Sunday, August 09, 2020

Modi's brutal treatment of Kashmir exposes his tactics – and their flaws

Guardian (Aus Ed):

Modi's brutal treatment of Kashmir exposes his tactics – and their flaws


[Arundhati Roy is a novelist, writer and political activist]


A year after a ferocious crackdown, I see the region facing nothing less than cultural erasure


 

‘Why did Narendra Modi decide to inaugurate the Ram Mandir now?’ 
Photograph: India Press Information Bureau Handout/EPA


At midnight on 4 August 2019, phones in Kashmir went dead and internet connections were cut. On 5 August 2019, a year ago today, 7 million people were locked into their homes under a strict military curfew. Up to 10,000 people, from young children and teenage stone pelters to former chief ministers and major pro-India politicians, were arrested and put into preventive detention, where many of them still remain. On 6 August, a bill was passed in parliament stripping the state of Jammu and Kashmir of its autonomy and special status enshrined in the Indian constitution. It was stripped of statehood, downgraded into two union territories, Ladakh, and Jammu and Kashmir. Ladakh would have no legislature and would be governed directly by New Delhi.

The problem of Kashmir, we were told, had been finally solved once and for all. In other words, Kashmir’s decades-long struggle for self-determination, which has cost tens of thousands of lives of soldiers, militants and civilians, thousands of enforced “disappearances” and cruelly tortured bodies – was over.

In India’s parliament, home minister Amit Shah went further. He said he was prepared to lay down his life to take over the territories of what India calls Pakistan Occupied Kashmir (POK) and what Kashmiris call Azad Kashmir, as well as the frontier provinces of Gilgit-Baltistan. He also threw in Aksai Chin, once part of the erstwhile kingdom of Jammu and Kashmir, now a part of China. He was wading into dangerous territory, literally as well as figuratively. The borders he was talking about lie between three nuclear powers. Amid the unseemly celebrations on India’s streets, the extra wattage generated by Kashmir’s humiliation intensified the glow of prime minister Narendra Modi’s already god-like halo. Provocatively, the Indian meteorological department began to include Gilgit-Baltistan in its weather reports. Few of us in India paid attention to the Chinese government when it urged India to “be cautious in its words and deeds on the border issue”.

How China captured Aksai Chin - India News

Just a few months of Covid lockdown, without a military curfew or communications siege, has brought the world to its knees and hundreds of millions to the limits of their endurance and sanity. Think of Kashmir under the densest military deployment in the world. On top of the suffering coronavirus has laid on you, add a maze of barbed wire on your streets, soldiers breaking into your homes, beating the men and abusing the women, destroying your food stocks, amplifying the cries of humans being tortured on public address systems.In the year that has gone by, the struggle in Kashmir has by no means ended. In just the past few months media reports say that 34 soldiers, 154 militants and 17 civilians have been killed. A world traumatised by coronavirus has understandably paid no attention to what the Indian government has done to the people of Kashmir. The curfew and communication siege, and everything else that such a siege entails (no access to doctors, hospitals, work, no business, no school, no contact with loved ones), lasted for months. Even the US didn’t do this during its war against Iraq.

Add to this a judicial system – including the supreme court of India – that has for a whole year allowed the internet siege to continue and ignored the 600 habeas corpus petitions by distraught people seeking the whereabouts of their family members. Add further a new domicile law that opens the floodgates by allowing Indians a right of residence in Kashmir. The precious state subject certificates of Kashmiris are now legally void except as backup evidence to bolster their applications to the Indian government for domicile status in their own homeland. Those whose applications are rejected can be denied residency and shipped out. What Kashmir faces is nothing less than cultural erasure.

Kashmir’s new domicile law is a relative of India’s new blatantly anti-Muslim Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) passed in December 2019 and the National Register of Citizens (NRC) that is supposed to detect “Bangladeshi infiltrators” (Muslim of course) whom the home minister has called “termites”. In the state of Assam, the NRC has already wreaked havoc. Millions have been struck off the citizens register. While many countries are dealing with a refugee crisis, the Indian government is turning citizens into refugees, fuelling a crisis of statelessness on an unimaginable scale.

