State of Siege in Kashmir: A warning to the International Working Class
Thirteen million people in Indian-controlled Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) have spent the last 13 days under a regime of extraordinary repression and collective punishment at the hands of India’s Hindu supremacist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government. These actions have few-and historically infamous-precedents.
A population that is greater than those of entire European countries ... has been subjected to a “security lockdown” that has included blanket curfews, keeping people caged in their homes with dwindling supplies of food.
Freedom of speech and assembly have been abolished, with gatherings of more than four people outlawed. Critics who have denounced the repression to the media have been imprisoned. Public transport has been shut down, and the region’s economy has ground to a halt.
The Indian government...has carried out the “preventive detention” of many of the politicians of J&K, which is the Indian-controlled part of the larger region of Kashmir, which has been divided since the reactionary communal partition of the subcontinent into a Muslim Pakistan and a mainly Hindu India that accompanied independence from Britain in 1947. The disputed territory has been the flashpoint for two wars and numerous war crises between what are now nuclear-armed rivals.
via World Socialist Web Site
NB: Articles are floating around blaming this on Trump's ignorance of how to deal with the sub-continent and Modi (over-?) reacting to Trump's support for Pakistan (Imran Khan's) unilateral calls for mediation. I wonder what the Kashmiri would prefer?
A population that is greater than those of entire European countries ... has been subjected to a “security lockdown” that has included blanket curfews, keeping people caged in their homes with dwindling supplies of food.
Freedom of speech and assembly have been abolished, with gatherings of more than four people outlawed. Critics who have denounced the repression to the media have been imprisoned. Public transport has been shut down, and the region’s economy has ground to a halt.
The Indian government...has carried out the “preventive detention” of many of the politicians of J&K, which is the Indian-controlled part of the larger region of Kashmir, which has been divided since the reactionary communal partition of the subcontinent into a Muslim Pakistan and a mainly Hindu India that accompanied independence from Britain in 1947. The disputed territory has been the flashpoint for two wars and numerous war crises between what are now nuclear-armed rivals.
via World Socialist Web Site
NB: Articles are floating around blaming this on Trump's ignorance of how to deal with the sub-continent and Modi (over-?) reacting to Trump's support for Pakistan (Imran Khan's) unilateral calls for mediation. I wonder what the Kashmiri would prefer?