Their sacrifice and courage as brave people who rose up against tyranny and for their identity
Horrified, he stared at the blood with fear. He felt his own hands drenched with the oozing red liquid which was as clear as rubies. He did not understand what had happened. Did he kill someone? Blood vividly appeared portraying its deadly beauty in shades of red. With a start only he realised the blood was his.
This is what the definition of ‘normal’ is for the Kashmiri people.
Kashmir is in the far north of Pakistan, a valley that is etched into the Himalayas. In 1947, its ruler was a Hindu but more than half of his subjects were Muslims. Since then, India and Pakistan have been to war four times — the last one being the Kargil conflict in 1999 — all of which have somehow or the other centred around Kashmir.
It has been 70 years since the first shots were fired in the valley of Kashmir and it has not known complete peace and tranquility since then. Apart from occasional skirmishes, the insurgency that erupted in 1989 was triggered by multiple factors and resulted in 41,000 lives being lost, according to a recent report based on Indian official data.
International intervention is out of the option due to the Simla Agreement signed by then Pakistani prime minister Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto and then Indian prime minister Indira Gandhi. This agreement was signed after the secession of East Pakistan to Bangladesh that left 90,000 Pakistani soldiers as POWs (Prisoners of War). In order to negotiate their safe release, Bhutto had to compromise and agree to take up the Kashmir issue only through bilateral conversation between India and Pakistan.
This past year, the Indian police have dominated against the Kashmiri “insurgents”. Indian officials said at least 267 “militants” have been killed in 2018, the largest death toll of “insurgents” in a decade. Most of these freedom fighters have been methodically hunted down and have refused to give up when cornered, dying in a hail of bullets and being branded as militants. Their sacrifice and courage as brave people who rose up against tyranny and for their identity, ever tarnished with the labels they have been given.
Hamd Azan
Published in The Express Tribune, March 9th, 2019.
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