending more talks.

The centrally appointed Interlocutor Group on Jammu and Kashmir has, in effect, concluded that there is need for more, and varied, interlocution before solutions could begin to emerge to the nation’s most intractable tangle.

Made public today after months of drip-dose media leaks, the report is a candid confession of running aground 121 pages long.

Its authors — Dileep Padgaonkar, Radha Kumar and M.M. Ansari — have relieved themselves of the scorching Kashmir can, handing it left and right as they retreated from the mire — to a future Constitutional Committee to “re-appraise” the “erosion” of protections under Article 370 and recommend binding corrections, to the Centre and the separatists to resume dialogue, to Pakistan and the administration of Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK) to reincarnate from problem to solution, to political parties and the citizenry at large, this and that side of the LoC, to enter the debate for the making of what they’ve chosen to call the “New Compact”.

The irony that rings loud above the interlocutors’ avid espousal of dialogue is that they themselves were denied it by key stakeholders of the Kashmir problem.

The parties of the Hurriyat, both moderate and extreme, refused to engage with their year-long effort and verily robbed the report of consequence. What the government had tasked the interlocutors with, they have now handed back to the government, unfinished.

It came as no surprise that in the months preceding the report’s publication, Padgaonkar, the group’s lead act, had consistently downplayed expectations. “Let’s not expect miracles; Kashmir is not going to be resolved overnight,” he told The Telegraph a fortnight back. “We are not mandated to offer solutions, we can only show a way forward.”

But little of that “way forward” is likely to come to pass in the foreseeable future. As one Kashmir observer who has been part of Track II initiatives in the past put it: “Did we need an elaborate interlocution exercise, such as it was, to tell us there will likely be a solution if Pakistan were to play ball and the Hurriyat were to shift tack and begin talking of solutions within the existing national framework? This is a classic pass-the-buck exercise; they have handed the government the old malaise disguised as prescription.”

Dovetailed into the requirements of an overarching sub-continental solution are a lesser set of proposals aimed at addressing what the interlocutors fashionably labelled the “competitive victimhood” between the state’s three regions — the Valley, Jammu and Ladakh. Create regional councils and devolve greater financial and administrative powers to Jammu and Ladakh. Review — not rescind — red-rag laws like the Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA), the Public Safety Act (PSA) and the Disturbed Areas (DA) Act as a salve to the Valley.

And since it has been the flaming arrowhead for decades, administer the Valley additional caresses of poultice: change the “temporary” nature of provisions under Article 370 to “special”; allow them the use of sadr-e-riyasat (President) for governor andwazir-e-azam (Prime Minister) for chief minister, but only in Urdu, mind you; examine if the governor can be picked from a shortlist of three made by the state government, but mind you, again, he/she will hold office only at the pleasure of Rashtrapati Bhavan.

Should the Centre think elements of the “New Compact” worth a shot, here is how some of the obstacles lie arranged:

For a government mired in crises, instituting a Constitutional Committee on Kashmir might mean adding to trouble. Article 370 is as emotional an issue as it is divisive. Strengthening it could play out one way in the Valley, quite another in the rest of the country. The BJP could exploit the issue playing ultra-nationalism, there might be negative political dividends for the UPA in the run-up to the general election. Current parliamentary arithmetic does not permit amendments this way or that. But even on paper, a CC on Article 370 could spell political peril.

The autonomy issue is double-edged and cuts sharp and deep. What’s too little for the Valley is too much for many others. Concessions on nomenclatures like sadr-e-riyasatand wazir-e-azam, however symbolic, could unleash contrary tides beyond the Valley. On the other hand, anything short of concrete autonomy measures could leave even the mainstream parties of the Valley — the National Conference (NC) and the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) — rankled.

There is no mention, much less a prod, of autonomy or self-rule, the empowerment demands formally made by the NC and the PDP respectively. On the other hand, the advice to hand greater powers to Jammu and Ladakh could trigger fresh outcry in the Valley for it will take that as an emaciation exercise. The interlocutors were right to recognise “competitive victimhood” between regions of J&K — the violent fracture of the Amarnath land row of 2008 is deep-set — but contrary aspirations aren’t easy to reconcile.

