In February 2019, a Kashmiri suicide bomber killed more than forty Indian military personnel, spurring air strikes between India and Pakistan and bringing the nuclear rivals toward the brink of war.1 Kashmir made global headlines, yet the media establishment reported on the conflict as if it were merely a border dispute, as if there were no people involved, without asking what could have caused a young man to take such a desperate action. Most of the articles failed to mention the routine and blatant human rights violations occurring in Kashmir, or the decades-long independence movements. In June 2018, the United Nations (UN) released its first report on human rights violations in Kashmir, finding that Indian authorities have used excessive force to supress the movement for self-determination, including unlawful killings, torture, disappearances, and rapes.2
Control of Kashmir is split between three nuclear nations—China, India, and Pakistan—with the largest portion administered by India. The militarization is extreme. There are 700,000 armed forces in Indian-administered Kashmir, making it the most militarized zone in the world.3
Militarization and censorship reinforce each other in Kashmir, with the government closely monitoring journalists. “Every journalist is on their radar,” said Kashmiri journalist Irfan Mehraj.4 While local journalists are closely scrutinized, foreign journalists and human rights groups are routinely denied visas to the valley. According to Reporters Sans Frontières, it is “nearly impossible” for international journalists to obtain media visas to Indian-administered Kashmir.5 In 2017, French filmmaker Paul Comiti was arrested and detained for filming an event with pellet gun victims.6
What is the world’s largest democracy so afraid to share with the world?
“They picked me up and took me to the Army Center, where I was tortured. In Qalamabad Handwara Camp, they used a roller for torture,” explained Nazir Ahmad Sheikh, who was taken in 1994 by the 14th Dogra Regiment, an infantry regiment of the Indian Army headed by Major Multani. Heavy stone rollers are often used as a method of torture, and army personnel throw their weight on top of the rollers. Sheikh lost both legs and four of his fingers as a result of the torture. Despite having a case filed against them in court, the perpetrators have not faced any prosecution.7 Since 1990, there has not been a single prosecution of Indian armed forces for human rights violations in Kashmir.8
According to the Jammu Kashmir Coalition of Civil Society (JKCCS)’s 2017 report on human rights in Jammu and Kashmir, torture continues to be the most ignored and underreported subject in the region.9 By keeping both international journalists and human rights activists out of the region, the Indian government creates conditions that allow it to continue to act with impunity.10
“They hit me like corn cobs are shelled to obtain maize. This threshing was so harsh that many wooden canes got broken in the process,” explained 20-year-old Masood, who was arrested in August 2002 along with his entire cricket team under charges that the team was “anti-India and pro-Pakistan.” Masood was blindfolded, chained, hung upside down, and left unconscious before being released. For the next fifteen years, Masood and his teammates continued to be intermittently arrested and tortured. In 2017, the charges were dropped, but Masood endures lifelong scars from the torture committed against him on false charges.11
In May 2019, human rights groups released the first comprehensive report on torture in the region. Based on 432 case studies, the report, “Torture: Indian State’s Instrument of Control in Indian Administered Jammu and Kashmir,” determined that 70 percent of the torture victims were civilians. Doctors, paramedics, and journalists in particular have been regularly targeted and assaulted since the early 1990s.12
In 1990, the sixteen-year-old son of a schoolteacher was killed by the Central Reserve Police Force in Cheeni Chowk, Anantnag. Devastated, the schoolteacher left his job to join the freedom movement. As an activist, he was continuously arrested and tortured. Fed up with the violence perpetrated against him, he joined the insurgency and was arrested as a militant in 1996. During detention, his flesh was burnt around his hands and stomach; his heel was chopped off so that he could not run again. His case succinctly illustrates how torture inflicted by the State can fuel militancy.13
Only a small percentage of people who have been tortured go to hospitals for treatment, even when medical attention is needed, due to fear of state reprisal and social stigma.14 Retaliation for speaking about torture or even receiving medical treatment for it can be severe, and security forces have raided hospitals to arrest injured patients, destroyed or damaged medical equipment, and threatened, beaten, detained, and even killed doctors and other medical staff.15
A social and political activist, who requested to remain anonymous, explained some of the torture methods that were used on him: “There were different techniques and methods. All of those techniques—be it electric currents, rollers on legs, be it stretching, or beating with canes—all that kicking and boxing is basically called third degree [torture].” He was arrested for the first time in 1996, when he was a social and political activist who had decided to use nonviolent means to organize and resist after witnessing countless atrocities, including his brother’s murder in custody. “I saw the crackdowns and cordons, how those people were tortured, beaten, and sometimes killed,” he said. He was arrested multiple times in the course of his years as an activist. During one arrest, security forces bathed and cleaned him up and he thought he was going home. Instead, they took him into a beautiful garden filled with reporters, who had been informed that the army had caught a hardcore militant. He recounted, “So they gave me a piece of paper and threatened me that I should read it in front of the media, saying that I attacked army vehicles and other things. I didn’t read it. After that, I was transferred to many torture centers.”16
