The Locked-up Kashmir !

By Manuwant Choudhary

The Indian government need not have arrested the former chief ministers Omar Abdullah and lady Mehbooba Mufti and Farooq Abdullah - when they have already locked up the people of an entire state after demoting it to a union territory.

But this morning at least one positive news on NDTV that relatives have been allowed to meet the former chief ministers.

Omar Abdullah has grown a beard but is allowed his walks in the garden. We still do not know the condition of Mehbooba.

But first lets see how the Indian media report on Kashmir.

And actually not surprisingly the Times of India does not carry a single report on Kashmir.

The Wire has a first person account of Murtaza Fazily, a Ladakhi who says Ladakh had never even asked for a Union Territory status and even now a majority don't support it. Its a personalised account of how he managed to speak to his father after 20 days and that too through a government land line.

It also carries a report on Nazir Ahmed Ronga, a former President of the Kashmir Bar Association, he was arrested on August 4 itself, a day before article 370 was abrogated, under the Public Safety Act. His crime: "His ability to get voters out to vote."

His colleague says, "Its a crime to be democratic in Kashmir."

The Hindu has a report on Kashmir's `Revolving Door Arrests'. So far under this 1500 young people have been arrested and let off after a week..but the arrests are a continous process, it says...anyone can be arrested under this on charges of being a prospective stone thrower !

It also reports that on any single day there are at least 40 stone throwing protests in Kashmir, the least being 8 incidents on just two days.

But whats worse is there are no official centralised numbers on the arrests made so far...

Most Indian newspapers say Kashmir is in a lock-down...but the fact is Kashmir has been locked up.

Medical needs are suffering and even doctors who voice the issue are placed under detention.

Violation of such human rights can never be an internal matter of any country.

The Hindu has another interesting story on how India secretly armed the Afghanistan Northern Alliance and its fighter-in-chief  Ahmed Shah Masaud against the Taliban...(So is that not getting involved in the internal affairs of another country?)

Ambassador Bharath Raj Mutthu Kumar was called by the `Commander' and in a meeting Massoud dramatically threw his trademark cap on the table and said, "This is all the space I need to fight for my country."

Indian Express has a detailed report on the Indian officials who are in charge of locking down Kashmir and their credentials.

Still no report on how ordinary Kashmiris are surviving in all this...