My Journey towards Political Consciousness
Narrative: Khurram Parvez
Written by: Haziq Qadri
IN the winter of 1989, when I entered the seventh grade, armed insurgency broke out in the Valley. As a child, I would listen to the discussions taking place around me, which held that the violence was a result of a conspiracy of the Central government to dislodge the Farooq Abdullah government in Kashmir. Being very young, I could not take part in those discussions, but I did have a strong desire to be part of them anyway.
There were other major events happening around at that time. In September that year, there had been protests outside the UN office. Tear-gas shells were fired on protestors. Some of the shells landed in the lawn of our home. These occurrences indicated to my young mind that something was going on. I recall one of my teachers who taught me in the seventh grade, Razdan sir, a very kind Kashmiri Pandit. In Burn Hall, an elite Christian missionary institution, in those days almost 50 per cent of the students were Kashmiri Pandits and Hindus. There was no discussion in the school about the things happening around us at the time. Only a few of my friends would talk about the gun battles that would take place.
Two days before the winter vacation in December 1989, someone was kidnapped. I had no idea who it was and why. But the news was abuzz and everyone was talking about it. Soon when schools were shut, my friends and I realized the gravity of the situation. We came to know that Rubaiya Sayeed, daughter of India’s the then home minister, Mufti Mohammad Sayeed, was missing. The events that unfolded in the coming days, like her release in Bohri Kadal in the old Srinagar city, and other commotion made me understand the seriousness of what had happened. The Tehreek (movement) for azadi had begun and was taking shape.
In those days, my cousin used to live in Mandir Bagh, Srinagar, adjacent to Gaw Kadal. I would go there to meet him and spend my winter vacations with him. When the uprising started, I was at Mandir Bagh. There used to be blackouts in the evenings. Nobody would put on the lights and if anyone even tried to, young boys would throw stones at that house. The blackout would go on till ten in the evening.
Those blackouts are etched in my memory. I would wonder if we were fighting against the darkness, why were we bringing more darkness into our lives. I did not think a blackout was the way towards freedom. As a child, these things confused me. The month of December in 1989 was tense. There used to be grenade blasts around, and young boys were leaving home in droves to join the armed militancy. There was total chaos in the Valley. People were supporting the Tehreek but they were also not sure if the events unfolding around were planned by the Tehreek or were random or something else.
After the Rubaiya Sayeed episode, the notion that the uprising was a conspiracy of the Indian government turned out to be false and people began to believe that the incident had really been planned by the Tehreek workers. Earlier that year, there had been firing somewhere in Bohri Kadal and four or five Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) personnel had been killed. I remember people talking about this encounter and glorifying the HAJY group. The HAJY was an acronym for the four original JKLF militant leaders including Hamid Shiekh, Ashfaq Majeed, Javaid Mir and Yasin Malik who had become popular public heroes of the Kashmiri resistance movement. Militant groups were part of our everyday consciousness, and talking about them became a part of our mainstream life.
On 21 January 1990, a procession came out from Sonwar, Srinagar. Around 2,000 people participated in it. There was a great deal of sloganeering going on. The participants were stopped outside my home, near Gupkar, and were fired upon by the armed forces. Since it was difficult to run away from there, many of the protesters ran through the premises of our house. I saw the whole episode from inside my home, people dispersing in chaos, being chased away and fired upon. This was the first time I had heard bullet shots. It was extremely loud, and my uncle told me they had come from a .303 rifle. In the days that followed, many more such shootings took place.
On 22 January, a police vehicle stopped by my house. The officer asked for my parents. The police informed him that my grandfather had been injured in the protest. My parents left with the policeman to go to my maternal grandfather’s home in Gonikhan, which is also the trade hub of Srinagar. I was not taken along, and over lunch, my relatives told me that my grandfather had been martyred the previous day.
