Auschwitz in the old city by Sameer Bhat

Yeh kiska lahu, kaun mara
ai rahabar mulko kaum bata

~Whose blood is this, who died?
Oh leader of my nation, speak up
[My translation of Sahir Ludyanvi’s verse lines]

Word was out, like a lion that hadn’t eaten for days. Early Monday morning three gunmen had barged into the Lake view home of Kashmir’s Mirwaiz – Chief preacher and spiritual leader to more than five and a half million Kashmiri Muslims – and went straight to Maulvi Muhammad Farooq’s alcove. The men had the mental maps worked out and knew exactly where to find the head priest.

A hugely influential but controversial leader, Maulvi Farooq was quite urbane and classy. He would appear in Srinagar’s historical Jamia Mosque at noon-time on Fridays clad in an intricately embroidered gown and a Karakul cap with trademark black glasses. A thousand eyes would look at him in awe as he slowly ambled towards the pulpit of the 600-year old perfumed prayer hall, ornate in exquisite Indo-Saracenic architecture. All 370 wooden pillars in the mosque stood upstanding. The chandeliers pendulated.

But when have gun-barrels respected superior lineages? The men, who entered the Mirwaiz house, on May 21, 1990, pushed their way into his study and even before the 11th Mirwaiz of Kashmir could understand what was happening, a volley of bullets hit him. Centuries old reverence was brutally violated. Always pro-Pakistan, Maulvi Farooq had recently fallen out of favor with the hardliners. A meeting with India’s Kashmir affairs minister and subsequently calling the kidnapping of Rubiya Sayed ‘un-Islamic’ acted as an immediate provocation.

By the time the reverend was wheeled to the Sher-i-Kashmir [Lion of Kashmir] institute of medical sciences, a hospital ironically named after his bete-noire Sheikh Abdullah, with fifteen gun-wounds to his head, chest, stomach and legs, Mirwaiz was dead. Kashmir’s grand abbot was no more, slaughtered by his erstwhile followers. Irate crowds began to gather outside the hospital as news got around. Governor Jagmohan – recently dispatched to tame Kashmiris – got into a huddle with his security advisors at Raj Bhawan, a few kilometers away. Indignation rained.

There was some scuffle over Mirwaiz’s dead body. The hospital authorities were hesitant to hand it over. People took forcible control of the slain leader’s body and carried it in a procession through downtown Srinagar. The crowd swelled as more and more people joined the cortege. Sloganeering hastened. Women wailed. Near the Islamia College of science and commerce, located at Hawal, the 69th battalion of CRPF intercepted the marchers. Suddenly, skittish like stupefied horses, troopers aimed their guns on the mourners. A curtain of fire followed. 57 innocent people were cut to an instant death.

The pallbearers were all dead. Mirwaiz’s body fell off the coffin, on the road. Two more bullets hit his mortal remains. The air was rent with terrifying screams and more bullets, which seemed to ricochet off the walls and hit even more people. In less than three minutes, the funeral procession was reduced to a pile of dead. The road outside the college resembled a concentration camp, with bodies scattered all over, a blood-soaked coffin, hundreds of slippers, bedaubed in blood. Hawal was Srinagar’s little Auschwitz in that hour.

There are conflicting reports about what happened afterwards: Eye-witnesses who spoke to foreign media said that as soon as the CRPF guns fell silent (having exhausted their ammunition), around six to seven men -- from the procession -- collected Mirwaiz’s body from the roadside and placed it in the coffin. By all accounts they ran with the casket to Mirwaiz’s office. The cleric was later laid to rest in Srinagar’s Martyr’s graveyard. Those who perished in the blood-bath were buried the same day. Sometimes in history mourners can swiftly become mourned.