The CAA, NRC and Kashmir’s new domicile law require even bona fide citizens to produce a set of documents approved by the state in order to be granted citizenship. (The Nuremberg laws passed by the Nazi party in 1935 decreed that only those citizens who could provide legacy papers approved by the Third Reich were eligible for German citizenship.)

What should all this be called? A war crime? Or a crime against humanity?





And what should the collusion of institutions and the celebrations on the streets of India be called? Democracy?

A year down the line, these celebrations over Kashmir are distinctly muted. For good reason. We have a dragon on our doorstep and it isn’t happy. On 17 June 2020, we awoke to the horrifying news that 20 Indian soldiers including a colonel had been brutally killed by the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) in the icy reaches of the remote Galwan Valley on the Ladakh border. Over the next few days reports in sections of the Indian press suggested that there had been several points of ingress. Army veterans and respected defence correspondents have said that the PLA has occupied hundreds of square kilometres of what India considers to be its territory. Was it just naked aggression as portrayed by the Indian media? Or have the Chinese moved to protect what they see as their vital interests – a road through the high mountains of Aksai Chin and a trade route through Pakistan Occupied/Azad Kashmir? Both are under threat, if the belligerent statements made by India’s home minister were to be taken seriously, and how can they not be?

For a ferociously nationalist government such as ours to concede what it thinks of as sovereign territory has to be its worst nightmare. It cannot be countenanced. But what can be done? A simple solution was found. Just days after the Galwan Valley tragedy, Modi addressed the nation. “Not an inch of land has been occupied by anyone,” he said, “no one has entered our borders” and “none of our posts have been occupied by anyone”. Modi’s critics fell about laughing. The Chinese government was quick to welcome his statement, because that’s what they were saying, too. But Modi’s statement isn’t as stupid as it sounds. While army commanders of both countries are discussing withdrawal and the “disengagement” of troops and the social media is full of jokes about the art of exiting without entering, and while the Chinese continue to hold territory they claim to be their own, to the vast, uniformed majority of India’s population, Modi has won. It was on TV. And who’s to say which is more important? TV or territory?

Whichever way you slice it, in the long-term, India now requires a battle-ready army on two fronts – the western frontier with Pakistan and the eastern frontier with China. In addition, the government’s hubris has alienated its neighbours Nepal and Bangladesh. We have been reduced to boasting that in the event of war, the US – reeling from its own crises – will come to India’s rescue. Really? Like it rescued the Kurds in Syria and Iraq? Like it rescued the Afghans from the Soviets? Or the South Vietnamese from the North Vietnamese?

Last night a Kashmiri friend messaged me: “Will India, Pakistan and China fight over our skies without seeing us?” It’s not an unlikely scenario. None of these countries is morally superior or more humane than the other. None of them is in this for the greater good of humanity.



11 comments:

  1. we hear the same from hker, twnese, tibetan n uyghur.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Bullyland wants to Control Tibet and the Himalayas, then they control freshwater supply, which is critical for agriculture, food production, besides providing almost limitless hydro-power. Bully want to RAMPAS not only all the salt water of the Southern Seas but also all the freshwater in the major rivers.

    https://www.lowyinstitute.org/the-interpreter/india-china-relations-and-geopolitics-water

    QUOTE
    India-China relations and the geopolitics of water
    AMEYA PRATAP SINGH URVI TEMBEY

    Control over key rivers effectively gives China a chokehold on India’s economy – and poses a wider regional threat.
    23 Jul 2020

    The Tibetan plateau is often called the “Third Pole”, owing to its glacial expanses and vast reserves of freshwater. For as many as nine countries in the surrounding region, the status of rivers emerging from the plateau is a key concern.

    China has claimed express ownership over Tibet’s waters, making it an upstream controller of seven of South Asia’s mightiest rivers – the Indus, Ganges, Brahmaputra, Irrawaddy, Salween, Yangtze and Mekong. These rivers flow into Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, Myanmar, Laos and Vietnam, and form the largest river run-off from any single location. It is estimated that 718 billion cubic meters of surface water flows out of the Tibetan plateau and the Chinese-administered regions of Xinjiang and Inner Mongolia to neighbouring countries each year.

    Nearly half that water, 48%, runs directly into India.