Resuming dialogue with the Hurriyat is easier advised than achieved. There exists a trust deficit that defies bridging. Their stubborn boycott of the central interlocutors is proof of that. Should they be wooed to the negotiating table at a future date, agreed terms of reference will be tough to fix.

But bringing the Hurriyat around is a far cry; for the moment, it’s very likely even chief minister Omar Abdullah, a UPA ally, and Opposition leader Mehbooba Mufti, a former UPA ally, will turn their noses up in affront of the “New Compact”.

Babies die in Kashmir , why is there no outrage?

by Sameer Bhat on Thursday, May 17, 2012

More than 359 babies have died in Srinagar‘s GB Pant hospital in five months. 35 newborns died in the last fortnight alone. This is the city’s only paediatric facility. Mind you we ain’t backward. We have two world-class golf courses in Srinagar. The grass at Royal Springs is of different shades with a famous par-3 fifth, professional 18 hall, par 72 track, besides comfort stations and massage parlours, not to speak of the ultra modern underground sprinkler irrigation. There are only three ventilator machines for more than 1700 patients in the nearby GB Pant. Must we cry or clap.

Newspaper reports quote over-worked doctors saying that asphyxiation has been the cause in almost 98 percent of the deaths reported in the hospital. It is no rocket science. The facility needs more ventilators and staff. Instead it will get red-tape and bureaucracy. It will almost immediately get a thick minister visiting the wards, expressing his sympathies with the bereaved families and praying for eternal peace for the departed souls. Departed souls: What a text-book mortuary tribute!

What about the infants who died? Isn’t it grossly unfair that babies must die in a tourist brochure state, where indigenous civil servants and government ministers outdo each other to be propaganda babies? Why should Kashmir’s lone paediatric hospital be allocated an annual budget of Rs 13 crore only? Some of the homes of senior bureaucrats and ministers cost more than that. Why, even chopper sorties to ferry the CM around (on non-holidaymaking trips) cost much more.

Indeed blame-hammers aren’t helpful when babies are dying in our hospitals for the lack of better infrastructure. But questions haunt: Just why do we need more tulips in the city gardens when we have no ventilators in Srinagar hospitals?

Why is there no outrage?

Why should the union health minister, a son of soil, not apologize?

Why should heads not roll?

Why are we forced to cheer a million tourists when we should be mourning our inefficiency?

© Sameer

Follow @sameerft

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An open letter to OPEN Magazine’s editor, Manu Joseph from Kindle’s editor #Kashmir

Sorry, Manu Joseph, but you are sad!