Massive processions had been taken out from other parts of the Valley protesting the extreme brutality shown by Indian forces during a crackdown. They had also molested women, which had enraged people more. The protestors were all moving towards Gaw Kadal where they were heavily fired upon by the police and CRPF. Around fifty people had died, including my grandfather, Ali Mohammad Mir.1
For the next three days, I could not visit my maternal grandfather’s home because of the curfew that had been imposed. On the fourth day, there was a brief respite from curfew and I joined my parents. We stayed there for one-and-a-half months, which is the usual period of mourning in a Kashmiri household. It was during this time I heard much more about martyrdom, religion and azadi. Since my grandfather was among the first martyrs, every pro-freedom leader and prominent personality visited his home. I was an inquisitive child and would ask questions of those who visited. Thus, I began to understand some of what was unfolding around me. Though these discussions took place at home as well, they seemed different here. One reason for this might have been because my paternal grandfather was a retired police official. He was disconnected from the happenings that were rocking the Valley and due to that the socialization of my father and his siblings remained very much with those who were either part of state structure or those who had interests with state. My maternal grandfather, on the other hand, moved with the tradesmen and was in touch with the grass roots.
My father’s home is in one of the poshest neigbourhoods in the Valley called Gupkar. It is a location where the erstwhile Dogras lived in their palaces, which are now used by the chief minister and most of the pro-India political elite. At that time, Allah Baksh was the senior superintendent of police (SSP) of Srinagar, and was also our neighbour. After the Gaw Kadal massacre, I was angry at him because I thought it was he who had ordered the firing which killed my grandfather. Such was the anger that whenever I used to see him, I would spit out of spite. I am sure that Allah Baksh must never have noticed my little personal tantrum, but it is indicative of the schisms that was sown against our own Kashmiris who were doing the bidding of the government.
The situation in the Valley continued to remain tense. In March 1990, protest rallies were held all over the state. The epicentre of these protests was the United Nations (UN) office. The protestors would come from every corner of the Valley to register their protest at the UN office and that made this place relevant to the Tehreek.
When protestors continued to come to the UN office, boys from Sonwar (the large neighbouring town) being enterprising, would serve them tehri (turmeric-flavoured rice) and lemon or orange juice. The work was divided among various groups, and I also took part in the service. It was my duty to distribute food packets among the protestors who would come from far-off places. Earlier, people would distribute tehri at a shrine in Sonwar, called Sayed Saeb. But after the protests broke out, people would take that same tehri to the UN offices and distribute it. Since it had turned into a place of great importance, people started calling the UN office the ‘UN Saeb,’ a lighter take on giving the place reverential treatment.
One of those days, a group of boys was preparing orange and lemon juice. They were mixing the two flavours. An elderly man from the locality reprimanded them and said, ‘What you did to the juices, don’t do that with the Tehreek (movement).’ People were so concerned about the Tehreek and its fate. Sometimes, there were demonstrations and rallies organized by different professional groups. Doctors took out the first such rally, which was led by a Dr Abdul Ahad Guru who was a well-known cardiologist. Unknown gunmen later killed Dr Guru. Similar rallies were conducted by lawyers, teachers, autorickshaw drivers and even policemen; all demanding azadi.
One day, there was a protest rally of children marching to the UN office in which I also participated. This was my first political protest. One curfew day, my uncle had happened to visit a neighbour. When he returned, some gunmen who had come in a van wearing civilian clothes stopped him outside the house gate. They tried to take him away but when other family members came out and made a noise, he was let go. Later we learnt that those gunmen were personnel from the National Security Guard (NSG).
Earlier, when such incidents happened with other families, my extended family would always discuss the issues in such a fashion as if the people themselves were to be blamed. Yet when similar fate befell us, they complained about the army’s high-handedness. I pointed out to my family that similar things had happened in other places to other people and that we needed to recognize that something was wrong with the state. When more incidents like this began to take place, and with the killing of grandfather, it changed the discourse in my family. Till then my paternal family was ensconced in an ideology closer to the pro-India political elite, which encircled us in the neigbourhood.