Ironically the man alleged to have led the hit squad to assassinate the Mirwaiz, Abdullah Bangroo, was killed less than a month later by troopers. In an atmosphere as malefic and morbid as Kashmir it is hard to sift through the official and unofficial versions. Often both are contradictory. Call it a quirk of fate, Abdullah Bangroo lies buried very close to Mirwaiz's tomb in the Martyr’s cemetery in Srinagar.

No one was ever charged or punished for the May 21 killings. Governor Jagmohan, under whose watch the mass murder took place, never showed any remorse.

Blood, bought for a song.

© 2010 Sameer

Burden of Memories

By Uzma Falak for Kashmir Dispatch

My memory keeps getting in the way of your history - Agha Shahid Ali.

A little over fifteen years ago, while holding my mother’s arm, I looked out from a window of my house in Srinagar. The sight though blurred now, my memory bears an indelible impression; men shouldering the dead in shrouds, women wailing and the air resonating with slogans of Hum Kya Chahtay? Azaadi! (What do we want? Freedom!) I vividly remember asking my mother, “When shall we get Azaadi?” I didn’t know what Azaadi meant, though I knew that the people of my land desperately wanted it. A long silence had followed my question.

Today, after all those years, I stand at the same window, now with a broken pane, bearing witness to the same yearning, anger and asking the same question to myself. When shall we be free?

No matter how hard our elders tried to shield us from the trail of destruction outside, their efforts failed. My generation grew up listening to terms like Curfew, Crackdown, Martyr, Tehreek. Azaadi was in the air – at the bakers’, in dining rooms, in buses and on the streets.

My childhood passed under the shadow of a gun. Dreams were interrupted by the deafening sound of gunshots and grenades. I remember my brother’s favourite past time was to make wooden toy-guns and play what he called ‘encounter-encounter’. During cricket matches no one around me would cheer for India. As a child, I failed to comprehend the sentiment, however, gradually in those small but strong signs I started to find my identity as a Kashmiri.

On a sunny afternoon, I remember walking home from school with my friends. The roads were barricaded, the troopers stopped us and one of them frisked our school bags. He even frisked my friend’s lunch box, which made me angry. I snapped back saying, “We are school going children and this is a lunch box. How can you expect...” He was red in the face as I looked sharply at him and walked away. Anger and excitement gripped me at the same time as I hurried back home to narrate what I thought was an act of gallantry. But, my mother was scared. She scolded me saying, “They could have shot you there and then.”

At educational institutions books conceal our history, even maps are distorted. But planners of such tactics forget that children here live in conflict and life is the greatest teacher.

The heavy presence of troopers, the army pickets at every nook and corner, the barbed wires and barricades, the frisking – it all seemed ‘normal’ until I stepped out of Kashmir and found a different world. It was then I realized that my home was not ‘normal’.

Debates surrounding us made me inquisitive and I found that in the United Nations, the state of Jammu and Kashmir was registered as a dispute after litigation made by the first Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru. The UN suggested a plebiscite, which was accepted by Nehru and promised to the people of the state during his speech on All India Radio in 1948 and also while addressing a mammoth gathering at Lal Chowk in Srinagar. Nehru made this promise time and again.

But instead of holding to the promise, New Delhi indulged in systematic abrogation of the special status guaranteed to the state under the Treaty of Accession. Till 1987, observers say not a single state election could be termed ‘free and fair’; such doctored democracy could only breed rebellion. Two years later, an armed uprising erupted and New Delhi’s response was repressive, to say the least. The number of people killed is disputed, but the widely accepted figure is 70,000.

Since childhood I have only known the inhuman face of India’s presence. Victims of torture, rape, forced disappearances, unmarked graves, widows, half widows, orphans – their common address is Kashmir.

In 2005, a bomb blast outside Tyndale Biscoe and Mallinson girls’ school, where I studied, left me uneasy for days. Disturbing images of my classmates and children yelling, crying in pain; blood soaked uniforms and blood spilled floors. My helplessness at not being able to locate my younger brother in that huge crowd of media men, ambulances, OB vans and troopers still haunts me.