By Pritha Kejriwal

Oscar Wilde had once said that journalism is unreadable…I wouldn’t go into the merits of the sweeping statement, but it just so happens, that at times, one comes across instances of journalism, so grotesque, so misshapen, so utterly despicable, that one can’t but not agree…
‘Sorry, Kashmir is happy’ (Cover story, Open Magazine, 21 April 2012 by Manu Joseph) is one such apology for journalism, which makes me wonder, how on earth, did one become so delusional, so as to pass a judgment on an entire people’s state of mind, so as to make a pulp out of their past, present and future and sieve it through their utterly myopic vision and print it in bold yellow letters on their pompous publication, thinking they are the only ones, who can tell a story, as it should be told…well, I hate to say this, but one wouldn’t even throw a penny at such puny journalism, or at the lowly comedian who seems to be masquerading as a journalist.
We have been served lies by most media for a very long time now, but such shallow, easy and vulgar striking off, of decades of struggle, memory, pain, tears, songs and slogans of protest and replacing them with Café coffee day and KFC chatter, labeling people who have bled and cried and sang for a cause as “melancholy poets, facebook revolutionaries and a rapper who owns a hood”, ignoring decades of human rights violence which continues, Indian military exploits which continue, terror victims which continue to pile up and to paint a seemingly happy picture, is not just blatant falsification, but utter stupidity.
And even though its true, that Kashmir’s status as a conflict zone, has spun an industry of writers, seminar tourists, cause peddlers around it, it doesn’t negate the problems of the state, which continue to persist and haunt its people every single day. The fact that, for over six decades now, the Kashmiris have refused to take any sides and continue to assert their need for autonomy, and have prepared themselves for any eventuality, should be testament enough to the fact that we require new imaginations to deal with the continued crisis, rather than brushing an entire people and their sacrifices under the carpet.
And if all these arguments sound like the echoes bouncing off the walls of some old heritage building, let me also make some arguments, sitting at this mental health camp in Srinagar, set up by the state hospital’s department of psychiatry. Men, women and children of all ages have come pouring in, for an entire day…blank eyes, tearful eyes, angry eyes have narrated many stories, and almost half of them are suffering because of the onslaught of cell phones, (this particular article partly seemed to be advertising for Aircel), breaking up of families, breaking down of tradition, cultural alienation, loneliness and other such effects of globalization. The department’s report on the average Kashmiri’s mental health would soon be ready and one would know, a little more of the truth.
And if one could actually measure happiness, well there is an index out there, which makes Bhutan, the happiest place in the world, with least number of tourists and posh coffee shops.
If only, someone could tell Mr Joseph, who has fallen into a habit of writing mostly easy, simplified pieces for his NRI readers in New York Times, that Kashmir is a cause for which Kashmiris living in Kashmir have given their lives to, and has little to do with Kashmiris living in America, Dubai or Delhi.
Also, if someone could ask him, if electricity and roads are not about politics, then what is?
From Capitalism : a ghost story, to  Kashmir: a happy story, we seem to have lost an essential narrative somewhere in between.
As Manu’s neon lights blaze on, to scare away the ghosts perhaps, Kashmiris complain, that these lights are too bright and mis-leading.
Sadly, we still have to take back Kashmir’s night first, before we wait for the true light of the morning…
As Faiz had said, “ye woh sehar to nahin…”

Read Kindle Magazine here- http://kindlemag.in/

Doctors Without Borders Pull Back in Kashmir

May 7, 2012,

By NIDA NAJAR, India Ink

Rafiq Maqbool/Associated Press PhotoShaheen, wounded in an earthquake, waits for medical help at Jabla village, 69 miles north of Srinagar, Jammu and Kashmir, Oct. 9, 2005.

Médecins Sans Frontières shut down its operations in the Kupwara district of Kashmir last month and will significantly reduce its activities in the valley as a whole, cutting a staff of 100 by more than half.

The group, known in English as Doctors Without Borders, has operated a mental health program in Kashmir since 2001, its longest-running India project, and its doctors also provide services like immunizations and postnatal care in the area. It began working in Kupwara, which is on the Indian border with Pakistan, in 2005 after an earthquake there.

“The reason that we left Kupwara district really is because of the necessary downscale in our operation,” said J.J. Fisher,  the project coordinator for MSF Holland in Kashmir, who said that the group was trying to conserve resources for medical treatment in case of an emergency. “We do see there are still needs in the area to be met.  It’s not that we’re saying that everything’s perfect in Kupwara district. But sometimes we have to make difficult decisions.”

As violence has lessened in Indian-administered Kashmir recently, the government plans to reduce security bunkers in the capital of Srinagar, there has been a push to lift an unpopular act that gives the armed forces special powers in the region, and tourists have flocked back. Local officials are making plans for new development and improvement projects.

Still, MSF’s departure leaves a vacuum in Kupwara and the Indian-administered Kashmir Valley as a whole, which is still severely in need of mental health services, experts say. Nearly one in five Kashmiris is depressed, according to the psychiatrist Mushtaq Margoob, who published a study in 2006 estimating that almost 60 percent of Kashmiris have witnessed traumatic events.

Since MSF’s departure last month, Kupwara has only one psychiatrist in the district hospital for its population of almost 900,000. Kashmir as a whole is short on psychotherapists, who are trained counselors rather than full-fledged doctors who prescribe drugs. Government hospitals have few positions for psychotherapists because drug-based psychiatry is favored.