Though school was supposed to reopen in March 1990, it stayed closed, as the situation seemed to worsen. My aunt and one Mrs Nazir – both teachers – held a meeting with other teachers and decided to ask the principal of Burn Hall to handover to them the responsibility for the school, so that they could teach us themselves. When the schools finally reopened in May, their timings were changed to keep in mind the rules of the curfew.
When I went back to school, I noticed that many Pandit students had not turned up. I had no idea that many of them had fled the Valley. As children, we had never viewed one another through the prism of religious faith or political loyalties, so their disappearance was a complete surprise to me. I missed my friends.
Shortly after, Mirwaiz Moulvi Farooq was killed [on 21 May 1990] and schools were closed for some time again. When it reopened, I noticed that one of the Pandit teachers had not turned up. It was then that I put two and two together, and realized it: the Pandits were fleeing Kashmir. A Hindu named N.D. Radhakrishan and his family lived next door to my house. As children, my friends and I used to steal apples from their orchard, and then we would be chased away. That year, when the fruits were ripe, we sneaked in to steal apples like always, but this time we were not chased by anyone. We realized that the neighbours had also left. From that day on, I never stole their fruit, because the fun of the chase was gone. Later, the house was occupied by the Intelligence Bureau who were guarded by CRPF until 1998. In this manner, I watched the militarization of the Valley from the confines of my own home.
My maternal uncle was a great influence on me. My cousins and I, inspired by him, would often talk of taking up arms to avenge the death of our grandfather. It was my uncle who often spoke of revolution and azadi and made me think of politics. He was inclined towards religion and the Tehreek. It was due to him that I acquired a basic understanding of Islam and the freedom movement. He let me sit in while he was engaged in discussions, and in this manner, I learned a lot.
In 1992, I participated in an NCC camp in Gujarat. Six hundred students came from all over India. Only nine students from Kashmir took part and all of us belonged to the Burn Hall School because no other school from the Valley had agreed to participate. In my childishness, I went to the camp with the idea that we would be trained in how to use a gun. Such was our adulation for the armed movement.
In Gujarat, we discussed Kashmir with other students from India. During the tour, when students were asked to shout Vande Mataram, my fellow Kashmiris and I chanted ‘Nara-e-Takbeer, Allah-u-Akbar!’ We did this to assert our Kashmiri identity: the chants were a mere demonstration of our difference with India. Hearing our slogans, the other campers would call us terrorists. In this manner, as we grew older our politics sharpened and became palpable when we met people from outside the Valley.
Even though we were fighting for azadi back home, during the camp I realized that the other Indian students had no knowledge of what Kashmiris wanted. They were unaware of the situation in the Valley. So, when I went back, it was with the understanding that I had to speak to more people and educate them on our situation. Though I adored the armed movement – even childishly thinking that in the Gujarat camp I would be taught to use a gun – I personally realized that there were some militants and other miscreants who had, instead of serving the Tehreek, used the weapon for thuggery. There was an incident when I was in the eighth grade, when one of the students placed a pistol on the bench during an exam, implying that he should not be stopped from copying. The supervising examiner broke down after seeing this, imploring the student not to ruin his career.
On another occasion, there was a Pandit couple walking down a road in Sonwar. I was walking in the opposite direction. In an alleyway, there was a militant. When the couple passed the alleyway, the militant fired at the woman and she was hit on the leg. People in the neighbourhood took her to the hospital. There were some unethical people who had joined the militancy less for serving the Tehreek and more for running extortion rackets, which weakened the movement and created distrust for genuine fighters. Only after the militant group Hizb-ul-Mujahideen issued a statement to the effect that they should not give money to anyone who used their name and should nab the militants instead, did a sense of understanding and confidence return among the people.