Documented forms of torture perpetrated by the Indian State include beating; stripping people naked; hanging them upside down; electrocuting genitals; rubbing feces, petrol, and/or chili pepper in wounds, eyes, and genitals; and cutting flesh from the body.17
Between 2008 and 2017, thousands of people were arrested and tortured in Kashmir.18 Throughout the region, torture is a contemporary state practice used to exercise control, inflict physical pain, and curb dissent. Victims are not only physically and mentally brutalized, but are even killed in Indian custody.19 In 2019, a 28-year-old was killed in Cargo, a notorious torture center in Srinagar, as a result of torture inflicted by government forces.20 The machine of torture was created not only to overpower a victim but also to break the victim’s individual will and the collective will of the people. As George Orwell warned in his book 1984, torture is not actually a means to something else, but an end in itself.21 Dehumanizing victims during torture is the essence of this inhumane practice.22
Torture is also a widely used instrument to terrorize large populations, intimidate them, interrogate them, coerce confessions, or simply punish those who are thought to be sympathizers or relatives of pro-Pakistan and pro-independence militias, referred to as “militants.”23 One out of every five Kashmiris report experiencing some form of torture, ranging from verbal abuse, kicking, and slapping to waterboarding, extraction of nails, and electrocution of genitals. Sexual violence continues to be perpetrated by government forces. In 2016, a sixteen-year-old girl was molested by an army officer and then coerced into recording a video statement absolving him of responsibility.24 In February 2018, 143 cases of documented sexual violence were submitted to the Jammu & Kashmir State Human Rights Commission for investigation.25 Despite a petition calling for inquiries into these cases, “no progress” has been made on any of them, according to the International Federation for Human Rights and its partner organizations.26
Many innocent civilians are tortured while detained under the Jammu and Kashmir Public Safety Act (PSA), which allows for anyone to be held for up to two years without charges or trial.27 Between March 2016 and August 2017, more than a thousand people were detained under the Public Safety Act.28 In 2016, human rights activist Khurram Parvez was arrested and detained under the PSA to prevent him from attending a session of the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva.29
Children are also tortured and held under the Public Safety Act.30 In 2012, the PSA was amended to prohibit the detention of children under the age of eighteen.31 Nevertheless, in 2016 and 2017, human rights groups found evidence that the Indian armed forces continued to detain children under the PSA.32 Children as young as thirteen years old have been victims of severe torture by military and police personnel. From 2003 to 2017, 144 children were killed while Indian armed forces carried out operations.33 In 2018, at least 31 children were killed as a result of violent incidents perpetrated by the State.34 Since the early 1990s, boys as young as age ten have been swept up in identification checks, which have often led to killings, tortures, or disappearances.35 Many of these children suffer from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and struggle to continue their education. In 2016 in the Batamaloo area of Kashmir, a seventeen-year-old boy who was arrested on charges of throwing stones at military personnel was released after months of detention. In addition to torturing the boy in detention, government forces provided no information about the boy to his family. Firsthand accounts attest to the fact that many juveniles are arrested in the absence of their guardians and the legally-required First Information Reports (FIRs) are not filed.36
“My only crime was that I expressed my outrage about [the] killing of some innocent Kashmiri brothers,” another young man from Kashmir who requested anonymity recounted. “I did that by pelting [a] few stones. I was arrested late in the night during Ramadan when I was coming out of the mosque after praying Taraweeh [late night special prayers during the Muslim month of fasting]. Even though I was a juvenile, they arrested me—rather, dragged me for almost a mile—and then put me in the police jeep. No legal guardian was present there, and for days to come our family members were not allowed to meet us. In [the] middle of the night some drunk policemen would come and beat us ruthlessly.”37 According to a government report in Kashmir, the majority of the people detained under the PSA are accused of being stone-pelters.38
Another seventeen-year-old Kashmiri boy was charged under Section 307 of the Indian Penal Code (that is, “attempt to murder”) because he pelted stones during a protest after Friday prayers in the Batamaloo area of Kashmir. When asked what Section 307 meant, he said he had no idea.39 Yet government forces think nothing of denying such a minor contact with family, legal counsel, and medical support.