Kupwara is a largely poor, rural district and one of the most heavily militarized areas in India-administered Kashmir, owing in part to the Border Security Forces that police the Line of Control separating the areas controlled by India and Pakistan.  The literacy level is below the national average, and one of the greatest challenges for MSF staff at first was spreading awareness of concepts like depression.

Some mental health professionals say their services are still desperately needed.

“I have absolutely no idea why they are leaving Kupwara,” said Dr. Arshad Hussain, a psychiatrist based in Srinagar who worked with MSF in Kupwara at the beginning of his career.  “There are absolutely no mental health facilities in all of Kupwara.”

Although it has closed its Kupwara activities, MSF has started a new mental health program in one of the hospitals in Baramulla and plans to expand to nearby Sopore, two towns in central Kashmir with a heavy military presence and strong separatist sentiment in the local population, which MSF says leads to a disproportionate amount of violence compared with the rest of the valley.

MSF was lauded by local physicians for educating the public as well as doctors about mental heath, and also for training staff in counseling in an area where medication is often seen as the key treatment for a traumatized population.  Before MSF entered the valley, the concept of psychotherapy was virtually nonexistent, MSF officials say.

But even trained counselors have difficulty finding jobs now that MSF has pulled out.

Zahoor Ahmad Hawar, a sociologist with a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering, worked for MSF for seven years and went to Holland for a psychotherapy certificate degree from the Netherlands Institute of Psychology.  He left MSF in August and now has a part-time job at a private engineering college. “Every district hospital, there should be one psychiatrist there, but there is no psychotherapist,” he said.

The large number of trained counselors with nowhere to work is the greatest loss from MSF’s departure, other doctors say. “It’s not just MSF as an aid organization that we have lost,” said Dr. Hussain.  “It’s that skilled manpower that we have lost.”

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From behind barbed wires in Kashmir

DIVYA TRIVEDI, The hINDU

Young Kashmiri rappers find their creative dissent muffled and face the axe if they step out of line

ENTERTAINING WITH PURPOSE:Zubair Magray has become an independent artiste. He shot to fame when his song ‘Azadi’ uploaded online was forced to be taken down by the police.

It is not unusual that rap and hip-hop find favour with budding musicians of Kashmir. World over, starting from the inner city lanes of New York to the Middle East, these genres of music have been creative tools of resistance. Through popular culture, a critique of perceived discrimination takes place, dissent is voiced and racism and exclusion get challenged. Misrepresentation is also taken to task.

These genres do not exist in isolation but are embedded in and born from the socio-political environment of a society. For many years, youth have taken recourse to these global art forms to engage with and reflect the reality they see around them. A few years ago, this trend took shape in the Kashmir valley, where youngsters tried to articulate what they saw around them through their music.

Soon Renegade, MC Youngblood, The Revolutionary, Mista Shais, M1B, Haze Kay and MC Kash became popular stage names of young Kashmiri men who created music that came straight from the soul of the land and found resonance with the public, not only in the valley but across India. MC Kash or Roushan Illahi is a rapper and emcee who released a song, ‘I Protest‘ in the Kashmiri unrest of 2010 when hundreds of people were killed in paramilitary action. He has a huge fan following on the social networking sites with thousands of followers on Facebook, Twitter and ReverbNation. His popularity notwithstanding, his studio was raided by the police and henceforth he has been unable to find a place to record his songs. But he continues to sing, sometimes about love also, says Shayan Nabi, his manager.

Haze Kay or Zubair Magray used to perform with Roushan but has become an independent artist since he moved to Pune to pursue further studies. He shot to fame when his song ‘Azadi’ uploaded online was forced to be taken down by the police who were not amused by the lyrics.

He makes his own music and releases it through his own production house. His music was labelled anti-government. “I am living and studying in Pune, which is in India, how am I anti-government? As an artist, it is my duty to respond to the reality around me and express it through the art form,” says Zubair.