After my tenth grade, I joined the Tyndale Biscoe School in Srinagar, which is the oldest Christian missionary educational institution in the Valley. Militancy was at its peak and it received people’s full support. Now, our discussions about joining the militancy became more intense. One of my cousins actually became involved with armed resistance to some extent, but he later backed out. I did not approve of all the tactics the militants used and was not too enthused about joining them. My friends taunted me, calling me a coward. At the end of 1994, on the day when Shabir Shah was released from jail in Jammu, the Muslim Students’ Federation (MSF) asked us to join them in a rally to receive him. I too went. When we reached near Gaalandhar, Pampore, there was a huge traffic jam. On return, when the rally was marching towards UN office, I was on the roof of a bus and my parents spotted me. They were quite upset by my actions, but there was nothing they could do to extricate me from the rally.
When Shabir Shah reached the UN office, he addressed the gathering. Far from the rhetoric I had been expecting, his speech was quite ordinary. Later, we went to martyrs’ graveyard and from there the rally marched to Lal Chowk. In Lal Chowk, Shabir Shah once again addressed the crowd, but his speech was dull and far below the expectations of those who had gathered to listen. It was then that I realized that politically, Kashmiri struggle had a long way to go because even a leader like Shabir Shah for whom people were clamouring had given no imminent plan on how to achieve azadi.
On 1 November 1994, my cousin, who was pursuing an MBBS in Bangalore, died in an accident. In January, I went with her family to Bangalore to bring back her belongings. We found that she had many books on Islamic literature. I began reading those books on the journey home, and that was how my interest in the subject arose. I decided to read the Quran again and my family appointed for me a teacher named Muneer Ahmad Dar. It was due to him that I began to read more books about religion and Islamic literature. I met many of his friends who belonged to Jamaat-e-Islami, but at that time I had no idea of this organization.
One day, my friends and I went to Pahalgam for trekking. On 4 July 1995 we set up our camp near Lidderwath, 28 km ahead of Pahalgam. There was a group of foreign tourists there as well. Suddenly a group of militants appeared and asked the tourists to line up. The tourists were playing music, which the militants asked them to turn off. The militants then asked us what we were doing in the area. When we replied that we were on a trekking expedition, they demanded to know how we could dare to sit around enjoying ourselves, not take up arms to protect those who were dying in the Valley. After this interaction, they took the passports of the foreign trekkers. There were a few women among the foreigners who were dressed in shorts, and the militants asked them to wear longer clothing. The leader of the group was one man known as Hameed Turky. We asked them where they had come from and only one of them answered, saying he was from Dara-e-Khyber. Later, they locked my friends and me in a nearby hut. The foreigner women were sent back to their tents while the men from their group were taken away. We were warned that if we came out of the hut, we would be shot.
In my group there was a Sikh boy. He was very frightened. Such was the fear that he told me that he would be killed because he was a ‘Kafir’ (non-Muslim). But I assured him that he would be OK. Soon it started to rain. Our belongings were out in the open but nobody dared to come out and bring them inside. I finally mustered some courage and attended to this task myself. I asked the foreign ladies, who were crying in the camp, if I could help them in any way but they turned me away saying that they did not want to talk.
When we returned to Srinagar, we went to Ram Munshibagh Police Station to give them an eyewitness account of the previous day’s incident. The police said they knew about the incident and we would be called if needed. The police responded coldly to us. News of the incident started to appear in the media quite frequently. The reports claimed it was the Al-Faran group who had abducted foreign tourists. But the militants had told us that they were from the Harkat-ul-Ansar outfit. We happened to meet a journalist from the Norwegian press. When we told them about the incident, he was stunned, perhaps more so by the fact that the police had not recorded our statement. Hurriyat leaders like Mirwaiz Umar Farooq, Syed Ali Geelani and Yasin Malik issued statements condemning the kidnapping.