    For India, the one domain in which China’s status as the “upper riparian” provides an almost insurmountable challenge is in ensuring shared access to transboundary rivers. And as the recent clashes on the Sino-Indian border have made clear, India needs to assess how China might “weaponise” its advantage over those countries downstream. Control over these rivers effectively gives China a chokehold on India’s economy.

    China could exploit these rivers in three ways.

    First, it can “blockade or divert” them. China’s large-scale infrastructure projects such as the South-North Water Diversion Project and West-East Power Transfer Project already threaten to do so. In addition, to meet its irrigation and power needs, as per the Five-Year Plan 2011–15, the Chinese government planned to build 120 gigawatts of new hydropower plants on the Salween, the Upper Mekong, Upper Yangtze and the Brahmaputra – “more than one new Three Gorges Dam every year for the next five years, and … more than any other country has built in its entire history”.

    Even in Pakistan-Occupied Kashmir, China has promised to finance and build five dams that will form the North Indus River Cascade. Not only will these dams negatively affect the flow of water to lower riparian states, including India and Pakistan, especially in non-monsoon months, but they will also stop the flow of silt which supports agriculture downstream.

    China is also building five dams on the Brahmaputra river, and it is feared that “directional blasting techniques could be used to divert the Brahmaputra north to China at the u-bend” before it enters India through the state of Arunachal Pradesh. China has already blocked the flow of the Xiabuqu river, one of Brahmaputra’s Tibetan tributaries, for the Lalho hydel project. More recently, in the aftermath of border clashes between India and China in the Galwan Valley from May, China blocked the flow of the Galwan River, a tributary of the Indus which originates in Chinese-controlled Aksai Chin area, thus altering the natural course of the river to prevent it from entering India.
    UNQUOTE
    .......continued

    ReplyDelete
  3. ....cont..

    Second, China could sabotage transboundary rivers by polluting them, rendering them unfit for use. The Siang river, which joins the Lohit and the Dibang downstream to form the Brahmaputra, turned muddy and “blackened” in 2017 raising concerns about China’s upstream activities. The water became unfit for human consumption, with “up to ten inches of sediment accumulated on some stretches of the riverbed”.

    This episode severely affected agriculture production in the Siang valley, known as one of the rice bowls of the Indian state of Arunachal Pradesh, and it also had a detrimental impact on fishing communities. Although China stated that an earthquake in November 2017 might have been the cause, the river waters reportedly changed before the quake struck.

    Third, China has access to valuable data that can help manage floods and fluctuations downstream. India and China have signed two pacts since 2008 on data sharing for the Sutlej and Brahmaputra in order to better manage the shared watercourses. While these agreements have had a positive effect on water management, and helped pre-empt and control flooding, this dependence can also be exploited by withholding hydrological data accessible only to the upper riparian state.
    UNQUOTE

    ReplyDelete
  4. It is not the rocks and stones in Kashmir Bully is fighting for. Bully want to draw more dash-lines (ha ha ha) and RAMPAS.....control the fresh water source in the major rivers, just like they are RAMPAS-ing all the salt water in the Southern Seas...Belt You Down My Road....

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Blind mice barking away day and night railing against evil China, hehe. Rampas here, rampas there, bully here, bully there, but like the rat that you are cursed with blind sight, you are incapable of reporting the truth :

      China-India border conflict arose due to India being an expansionist.

      India has a long list of territory expansion:

      1947 Annexation of Kashmir

      1948 Annexation of Hyderabad

      1949 Annexation of Manipur

      1949 Annexation of Tripura

      1951 Annexation of South Tibet

      1954 Annexation of Nagaland

      1954 Attempt annexation of Sikkim and Bhutan (Failed)

      1961 Annexation of Goa

      1962 Annexation of Kalapani, Nepal

      1962 Aggression against China

      1971 Annexation of Turtuk, Pakistan

      1971 Agression against Pakistan

      1972 Annexation of Tin Bigha, Bangladesh

      1975 Annexation of Sikkim (the whole country)

      1983 (Aborted) Attempted invasion of Mauritius

      1987 Invasion of Sri Lanka

      1990 (Failed) Attempted annexation of Bhutan

      2006 Annexation of Duars, Bhutan

      2013 Annexation of Moreh, Myanmar

      2017 Aggression against China in Doklam

      2020 Agression against China in Ladakh

      Podah la you and your gang of blind mice here....for once, try to go for credible source. Told you oredy...keep to local social commentaries and politics...save you a ton of bricks on your head, hehe

      Delete
  5. U guys r REALLY into yr demoNcratic bashings of China with hp6 c&p news & syiok-sendiri chorus!