Other vibrant artists have now stopped making any music whatsoever. If a song has the words protest, stones or Kashmir, the police are quick to swoop down to the studios and threaten the producers to discontinue the recording. They are instead offered free promotion if they choose to sing about love and police-people harmony. A number of artists have stopped making music altogether due to the constant threats.

Only those artists, who either have some influence or sing about non-political subjects are able to survive in Kashmir today. A healthy non-violent mode of resistance guaranteed in any free society is thus being stifled even before it can take complete shape

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Indians have no right to info in J&K

 

Published: Monday, May 7, 2012, 9:45 IST
By Iftikhar Gilani | Place: New Delhi | Agency: DNA

Even as successive governments in Jammu and Kashmir have liberally extended security laws like TADA, POTA or Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA) to the state, they block implementation of central laws like Right to Education (RTE), granting constitutional status to panchayats etc, citing special status granted under the Article 370 of the Indian Constitution.

“Are you Indian? Or “Are you from India?” These are the questions asked to anybody from India landing in Kashmir. People apart, now such questions are asked even by the J&K government – ruled jointly by the National Conference (NC) and the Congress – which do not tire from always asserting that J&K is an integral part of India.

The state government is not entertaining even rudimentary queries under the Right to Information (RTI) Act, if you are not from the state. Your RTI applications will be rejected, citing the law enacted by the J&K assembly that the right under Section 3 is available only to the J&K residents. It says: “Every person residing in the state shall have the right to information.” A large number of scholars interested in Kashmir-related topics, are frustrated as their queries are rejected on this ground.

A Delhi organisation media studies group, specialising in research on media, had filed a simple RTI query to know the names of newspapers, news agencies and electronic agencies, the contact numbers of their journalists and employees, their addresses, emails, etc. and accreditations granted or pending.

The J&K Directorate of Information rejected the query and returned the postal order of Rs50 as the RTI fee, stating that “a person who is non-state subject is not entitled for right to information under Section 3 of the Jammu and Kashmir Right to Information Act, 2009. The group’s convener filed an appeal against this order, but it too was rejected as “not tenable”.

Conclusion- So, Kashmir is not in  India

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More reasons to talk about Kashmir? “The Pain” What exactly, you might ask?

From- Junaidmakbool’s Blog

“Why don’t YOU write something?” A Friend asked, a while back.

Why not?, I thought. Why don’t I write my own words for once. The question was, what would I write about?

This reminded me of what Arundhati Roy once had to say about writing, “People write when they have a story inside of them.” So, what do I hold close? What is it that I couldn’t say before? What is inside me?

The answer wasn’t too difficult.

Home.

Kashmir.

Kashmir;  tricky , very tricky. I have been on twitter long enough to realize that writing anything related to Kashmir, even a single line, can be controversial business. Write anything about Kashmir, and it is generally categorized into three headings

1. Rants. “Why are you complaining all the time?” Move on”.  You get the idea.
2. Playing to the gallery, again, there are types of galleries here A.) Mainstream Indian Gallery. B) Pakistani Gallery. C.) The separatist gallery N . B . There is NO Kashmiri Gallery.
3. Biased. “you missed this” “ I died too” . As if there is a competition.

I hope to circumvent the above categories, and write as a layperson, I am no expert on anything, I write as a common Kashmiri.

Phew, that was tough, categories and all, now about Kashmir. Kashmir is home, though I have been out a few years, and because of that I have realized even more that there is no place else that I can call home. Why? Let’s get to the ridiculous first;  it is breathtakingly beautiful, the weather is mild, the food is good, amazing people, even tap water tastes good, I don’t know how, but it does. You might argue that this is true for everyone, the native place is special, but, where else  do you get such a beautiful spring, when you can palpate the joy in the air, or the sunsets? And such clear demarcation between seasons? Have you seen the Chinar in autumn? You will sigh with me if you have. Dal lake in  the evenings? It indeed is heaven.

More reasons to talk about Kashmir? “The Pain” What exactly, you might ask?  There is a certain kind of pain inside every Kashmiri, kind of an dull ache,  we aren’t born with it (or maybe we are), but it is there, and it refuses to go, no matter where I am. Let me dissect this pain, the pain of Kashmir’s history, all that it has gone through, even the beauty gives me some kind of pain. What ails Kashmir?  Is it paying the price for being so bloody beautiful?  Maybe.