From early 1996 to 1999, I was associated with Islami Jamiat-e-Talaba, the student wing of Jamaat-e-Islami. Then due to a difference of opinions and change in their policy, I left the Jamiat. In 1997, Jamaat-e-Islami stated that they had no links with Hizb-ul-Mujahideen, which I felt was not the right thing to do because that tended to criminalize the Hizb-ul-Mujahideen. I was not comfortable with that, and did not appreciate the lack of independence within the group. However, I did learn a lot from them, and inculcated a good reading habit in myself thanks to their discipline.
Soon after, one day I went to see advocate Parvez Imroz, a renowned human rights defender, who is also my father’s cousin. His computer was not working, so he asked me if I could help. After I fixed it, we struck up a conversation and we began to meet often. My extended family viewed Parvez Imroz as a socialist. I saw that he was committed to serving the people, and was very inspired by his ideals and passion. In 1998, along with some of my friends, I created the Students’ Helpline group. The aim of this group was to create awareness and educate the youth about the ongoing Tehreek, our freedom movement. We used to organize different programmes like summer camps to invite members and create debate and discussion.
On 20 June 2000, thirty-eight members of the Indian civil society visited Kashmir. They helped bring together many people and formed the Jammu and Kashmir Federation of Civil Society Organizations (JKFCSO). This included the Association of Parents of Disappeared Persons (APDP) led by Parvez Imroz, the Hoteliers Association, trader groups and prominent individuals like advocate Ghulam Nabi Hagroo, advocate G.N. Gowhar, Prof. Hameeda Nayeem, Kumar Wanchoo, Zaffar Mehraj and Zahir U Din. I became a part of this initiative, and began attending their meetings.
In 2001, APDP laid the foundation stone of the memorial for the disappeared persons at Eidgah in Srinagar, adjacent to the central martyrs’ graveyard. When the programme had got over and the families of the disappeared and other activists were leaving, the police resorted to firing, and made it appear as if an encounter had taken place there. People ran away and in the night, the police removed the foundation stone. A case was registered against advocate Parvez Imroz and Parveena Ahanger, co-founder of the APDP.
Towards the end of 2000, one of my friends and I went to Delhi to pursue a short-term course in e-commerce. During that period, I kept up my work for APDP from Delhi. However, JKFCSO soon collapsed due to differences in the groups. Parvez Imroz, Zahir U Din and I, along with some other people, formed the Jammu and Kashmir Coalition of Civil Society (JKCCS) during my time in Delhi. In 2001 I got a job in Delhi, but I rejected it. The attack on the twin towers had just taken place and many Kashmiris were being harassed in the Indian capital. I did not want to stay on too long.
When I went back to Kashmir for vacation, the attack on the parliament took place. With the arrest of Afzal Guru, S.A.R. Geelani and others, Delhi did not seem a safe place for Kashmiris. So, I did not return to Delhi. In due course, I enrolled in Kashmir University and pursued a masters course in journalism and was also working for the JKCCS.
The environment in the University of Kashmir was telling of the political turmoil. Our journalism department once invited Kuldeep Nayar, the well-known Indian journalist, to interact with the students. The students asked him about the Indian politics in Kashmir and the prevailing situation in the Valley, but he left halfway through the session. The newspapers next day reported this episode. Greater Kashmir had reported: ‘Media Students Chase Away Kuldeep Nayar.’
Kuldeep Nayar called the vice chancellor of the Kashmir University and complained about the situation and the news report. The university authorities asked the media students to write a letter to rebut the reports. We were asked to write that they respected Kuldeep Nayar and that those who had heckled him were outsiders. Basharat Masood, who was also a student of journalism at that time, drafted the letter on behalf of all the students and we were asked to sign it.