The history of the resistance movement in Kashmir goes back hundreds of years. As various rulers have come and gone, Kashmiris have continued to resist the atrocities perpetrated against them.40 When India and Pakistan were formed as independent nations in 1947, the postcolonial partition by the British led to the greatest mass migration in human history and sparked communal violence, which continues to fuel the conflict today—but the partition was only one of many causes of struggle for the Kashmiri resistance movement, and was neither the first nor the last.41 Be it the shawl weavers’ protest in 1865, labor unrest in 1924, the mass mobilizations against Maharaja Hari Singh’s rule in 1931, peaceful protests post-1947, decades-long demands for a plebiscite,42 or the recent bloody mass protests against the Indian occupation in the valley, Kashmiris continue to fight for their self-determination.
Following the United Nations intervention in the region in 1948, Kashmir was effectively divided in two, with two-thirds of the area controlled by India and one-third controlled by Pakistan. A de facto border, called the “Cease-fire Line,” was created, and ultimately redesignated the “Line of Control” in 1972. The United Nations directed both countries to withdraw their armies and hold a plebiscite to allow for Kashmiris to determine their own future. But the armies never withdrew, and there has never been a vote on who should rule Kashmir.
Since 1947, more than 100,000 Kashmiris have lost their lives in the conflict over the region.43 Since 1990, more than 8,000 people have disappeared.44 Thousands of mass graves have been found, but comprehensive forensic and DNA tests have not been done.45 Between 2008 and 2018, extrajudicial killings claimed the lives of 1,081 civilians.46
For now, India, the world’s largest democracy, attempts to use media to control the narrative, military to control the ground, and torture to control the psyche of the Kashmiri people, all in hopes of smashing the independence movement. Yet the independence movement continues to evolve and take on new forms.
By 2008, social media was widely adopted, making it easier for Kashmiris to participate in freedom movements by telling and sharing their own stories. Facebook and Twitter helped fuel the massive uprisings in 2008, 2010, 2014, and 2016.47
The year 2016 was one of the most violent in the history of the conflict in Kashmir. The killing of the militant commander Burhan Wani by Indian forces in July 2016 propelled a new wave in the resistance movement.48 Burhan Wani was a successful student and cricket player who leveraged social media, developing a huge following on Facebook.49 “He had revived the face of militancy in Jammu and Kashmir, he had given it a totally human face,” said Irfan Mehraj, who grew up during the 1990s, when militancy had a very different face.50 “He would also record short videos and release [them] on YouTube. His way of communicating political ideology and politics was very unique and appealed to people who use social media.” Two hundred thousand people attended Wani’s funeral.51 Protests continued for months after his death, as did network blackouts. Burhan Wani’s use of social media helped reignite the fire of community activism for freedom in Kashmir.52
The media establishment often fails to report what is really happening on the ground in Kashmir—Indian media present a narrative of Pakistani militants attacking innocent soldiers, while international journalists are denied entry. In 2016 alone, 145 civilians were killed by army forces.53 “What you saw in the newspaper, in news channels, is not even thirty percent of what is happening. A lot is not being covered,” said journalist Irfan Mehraj.54 In Kashmir, news media are often banned. The Kashmir Reader, a local Kashmiri paper, was banned by the Indian government for three months during the 2016 uprising, in which more than 12,000 civilians were injured.55 Earlier, on July 15, 2016, Jammu and Kashmir police raided the offices of three local papers: Greater Kashmir, Kashmir Times, and Rising Kashmir. Newspaper issues were seized and staff were detained. All three newspapers were forbidden from publishing for three days.56