    "China has claimed express ownership over Tibet’s waters, making it an upstream controller of seven of South Asia’s mightiest rivers – the Indus, Ganges, Brahmaputra, Irrawaddy, Salween, Yangtze and Mekong……

    Nearly half that water, 48%, runs directly into India."

    Blurred mfer, what happened to the other 52%? Flows into yr backyard longkang!

    "China’s large-scale infrastructure projects such as the South-North Water Diversion Project and West-East Power Transfer Project already threaten to do so."

    What have these projects got to do with yr farted Himalayan water source?

    Or, as in yr wet dream, these projects happened high in the Himalayan plain!

    "Pakistan-Occupied Kashmir, China has promised to finance and build five dams…"

    Mfer, all the dams built outside china r the decisions/evil works of China, right?

    “directional blasting techniques could be used to divert the Brahmaputra north to China at the u-bend” before it enters India through the state of Arunachal Pradesh."

    If u don't know water drainage engineering, consult some experts or do a proper Google for articles written by reputed experts lah!

    This statement about directional blasting techniques puts a lot of learnt experts in shame. & u treat it as a gem of yr fart!

    "China could sabotage transboundary rivers by polluting them, rendering them unfit for use. The Siang river, which joins the Lohit and the Dibang downstream to form the Brahmaputra, turned muddy and “blackened” in 2017"

    Mfer, do u actually know how to read map & topological reading? Go & Google these technical applications before u do another c&p lah. Is yr otak so petrified u just can exercise a neuron on it?

    All over all, u r just purely regurgitate a piece of trash that only u can value & appreciate. & used it to vent yr China bashing ego!

    Bravo, a simpleton tool of demoNcratic WASP. Worst than those long genuflecting curry puffers who have lost their upstanding ability due to that 200yr of pommie colonization!

    ReplyDelete
  6. I think Modi learn from CCP in Xinjiang how to tackle Islamist.
    But Modi's tactics still less inhumane compared to CCP.

    And people like Ah Mok close both eyes to crime against humanity in Xinjiang.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. u imply ah mok a racist, or a communist?

      Delete
    2. Old moneyed mfer, the way u fart about Islamists (which one, Hui, Uyghur, Han etc?) in Xinjiang as if u have been there!

      The way u open yr mouth to the radicalised activities of the f*cked jihadists in Xinjiang put pay to yr blurred diarrheas about crime against humanity.

      Perhaps, u have intended to mean supports for terrorism!

      Delete
  7. Ooop… forget to add.

    Recently yr favourite BBC has broadcast to the world about a Uyghur youth been filmed handcuffed to his bed.

    www.bbc.com

    China Uighurs: A model's video gives a rare glimpse inside internment

    Wakakakakaka… read & laugh about this 抖音(Chinese TikTok) video show done by the performer.

    There r so many HINTS about this is JUST a show.

    Yr good old freedom broadcaster of the world, BBC, turns it into a Uyghur political concentration caption!

    These pommies NEVER learn anything from the HK spy espionage so loudly championed by Oz ABC. That showpiece turned a porkpie on the face for ABC.

    Guess BBC is hungry for one too!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. BBC now stands for Bloody Broadcasting Corporation, with egg on its face, for this fake made up story of this model boy Merdan Ghappar handcuffed to a bed who "happened" to find a mobile phone and took selfies of himself being "incarcerated" in the dreaded "concentration camp". Then he also "happened to find a piece of document in his cell" which he photographed which calls on children as young as 13 to "repent and surrender".

      Among those who viewed this fake BBC report, one had written in :

      "Dear BBC, how come in China, they detain and handcuff you and allow you to keep your handphone to make selfies ? Must be the most benevolent country in the world ! Either that or that model has such low IQ level he can't even a tell a lie properly".

      Delete