I refused to sign the letter, and convinced others to follow my example. Only a few students did not side with me. This infuriated some of the teachers and they threatened to rusticate us. Upon receiving the threats, a few more students agreed to sign the letter, but I refused to change my stance. The head of department, dean and other teachers threatened to rusticate me, but I refused to back down. They told me not to ‘play politics’ inside the campus, but I pointed out that by threatening the students who had interrogated Kuldeep Nayar, they themselves were politicizing the issue. Being apolitical in Kashmir was not an option. At that point, I realized that teachers and students alike thought that the freedom movement was only the responsibility of the Hurriyat and militant groups. They always spoke about the failures of resistance leaders but never realized their own failures. Finally, faced by my stubbornness, the teachers did not create any more trouble for me.
From 2003, Aasia Jeelani who was my peer at the journalism department joined me at the JKCCS. She began editing the quarterly magazine, Voices Unheard. On 8 February 2004, we got news that in a village called Chittibandi of Bandipora, four persons have been used as human shields by the Indian Army. The next morning, I arranged a vehicle and went to the site along with another colleague, Idrees Ahmad, and driver Ghulam Nabi, who lived in my neighbourhood. I called to ask Aasia if she could come, but that day she could not. When we reached, we saw a huge protest in the village. We learnt that the four men had been employed as porters by the Indian Army. When an encounter had ensued, these four men had been used as human shields, and as a result they had been killed.2
When we returned to follow up on the story, Aasia accompanied us. We spoke to the families of the victims, recorded their statements and tried persuading them to file a case against the army. While leaving, we were intercepted by the army and asked to show them the footage we had recorded. We refused to do it. We were told that a colonel wanted to meet us at Nadihal camp, and we were almost forcibly taken there. Later, a brigadier also came to meet us and told us to stop whatever we were doing. I told him that our job as human rights defenders was to write the truth, no matter what. We were finally let go at 9.30 at night. As a Kashmiri girl who had led a sheltered life, it was the latest in the night that Aasia had ever been home. In a way she became a pioneer for women human rights defenders in the Valley.
When the parliamentary elections were held in April that year, we decided to monitor them as usual. Civil society activists arrived from India, and we divided ourselves into ten groups to do the monitoring work. I was the coordinator of the groups. Shortly before the elections, Aasia was not feeling well, so we were not sure if she could accompany us. The night before, I called her and asked her not to come because she had been ill. But in the morning, everyone was shocked when Aasia joined us despite her ill health.
Aasia joined the team and we headed to Kupwara. Here, we heard conflicting reports. While some people told us that they had been warned by the Indian Army and told to cast their vote, others said that they had voted only because a local candidate was contesting the elections. Altogether, very few people were coming out to vote on their own and we found there was some form of coercion involved, either from the state or from the candidate or the army. There had been glaring cases of coercion in some places where the army had threatened people, saying that if they did not find the indelible ink marks on their fingers, they would chop them off.
Such forms of coercion seemed to be institutionalized in most of the places we visited. We received reports after the elections that when people went to local MLAs (members of the legislative assembly) to discuss roads, sanitation and other basic amenities, they were turned back because they had not voted. The people were told that basic amenities would be provided to them only if they voted. Indeed, at one place in Lolab, our team and media persons present witnessed the army forcing the people to go out and vote.3
In Sogam High School, we found small children way below the voting age casting votes. The air seemed festive because a local candidate was contesting the elections. A mockery had been made of the elections with the blessings of the state and the military. On the way back from Sogam, I was seated in the middle seat of the Sumo vehicle. To my right was Aasia and near the left window was an activist from Bangalore named Kumar. Two other group members, Jalees Andrabi and Sadiq Ali, were sitting in the back seat. Ghulam Mohammad Reshi and Abdul Ghani Tantray, two locals who were assisting us, were sitting in the front seats, along with the driver, Ghulam Nabi.
Four army vehicles overtook us on the road. After a couple of kilometres, we saw these four vehicles taking a U-turn. So, we stopped for a while, making space for them. When we moved on, our vehicle was blasted apart. When I came around, I could not open my eyes because they were full of dust. After I finally managed to look, I realized I was in a terrible condition. My leg was almost torn off, hanging by a shred of skin. I dragged myself from the debris of the car with great difficulty. Jalees and Sadiq had managed to come out from the back. The driver had been killed. Aasia was in terrible condition. Her shirt had ridden up a little above her waist, and despite her gruesome wounds, she was intent on pulling it down to protect her modesty. She called my name twice and I assured her I was by her side. She could not open her eyes. Then she started calling her mother’s name.