Internet access is also routinely blocked in Kashmir. In 2016, the government closed down internet facilities for more than five months, disrupting internet access for approximately seven million people.57 In August 2016, the government attempted a complete communications blackout in Kashmir, cutting all broadband and mobile services for several days.58 According to a study by Jan Ryzdak, a research fellow at Stanford University’s Global Digital Policy Incubator, 47 percent of India’s internet shutdowns take place in Indian-occupied Jammu and Kashmir. The study also suggests that internet blackouts are “a logical extension of curfews.” Following the killing of Burhan Wani in 2016, network shutdowns lasted for 203 days.59 According to an internet freedoms group, internet services were suspended 32 times in 2017, compared to ten times in 2016.60 By March 2019, internet services had already been suspended 23 times, just a quarter of the way into the year.61
The Indian government is not the only source of telecommunications restrictions for Kashmiris. In 2016, Facebook deactivated pages for filmmakers and researchers, including those of Kashmiris living abroad. California-based academic Huma Dar had her Facebook page suspended after posting images of Burhan Wani’s funeral. In addition, a Delhi-based documentary filmmaker, Sanjay Kak, had his page suspended. Dibyesh Anand, an academic at the University of Westminster, found his posts were removed and his account was twice suspended for 24 hours. Facebook apologized to Anand both times after he contacted them.62
The 2018 UN report on Kashmir recommended that the Indian authorities “fully respect the right of self-determination of the people of Kashmir as protected under international law.”63 Yet on the same day that the UN report was issued, the founding editor of Rising Kashmir was assassinated in the Press Colony in Srinagar, Kashmir. One of his last messages was a retweet of an article from Rising Kashmir titled “India Rejects UN Report on India.”64
Nevertheless, even in the face of torture, repression, and murder, Kashmiris continue to fight for self-determination. In the words of Kashmiri journalist Irfan Mehraj, “The endurance is such that when people think about the amount of torture people have faced, you can only rise from it.” Mehraj explains, “We have shown that resistance works. Resistance works in the way that we are here still.”65
ifat gazia is a human rights researcher, filmmaker, and journalist from Kashmir. She has a postgraduate degree in media in development from the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London. She is currently a PhD student at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, where she is studying communications.
tara dorabji is a mother, radio journalist at KPFA, filmmaker, strategist at the Center for Cultural Power, and a writer published in Al Jazeera, TAYO Literary Magazine, Huizache, the Center for Asian American Media, Mutha, the Chicago Quarterly Review, and in the books Good Girls Marry Doctors (Aunt Lute Press) and All the Women in My Family Sing (Nothing but the Truth Publishing). Follow her at https://dorabji.com.
Rifat Fareed, “At Ground Zero of Kashmir Unrest, Residents See No Ends to Deaths,” Al Jazeera, February 21, 2019, .
“Report on the Situation of Human Rights in Kashmir: Developments in the Indian State of Jammu and Kashmir from June 2016 to April 2018, and General Human Rights Concerns in Azad Jammu and Kashmir and Gilgit-Baltistan,” Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, June 14, 2018, https://www.ohchr.org/Documents/Countries/IN/DevelopmentsInKashmirJune2016ToApril2018.pdf, 17.
Ajaz Ashraf, “‘Do You Need 700,000 Soldiers to Fight 150 Militants?’: Kashmiri Rights Activist Khurram Parvez,” Scroll, July 21, 2016, https://scroll.in/article/812010/do-you-need-700000-soldiers-to-fight-150-militants-kashmiri-rights-activist-khurram-parvez.
Irfan Mehraj, journalist, interviewed by Tara Dorabji, Srinagar, May 2018.
“Report on the Situation of Human Rights in Kashmir,” 33.
Ibid.
Nazir Ahmad Sheikh, interviewed by Tara Dorabji, Srinagar, May 2018.