The picture perfect Kashmir, is not only about the picturesque Dal Lake and Mughal gardens it is also the most densely militarized zone in the world. Here minors are booked under draconian laws like the Public Safety Act (PSA), which allows people to be held without trial for up to two years. There are no juvenile homes here. The Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA) gives Indian troops free hand to search, arrest, shoot and also provides them with immunity from prosecution. Human rights violations, a plagued justice system and bad governance are what people are protesting against.

With my childhood memories hoarded, 2010 only reinforced my identity as a child of conflict. And, it also came with a yearning to express our collective pain. For me writing became a consolation and a need.

Marked as the year of Innocent Killings, 2010 began with the killing of Inayat Khan, 16, who was shot by troopers on his way to tuition on January 8. Days later, Wamiq Farooq and Zahid Farooq, both school going boys like Inayat, became victims of the government forces’ actions. Worst was yet to come; on April 29, the Indian Army killed three Kashmiri youth in a fake encounter near the Line of Control (LoC) in the Machil sector. The situation became aggravated after 17-year-old, Tufail Ahmed Mattoo, who was returning from tuitions, was hit in the head with a teargas canister inside the Gani Memorial stadium in Srinagar’s old city. After that our days passed counting the dead; in total 118 people were killed during the summer unrest of 2010.

The words of Faiz Ahmed Faiz sum up our miseries. “The executioner's hands are clean, his nails transparent. The sleeves of each assassin are spotless. No sign of blood: No trace of red…”

Kashmiris have been alienated for decades. With every case that is forgotten, the memory sharpens. With every act of injustice a new stone thrower is born. The government has failed to reach people. In a volte-face, the government charged dead Wamiq, 13, of causing injury to a cop instead of bringing his murderers to book.

“There are countless pending cases and everyone knows the fate they meet. We don’t have any hopes. We can’t push it to the court for long. We are common, poor people and can’t afford the costs. Allah is the witness and that is the only consolation.” These words of a brother, whose sister was among those killed, speak volumes about the faith common man has in the judiciary.

Terms like healing touch, negotiation table and dialogue have been used and abused by the government repeatedly. In reality India’s answer to stones has been brute force. Though India’s diagnosis has always entered on development and employment, intentionally shoving the real issue under the rugs of oblivion. Labelling the unrest as part of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) and Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT) backed is seen as yet another desecration of Kashmir’s sentiment.

A 5th grader in my neighbourhood secretly comes out of his house, without letting his mother know, to pelt stones and register his protest. Is he, a boy in grade 5, funded by ISI or LeT or is he crying for employment? I will let you be the judge.

I saw 9-year-old Sameer Rah in shrouds, his tiny body on a stretcher, being carried for the burial. He was ruthlessly beaten to death, and when his body was found he still had a half eaten toffee in his mouth. I can’t forget the face of his wailing mother and my own helplessness as I stood on the street testifying. The tearful voice of Sameer’s friend from a mosque loudspeaker still echoes in my head, “Sameer your blood will bring revolution!”

Concertina wires, barricades, burning tires or its leftover, crushed glasses, scattered stones – these have become signposts on every street in Kashmir. The graffiti Go India Go, We Want Freedom – a message loud and clear, is what every street in Kashmir says.

While the idea of Azaadi remains dear to the heart of Kashmir, there has been a clear transition from guns to stones and slogans and many other forms of dissent. While peaceful protests on the streets are quelled, they have reached cyberspace. Videos and pictures, depicting the gory realities of New Delhi’s troops have been shared across the globe.

In these times, when the mind is busy in damage control and when everyday brings with it new ordeals, we have to keep our head and wage war against our memory lest we forget. Our memory is the strongest weapon in such times.

As a Kashmiri I don’t hate Indians; I have many Indian friends. The protest is against the impotency of the Indian government to understand our sentiment. It is over 60 years and India should respect the ideals of the democracy that it claims to uphold, otherwise, its global image of being the world’s ‘largest democracy’ might be dubbed as the biggest PR scam in history.