When did all of this start, 1947, or earlier, when Kashmir was sold for a paltry sum, (like a miserable bride, who has no say in the matter), or even earlier? I don’t know, there are no clear answers.

Let’s take it at 1947, a stupid King can’t take a decision, and Kashmir is plunged into war (That is why it is important to be firm in decision making, even if one is wrong) The King can’t decide which way to go, dreams of a “Independent “ nation, the neighboring country attacks( can’t resist free meat, you see) , the King fears for his life, calls Nehru for help (Who is a Kashmiri) , Nehru does what he has to do(Politics), the army is called in, the day is saved, but only up to a certain line (The ALC, afterwards). Kashmir is divided forever.  Nehru is even more indecisive than the King, doesn’t allow the army to take all of Kashmir back, makes a lot of huge promises( None to keep) , and goes to the UN (taking the moral high ground ).

Meanwhile , there is also a PM(CM) who is played with like a rag doll (More versions of him afterwards too). Finally, the two countries have had enough, and they go to war. Nothing happens, there is no conventional “victory” . Things cool off. Kashmir gets used to the status quo, everyone is happy, till something else happens , and all of this repeats, ad nauseum. And while all of this is going on, millions die, thousands disappear, some in mass graves, the Pandits lose their homes, mothers wait eternally for their lost sons.

And a common Kashmiri like me? Where do I fit in? No one asks me anything, I am a mute spectator, always ready and willing to be taken for a ride, you see, I have got so used to seeing promises being broken, that I am  quite the cynic now; I usually smirk( inside coffee houses, and that is mistaken for joy).  I have no dreams, I have no hopes, I just want a regular life, I don’t want to see the face of a gun, every single morning, I want some dignity, I want some degree of justice, some redemption, I don’t want you to patronize me, no sympathy either, just some empathy.

Yes, I want good roads, a thriving economy, a good regular job, I want the violence to stop.

But what is the cost?

I don’t want you to tell me what to do, I want you to ask me, “Tere dil mein kya hai?”  I want a voice, but no politicians shall speak for me. I can’t take any more broken promises, shady deals.  I want you to hold my hand, as a friend, as an equal; and then decide.

I do want to move on (Trust me, no one wants to get killed evevryday),  but to move on, one has to have a good road, the past must be buried, with dignity. Can you do that? Is that too much to ask?

I am tired, too tired right now, to think beyond the mundane, but don’t take this silence for acquiescence,  all is not well, I need help, right now, before all hell breaks lose.

This is what a common Kashmiri thinks like ( at least me) .

Ignore me now, I am lost forever.

Click here to junaid’s blog

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129 Army Personnel Found Guilty of Rights Violation

PTI | Srinagar | May 06, 2012

As many as 129 army personnel, including three dozen officers, were found guilty of human rights violations mostly in Jammu and Kashmir and Northeast in the last two decades, defence sources have said.

Following the establishment of human rights cell in 1993, the army has received more than 1,500 allegations of rights violations against its men but most of these have been found false and baseless, they said.

“Of the 1,532 allegations of rights violations, investigations revealed that 1,508 were false. Out of the 995 complaints in Jammu and Kashmir, 961 were false while only 29 out of the 485 complaints from Northeast were found correct,” the sources said.

The sources said 59 personnel, including some officers, were punished in Jammu and Kashmir in the nine cases of rights violations.

“Similarly, 70 personnel were punished in Northeast after their guilt was established,” the sources said.

Army has awarded compensation in 34 cases in which the complaints were found to be genuine. While compensation was paid in 15 cases in Jammu and Kashmir, 19 victims of rights violations were compensated in Northeast, they said.

The sources said if the army decides to exercise the option of court martial against its accused personnel in the Pathribal encounter case, due course of law will be followed if they are found guilty.

“Anyone found guilty of rights abuses has been punished and it should be no different in this (Pathribal) case,” they said.