“Key Human Rights Issues of Concern in Indian-Administered Jammu & Kashmir,” International Federation for Human Rights, Association of Parents of Disappeared Persons, and Jammu Kashmir Coalition of Civil Society, March 2019, http://jkccs.net/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/Briefing-Note_FIDH.pdf, 6.
“Annual Human Rights Review 2017,” Jammu Kashmir Coalition of Civil Society, December 31, 2017, https://jkccs.files.wordpress.com/2017/12/jkccs-annual-human-rights-review-2017.pdf, 17.
“Report on the Situation of Human Rights in Kashmir,” 32.
Masood (name changed to protect his identity), interviewed by Ifat Gazia, Poonch, October 2018.
“Torture: Indian State’s Instrument of Control in Indian Administered Jammu and Kashmir,” Association of Parents of Disappeared Persons and Jammu Kashmir Coalition of Civil Society, February 2019, http://jkccs.net/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/TORTURE-Indian-State%E2%80%99s-Instrument-of-Control-in-Indian-administered-Jammu-and-Kashmir.pdf, 14.
Abdullah (name changed to protect his identity), interviewed by Ifat Gazia, Anantnag, September 2017.
Asia Watch and Physicians for Human Rights, “The Human Rights Crisis in Kashmir: A Pattern of Impunity,” Human Rights Watch, June 1993, https://www.hrw.org/sites/default/files/reports/INDIA937.PDF.
Ibid.
Social and political activist (anonymous), interviewed by Tara Dorabji, Srinagar, May 2018.
“Torture: Indian State’s Instrument of Control,” 13.
Association of Parents of Disappeared Persons and Jammu Kashmir Coalition of Civil Society, “Annual Human Rights Review 2018: A Review of Human Rights in Jammu and Kashmir,” Jammu Kashmir Coalition of Civil Society, December 28, 2018, https://jkccs.net/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/Annual-Report-2018.pdf.
Fayaz Bukhari, “Death of Man in Custody in Indian Kashmir Sparks Protests,” Reuters, March 19, 2019, https://www.reuters.com/article/us-india-kashmir-protests/death-of-man-in-custody-in-indian-kashmir-sparks-protests-idUSKCN1R01BH.
“Quarterly HR Review: 162 Killings, 89 CASO’s, 23 Internet Blockades,” Jammu Kashmir Coalition for Civil Society, April 2019, http://jkccs.net/quarterly-hr-review-jan-mar-2019/.
“The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power.” George Orwell, 1984 (New York: Harcourt, 1977 [first published in London by Secker & Warburg in 1949]), 252.
Robert de Neufville, “The Object of Torture,” Big Think, March 3, 2010, https://bigthink.com/politeia/the-object-of-torture.
Jean Drèze, “A Never-Ending Nightmare in Kashmir,” The Wire, January 10, 2018, https://thewire.in/politics/torture-testimonies-detained-youth-kashmir.
“Key Human Rights Issues of Concern,” 13.
Ibid.
Ibid.
“Report on the Situation of Human Rights in Kashmir,” 16.
Ibid., 25.
Ibid., 32.
Rabia Noor, “Public Safety Act Being Misused against Juveniles in Kashmir,” The Quint, May 1, 2018, https://www.thequint.com/voices/opinion/public-safety-act-being-misused-against-juveniles-in-jammu-and-kashmir.
“Report on the Situation of Human Rights in Kashmir,” 16.
Ibid., 25.
“Key Human Rights Issues of Concern,” 13.
Ibid.
Tim McGirk, “Kashmiri Student Tells of Torture,” The Independent, May 25, 1993, https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/kashmiri-student-tells-of-torture-tim-mcgirk-in-srinagar-reports-on-the-increasing-evidence-of-2325054.html.
Anonymous 1, interviewed by Ifat Gazia, Srinagar, August 2017.
Anonymous 2, interviewed by Ifat Gazia, Srinagar, August 2017.
Azaan Javaid, “As Kashmiri Politicians Debate PSA, Data Show North Kashmir Worst Affected,” The Wire, February 5, 2019, https://thewire.in/rights/as-kashmir-politicians-debate-psa-data-show-north-kashmir-worst-affected.