For twenty-five minutes, we lay there without any help. The army men were standing nearby, but they did not help and when the local people came to aid us, the army did not allow them to come close. Later, the police came and we were taken in an ambulance to the primary health centre in Sogam where we were given first aid. The doctors said that Aasia would not survive, but they expressed hope for me. They sent me in an ambulance to Srinagar. When I insisted that Aasia be sent along with me, they finally put her into a Sumo vehicle. Incidentally, she reached Srinagar before I did.
On the way, I called my family and told them that I was fine, not divulging that I was badly wounded. I was admitted in SMHS Hospital [Shri Maharaja Hari Singh Hospital] and later due to the scale of my injuries referred to SKIMS [Sher-i-Kashmir Institute of Medical Sciences]. When my relatives arrived, I told them that Aasia had passed away and they must attend her funeral since I could not. They kept telling me Aasia was OK. But I had a gut feeling that my family was protecting me by lying while the truth was that Aasia was no more. I was right. My comrade was gone.
In the operation theatre, I told the doctor to amputate my leg, but he tried to assure me that it would be treated. I was there for seventeen days, during which I was operated upon almost six times. I sank twice because of the loss of blood. Finally, on 5 May, my leg was amputated. During those days, every resistance leader including Syed Ali Geelani, Shabir Shah and Yasin Malik visited me. Yasin came every day to be by my side.
While I was in the hospital, a police officer from Sogam police station came to record my statement. He told me that the men who had planted the bomb had been in the army camp, but he asked me not to reveal this information to anyone. Riyaz Masroor, a Kashmiri journalist, had written a front-page article that was full of praise for me. I was embarrassed by it; I did not think that I had contributed to the cause by losing something myself. ‘The real contribution is my work,’ I thought, and I still think so today.
My family took me to Delhi for further treatment. In Delhi, I got a call from someone who introduced himself as Mushtaq Ahmad of the Hizb-ul-Mujahideen. He apologized to me and said that militants of the Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), who had mistaken our identity, had carried out the attack. I told him what the policeman had said to me, about it being army personnel who had planted the bomb. After listening to this, Mushtaq was shocked and confused, so I asked him to ascertain the facts about the blast.
In September, I was given an artificial limb. Though my life was changed, I was still unable to move past the incident, and continued to wonder who had been behind the attack on the Sumo vehicle.
In 2007, the Indian Express carried a story about one Captain Sumit Kohli.4 The army had stated that he had committed suicide but Sumit’s mother was refuting these claims. Sumit Kohli had written a letter to his mother stating that on 20 April 2004, four porters had been killed in a fake encounter in Lolab and then labelled as foreign militants from the LeT. He had also written letters to the families of those four porters, asking them to collect the bodies. Bearing this in mind, his mother claimed that her son’s death was a conspiracy aimed to suppress the truth and demanded an investigation.
When I read the news, I realized that the fake encounter had taken place on the same day that we were attacked. And this fake encounter had been carried out just two hours after that attack and just two kms away from the spot where we were attacked. When the army tried to hold a press conference following the fake encounter, Captain Sumit Kohli had protested. Perhaps the army wanted to show that foreign militants were present in the Valley, and they wanted to attribute the attack on our group to these people, who were actually porters from R.S. Pura, all of whom were Hindus.