Last week, the Supreme Court had directed the army to decide within eight weeks whether it would exercise the option of court martial or allow its personnel, accused of staging a fake encounter at Pathribal, to be tried by a civilian court.

According to the CBI charge sheet filed against the seven army personnel, five unarmed civilians were killed in a fake encounter on March 25, 2000 at Pathribal in south Kashmir‘s Anantnag district.

The alleged fake encounter took place five days after Lashkar-e-Taiba militants gunned down 35 Sikhs in nearby Chattisinghpora village.

The five civilians, dubbed as Lashkar militants, were held responsible for the massacre of Sikhs.

CBI investigations, however, revealed that the deceased were innocent civilians and accordingly, a charge sheet was filed before the designated trial court.

Army had challenged the charge sheet right up to the Supreme Court, pleading that CBI had not sought prior sanction for prosecution of its men from the Centre as required under Section VII of the Armed Forces Special Powers Act.

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Set aside AFSPA. What about PSA, Mr Omar?

The J&K Public Safety Act is being misused rampantly to arrest young boys. Baba Umar reports

Catch them young Nearly 5,500 stone-pelters have been arrested since 2010 Photos: Abid Bhat

WHEN Mohammad Rafiq Sheikh, a Class X student of DAV Public School in Srinagar, was picked up by unidentified men on 2 February, he couldn’t have imagined the ordeal that awaited him.

Initially, Rafiq was detained at Zakoora Police Station, where he was booked for eve-teasing. He was granted bail on 7 February, but when the order was served to the SHO, the police claimed that Rafiq was, in fact, being held in Shergari PS, where he was being charged with stone-pelting. The drama was repeated when Rafiq was shifted to Nigeen PS and back to Shergari PS and Srinagar Central Jail before he was shifted on 29 February to Udhampur Jail in Jammu, where he has been detained under Jammu & Kashmir Public Safety Act (PSA).

“We deny the charges. At the most, my son should have been charged for eve-teasing,” says Rafiq’s mother Shakeela, who has filed a habeas corpus petition in the Srinagar High Court seeking his release. “When my husband tried to expose the SHO’s high-handedness, Rafiq was charged for stone-pelting and slapped with PSA.”

The Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA) may hog all the headlines, but the PSA, which was introduced by Chief Minister Omar Abdullah’s grandfather Sheikh Abdullah in 1978, is the most misused Act currently in force. Under this Act, which is being touted as a deterrent against pro-Azadi dissent, one can be detained on such flimsy grounds as falling in love or complaining about cops’ high-handedness.

Even though the state Assembly passed a Bill in April to amend the Act, under which no person below the age of 18 should be slapped with PSA, Rafiq continues to languish in jail. While Rafiq’s educational certificates prove that he was only 17 when he was detained, the police’s grounds of detention claim that he was a “19-year-old stone-pelter who has affiliation with the separatist Geelani group”.

Shakeela says she couldn’t secure Rafiq’s release because she and her husband Abdul Rashid Sheikh, a labourer, were unable to meet the police’s bribe demand. Rafiq’s friend, who was also detained on the same charges, walked free after his family coughed up the money.

The family of Umar Farooq, 15, admit that they paid Rs 30,000 through intermediaries at different police stations to secure his release. “Both were friends and were in contact with a girl for one month on their cell phone,” says Umar’s grandfather Ghulam Qadir Sheikh. “It’s all about the money. We paid Rs 30,000 to various cops.”

Umar was detained on 3 February and taken to Zakoora PS. After finding Umar’s whereabouts, his father Tariq Ahmad Sheikh, a labourer, was told to rush to Shergari PS where Umar was charged for stonepelting. Despite a bail order, he was shifted back to Zakoora PS where a case of obscene acts was slapped. He was later released on 27 February. In this case too, the grounds of detention show Umar as a “19-year-old who had pelted stones and rioted” in 2008 and ’10. Umar’s case is being heard at the Srinagar High Court, which has stayed the slapping of PSA on him.