Iram, a forty-day-old baby girl, died just because she couldn’t make it to hospital as government forces did not allow her family through during curfew. Iram’s 5-year-old sister, when asked, innocently said woh margayi, military walon ne jaanay nahe diya (she died because troopers didn't let her go). Iram’s sister will find her identity as a Kashmiri in these signs, the way I did when I was a child. And when she grows up she too will sing the songs of Azaadi.

Courtesy: Kashmir Dispatch

Lest we Forget: Lal Chowk Massacre, April 10 1993

In one of the most devastating incidents of its kind, on April 10, 1993, a large section of downtown Srinagar known as Lal Chowk was burned to the ground by Indian paramilitary troops, apparently in retaliation for the burning of an abandoned BSF building by local residents. The BSF commanding officer refused to heed warnings about the security risks of abandoning the force’s headquarters and bunkers, and then ignored pleas for assistance from local police who were trying to protect these sites.

The incident, which was one of the largest such arson attack by Indian forces since the beginning of the conflict, left at least four civilians dead in the immediate area and more in attacks in nearby neighborhoods. Although the senior most civilian authority in the city, Deputy Commissioner Abdul Salam Bhatt, witnessed the behavior of the security forces, he did not intervene.

Officer Majeed (name changed) of the Jammu and Kashmir police, said that at 8:05 a.m. on April 10, he left the station on duty and walked toward Lal Chowk. Before he reached Lal Chowk, he was told that the BSF had vacated their building, the Sandam Dharam Sabha building, and their bunkers in Lal Chowk, which they had occupied since the beginning of the conflict. He entered the building and saw that no one was there, and that the bunker had been demolished

"The local people asked me why the forces had left. I went at 8:15 a.m. to see the BSF commander of the 117th division, B.R. Sharma, in the Dashma Akhara building. I saw that the troops, about 100 men, were standing in position, ready to move. I asked where the commander was, and a BSF deputy superintendent told me that the commander was in his office. I went straight to the office but Commanding Officer Sharma was not there; he was sleeping in the room next door and came out in his nightclothes at 8:15 a.m. I saluted him and told him that I was surprised that the BSF had withdrawn its troops without telling us. He said it was the order of a higher authority to withdraw the troops, and that he had started the withdrawal at 11:30 p.m. the night before. I told him the building was not safe because the local people set fire to buildings which have been abandoned by the security forces. I told him the BSF should provide me one platoon to protect the building. He said he had no troops available. I asked him to please give me six or seven men. He said he would see what he could do. I left the building."

Officer Majeed. informed his superiors at the police control room and then returned to Lal Chowk. When he approached the Sandam Dharam Sabha building he was warned by the crowd that had assembled at the building not to go in because it had been mined. Concerned that the building would be set on fire, he returned to C.O. Sharma’s office and again asked for troops to send to Lal Chowk. Officer Majeed. told: "C.O. Sharma then said, "Let us have a cup of tea." He ignored me. I told him it was not a time for tea, but a time to save Lal Chowk. He said he would arrange to send troops to Lal Chowk. I left the building and saw that the Sandam Dharam Sabha building had been set on fire. It was 8:50 a.m."

At that time, the fire was still small enough to be brought under control. Officer Majeed ordered the police control room to send the fire brigades, and within ten minutes the fire fighters arrived and tried to put out the fire.The gunfire continued for an hour and a half. Finally, after the fire was out of control, but the gunfire had stopped, the Inspector General of the BSF, Ashok Patel, the Additional Chief Secretary (Home), Mahmood ul-Rahman, the Additional Director General of the Crime Investigation Department (CID), Amar Kapoor, and the Advisor to Governor on Law and Order (Home) D.D. Saklani, arrived and asked what had happened. One of the Jammu and Kashmir police officers told them:

"I requested BSF to save Lal Chowk, but C.O. Sharma showed me a coldness and ignored my request."