Anonymous 2, interviewed by Ifat Gazia, Srinagar, August 2017.
Kabir Deb, “The Legacy of Azaadi: The History of Kashmir Revolution,” Countercurrents, January 16, 2019, https://countercurrents.org/2019/01/16/the-legazy-of-azaadi-the-history-of-kashmir-revolution/.
Crispin Bates, “The Hidden Story of Partition and Its Legacies,” BBC, March 3, 2011, http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/british/modern/partition1947_01.shtml.
Kritika Goel, “Kashmir Plebiscite Explained, But Is the Debate Still Relevant?” The Quint, February 26, 2019, https://www.thequint.com/explainers/kashmir-plebiscite-india-pakistan-explained.
Zaib un Nisa Aziz, “The Pursuit of Kashmir,” The Herald, February 2, 2019, "https://herald.dawn.com/news/1153341.
“Key Human Rights Issues of Concern,” 1.
Ibid., 6.
Ibid., 3.
Jon Boone, “Kashmir Death Toll Reaches 23 in Protests at Killing of Rebel Leader,” The Guardian, July 11, 2016, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jul/11/kashmir-death-toll-23-protests-shooting-burhan-wani-independence-violence.
Adfer Shah, “The Poster Boy of Militancy in Kashmir,” South Asia Journal, July 21, 2016, http://southasiajournal.net/the-poster-boy-of-militancy-in-kashmir.
Jason Burke, “Kashmir Conflict Ebbs as New Wave of Militant Emerges,” The Guardian, August 11, 2013, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/aug/11/kashmir-conflict-new-wave-militants.
Irfan Mehraj, journalist, interviewed by Tara Dorabji, Srinagar, May 2018.
Mehrunnisa Wani, “Why Kashmir Has a Right to Self-Determination,” Forbes, March 20, 2019, https://www.forbes.com/sites/mwani/2019/03/20/why-the-focus-needs-to-be-kashmiris-right-of-self-determination/#1f88a7fb2ae8.
Piyasree Dasgupta, “Who Was Burhan Wani and Why is Kashmir Mourning Him?” Huffington Post, November 7, 2016, updated June 2, 2017, https://www.huffingtonpost.in/burhan-wani/who-was-burhan-wani-and-why-is-kashmir-mourning-him_a_21429499/.
Sameer Yasir, “Kashmir Unrest: What was the Real Death Toll in the State in 2016?” Firstpost, January 2, 2017, https://www.firstpost.com/india/kashmir-unrest-what-was-the-real-death-toll-in-the-state-in-2016-3183290.html.
Irfan Mehraj, journalist, interviewed by Tara Dorabji, Srinagar, May 2018.
Gaurav Vivek Bhatnagar, “‘Kashmir Reader’ Hits Stands Again After Three-Month Ban,” The Wire, December 28, 2016, https://thewire.in/rights/kashmir-reader-ban-mehbooba; Al Jazeera editors and Rifat Fareed, “Kashmir Newspaper Banned for ‘Inciting Violence,’” Al Jazeera, October 3, 2016, https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2016/10/kashmir-newspaper-banned-inciting-violence-161003061348246.html.
“Report on the Situation of Human Rights in Kashmir,” 31.
Ibid., 30.
Ibid., 31.
Jan Rydzak, “Of Blackouts and Bandhs: The Strategy and Structure of Disconnected Protest in India,” SSRN (Social Science Research Network), February 7, 2019, https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3330413.
“Report on the Situation of Human Rights in Kashmir,” 32.
“Quarterly HR Review.”
Vidhi Doshi, “Facebook Under Fire for ‘Censoring’ Kashmir-Related Posts and Accounts,” The Guardian, July 19, 2016, https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/jul/19/facebook-under-fire-censoring-kashmir-posts-accounts.
“Report on the Situation of Human Rights in Kashmir,” 49.
Shujaat Bukhari (@bukharishujaat), tweet on Twitter, June 14, 2018, https://twitter.com/bukharishujaat?lang=en.
Irfan Mehraj, journalist, interviewed by Tara Dorabji, Srinagar, May 2018.