“Cases like these are rampant in Kashmir,” says Mir Shafqat Hussein, a prominent lawyer who claims to have handled many PSA cases in the past two decades. “You can gauge the high-handedness of the police in a case in which a boy was slapped with PSA because he had an affair with the daughter of a police officer.”

Like AFSPA, where some provisions offer impunity to erring soldiers leading to rights violations, PSA too has a provision, Section 22, which protects authorities from prosecution, even in cases where PSA has been abused. The misuse of PSA seldom leads to the victims getting any compensation.

“So far, there hasn’t been a single case in which compensation was given to victims after PSA misuse,” says Ishfaq Tantray, a journalist who has been covering legal cases in Kashmir for years. “Once a victim’s PSA is quashed, the order often reprimands the detaining authority for non-application of mind while preparing the grounds of detention.”

When medical representative Khalid Farhat Shah, 26, of Sopore was detained on 22 May 2009, he was charged under the Arms Act. A bail order issued on 25 June wasn’t entertained. The police filed a detention order on 18 January 2011, which was challenged by his mother Ateeqa Begum in the Srinagar High Court, which quashed the order. But instead of releasing him, Shah was shunted around various police stations until another detention order under PSA provisions was slapped, on the very same grounds.

The case of Mubarak Ahmad Wani, 33, of Bangidar in Anantnag, is even more shocking. He remains in detention under PSA since March 2010 despite the HC quashing two of his previous detention orders.

In reply to an RTI filed by lawyer Babar Jan Qadri in November 2011, the government revealed that 5,503 people have been arrested/detained in stone-pelting cases since 2010. But rights activists claim that more than 20,000 people have undergone detention under PSA in the past 20 years. The RTI reply also revealed that 5,468 persons were released after courts quashed their detention, or were granted bail, putting a question mark on the ‘grounds of detention’ that the police had prepared.

However, the RTI reply threw up another interesting fact. It revealed that all detainees have come out either on bail or after their detention was quashed by courts and no stone-pelter was given amnesty, which was publicly announced by Omar. The chief minister had announced amnesty to almost 1,200 stone-pelters on 28 August 2011, saying it was an Eid gift.

MEANWHILE, AMNESTY International’s 2011 report on the misuse of PSA has thrown up chilling figures on how the Act has triggered serious rights violations in the state.

Catch them young Nearly 5,500 stone-pelters have been arrested since 2010

Amnesty concluded that the number of persons detained without trial in J&K is 14 times higher than the national average; the conviction rate for attempt to murder is eight times lower, for rioting approximately eight times lower and five times lower for arson. It also reported that of the 600 cases it had studied, 290 detainees were booked in FIRs that included Arms Act offences. But only a handful of the 290 would eventually be convicted.

“The low rates of conviction in J&K are not necessarily indicative of a failing criminal justice system,” says the report. “The percentage of convictions in all cognisable (relatively serious) penal code offences in J&K (50.9) is higher than the corresponding national figure (42.6).”

Amnesty’s India Country Specialist Govind Acharya told TEHELKA that just like AFSPA, PSA should be repealed “and with it the system of administrative detention, releasing all detainees or charging those suspected of committing criminal acts with recognised offences and providing fair trials in a court”. “We share the view of the Supreme Court, which called the PSA a ‘lawless law’ in 1982,” says Acharya.

However, the government says PSA can’t be done away with at least until Kashmir becomes normal again. “PSA isn’t only used in maintaining law and order but to stop timber smuggling too,” says Law Minister Ali Mohammad Sagar. “We have already amended the PSA in which the detention period has been reduced to three months.” About Section 22, which prohibits prosecution of officials even when the Act is abused or misused, he says such provisions can be amended at the appropriate time.

As the debate over PSA rages on, the technicalities involved do not make sense to parents like Shakeela. “Instead of giving my son a fair trial, the government continues to dodge the rule of law by invoking PSA,” she says. “His life is over. By imprisoning my son hundreds of kilometres away, the government is punishing all of us.”

Baba Umar is a Correspondent with Tehelka.
babaumar@tehelka.com

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