I went back to Sogam to ascertain the details of this report, but I could not find anything. Finally, after several years I gained access to an official document that was basically an investigative report of the police, which is primarily regarding the killing of four porters in the fake encounter and the subsequent disappearance of the bodies of the two victims. According to this document the army had informed some Gujjar families at Chontwaliwar village in Ganderbal that these two bodies are of their sons who were militants and had been killed by army in an encounter. These Gujjar families, unlike the normal routine in Kashmir, got the bodies exhumed and transferred them to Chontwaliwar village. The police has been persuading the Chontwaliwar families for many years to allow them to exhume the bodies so that DNA tests of those two bodies can be carried out to establish if they are of those porters from R.S. Pura. Sources in the police told me that the attack may have been a conspiracy by the army meant to kill me. To legitimize the whole scene, they staged the fake encounter with the four porters.
This incident was life-changing. I had lost a limb and my close comrade. After finishing my masters, I never even once thought of any other job than the one I had already taken up as life’s cause. So many people had been killed, including Aasia, and the idea of thinking about a career or a job seemed like a betrayal to those who had given their life to the Tehreek. There have been so many challenges in my life since. Many times, people have pitied me for my physical handicap. But I refuse to let anything stop me.
My human rights activism with JKCCS kept moving from strength to strength. On 30 July 2005, JKCCS conducted a public programme, People’s Vision, in Srinagar. We invited Omar Abdullah and Yasin Malik to the seminar. The idea was to discuss the Kashmir issue and resistance in a mainstream manner. The programme was successful and we held more such programmes, and they became very popular. Through such efforts I wanted to inculcate accountability and transparency regarding the politics and struggles of Jammu and Kashmir. I have always believed that my job is to act as a watchdog, to make people aware of their civil liberties, especially as an occupied nation.
I have received many awards in recognition for my work, including the Irfan Kathwari Foundation Award and Reebok Human Right Award, which was accompanied by a cash prize of $50,000. I donated this award money to JKCCS. We have a small office overlooking the Jehlum. It is full of volunteers at any given day; these are people who are pursuing the dream of Kashmir’s freedom and documenting brutal human rights violations. I feel my comrades and I at the JKCCS are memory keepers, patiently documenting, writing and releasing reports, which are becoming a credible source on Kashmir’s political turmoil and why it has unceasingly clamoured for azadi.
Khurram Parvez, is the coordinator of APDP and the Programme Coordinator for Jammu and Kashmir Coalition of Civil Society (JKCCS) since 2000. Since 2014, Khurram is also working as the chairperson of the Asian Federation Against Involuntary Disappearance (AFAD). In 2006, Khurram was awarded the prestigious Reebok Human Rights Award for his significant work for human rights causes through non-violent means. He was also a recipient of a prestigious Chevening Fellowship at the University of Glasgow, UK, from December 2005 to April 2006. He was also a participant in the US government’s International Visitors’ Leadership Program in 2009.
Haziq Qadri is a Kashmiri journalist based in New Delhi. He is currently working as a multimedia journalist with Brut India.
NOTES
1See Mathur, Shubh, ‘The Forgotten Massacres’, Chapter 2 in The Human Toll of the Kashmir Conflict, New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016.
2Bhat, Saima, ‘Human Shields’, Kashmir Life, 29 April 2017, https://kashmirlife.net/human-shields-issue-04-vol-09-139195/ (accessed on 7 July 2018).
3For details, see, ‘Independent Election Observers Team Report: J&K State Assembly Elections 2002’, J&K Coalition of Civil Society, Srinagar, 2002 and 2004.
4For more details, see, ‘Did anonymous letter lead to Captian Kohli’s death,’ NDTV, 10 September 2010, https://www.ndtv.com/india-news/did-anonymous-letter-lead-to-captain-kohlis-death-431175 (accessed on 27 October 2017); Raj Kalpita, ‘On the Mysterious Death of Our Brave Army Officer Capt.Sumit Kohli – Part-1’, Sulekha, n.d. http://creative.sulekha.com/on-the-mysterious-death-of-our-brave-army-officer-capt-sumit-kohli-part-1_269204_blog (accessed on 27 October 2017).