The officer asked IG Patel to send army fire fighters. Patel responded that he had already requested them. An hour later Governor Krishna Rao and Director General of Police Bedi arrived. The fire was still raging out of control. At 2:30 p.m., a single army fire truck arrived with enough water to last ten or fifteen minutes.

Mazhar, a waiter at one of the hotels, said that on the morning of April 10, 1993, he came to work at the hotel at 8:00 a.m. Everything was quiet at that time and the bunkers near the hotel were still occupied by the security forces, as they had been for many months. Then at about 8:30 a.m. he heard people shouting slogans of "Azadi" (Freedom) and "We want freedom." He said that when he looked out of the first floor kitchen and dining room windows he saw Jammu and Kashmir police and civilians running in Lal Chowk in front of the hotel. Just after 8:30 a.m. he saw smoke and flames rising from the Sandam Dharam Sabha building. He said that at about that time a security vehicle arrived on the scene. The vehicle went towards the fire and then returned. He saw SSP Rajendra Kumar come out of the vehicle, walk toward the Sandam Dharam Sabha building and then walk back to the vehicle and put on a bullet-proof jacket and helmet. SSP Kumar then went inside the Akhara building. After half an hour, he and other security forces came out and, as Majeed. watched from the dining room windows, about 100 security forces surrounded Lal Chowk and started firing indiscriminately.

After the fire started, people who were trapped inside the buildings tried to push open the doors only to discover that they had been bolted from the outside and could not be opened from the inside. The soldiers moved down the street, one of them carrying a green plastic bucket into which another soldier dipped a small can and then threw liquid from the bucket onto wooden portions of the buildings.

Within a few minutes, the buildings erupted in flames. The other soldiers continued to shoot all around Lal Chowk. M. saw a waiter from the hotel come to the second floor window and scream, "Spare us!", and then he saw at least two soldiers fire at the man. The man fell backward. Then the soldiers threw liquid from the bucket on the gate of the hotel. Fire erupted. Another soldier pointed some kind of weapon at the top of the Standard Hotel and fired and the roof burst into flames. Then the Jammu and Kashmir police came and opened the bolt on the door from the outside and five persons came out of the hotel.

Majeed said that at about 10:30 a.m., he broke open a window at the back of the hotel and escaped down the staircase of the mosque next door. As he went he saw that the doors of two buildings adjacent to the new Standard Hotel were bolted from the outside and people were pushing on them from the inside. He ran to Barbarshah along the by-ways and two others from the hotel escaped with him.

Tauseef, a resident, stated that as he was returning from home from Maisuma Bazaar, he heard bursts from light machine guns. He took refuge with friends in a house on Red Cross Road from where they could see the BSF putting liquid on the Standard Hotel and other buildings which then erupted in flames. When Tauseef learned that his own house was on fire, he ran out on to Red Cross Road. He saw five BSF soldiers on the street, some of whom were gathered around a light machine gun outside the burning Standard Hotel. When Tauseef reached home, he found the front door bolted from outside, as were other houses in the lane. He and his mother and sister then fled to a relative’s house in another part of Srinagar.

Mohammad, another resident of Lal Chowk, stated that he heard shots at about 10:00 a.m. The security forces banged on the door of his house saying, "Come out, we will kill you." After that, he saw smoke coming from the right side of the house. Majid and his family escaped through the back door. Since the burning of their house, the family has lived in a hotel.

In all, 59 houses, 190 shops, 53 stores where inventory was kept, two office buildings, five commercial buildings, two schools and a shrine inside the building were gutted by the fire. Four people were killed: a woman, Shishi Chouralsy; a man, Rahool Chouralsy, about 20; a boy, Mudasir, 14, who died of bullet injuries; and Bashid Ahmed Tantri, 30, a waiter, who was burned to death. One hundred and twenty-seven families lost their homes.

(Some Names Have been Changed)