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‘Police refused vehicle and Sajad breathed his last on way to hospital’
Ishfaq Mir
(from Rising Kashmir)
Srinagar, Sep 13: “Sajad who fell to the bullets of SOG personnel at Shopian on Friday could have survived had a police officer allowed us to shift him to hospital in a police vehicle,” his friend Khalid said.
Sajad, 28, the only surviving son of his parents, was the youngest of all and used to run a tent house shop.
Three years back, his elder brother Gasha was killed in cross firing between militants and army. “Another of his brother suffered heart attack when he heard the news about his brother’s death. He died after few months,” said Khalid.
He said that lawyers had staged a protest demonstration near the Jamia Masjid after the Friday prayers. The police and CRPF personnel used force to quell the demonstrations.
“After finishing the prayers, the devotees came out on roads to stage peaceful protests,” said Khalid, adding, “Me and my friend were also part of the peaceful protests.
He said, “As we were moving ahead, the SOG personnel fired three bullets. Two of the bullet his the Jamia Masjid while the third one hit Sajjad in abdomen. Sajad fell into my lap after being hit by a bullet. I took him in my arms and two other people helped me to take Sajad up to a vehicle of DSP. We pleaded before him to give us the vehicle so that we could shift him to the hospital. He, however, refused and we had to drag him up to the hospital. Before we could admit him to the hospital, Sajad succumbed after reciting the Kalima Shahadat”.
Khalid said that had the police officer provided them vehicle, Sajad would have survived. “By the time we shifted him to hospital, he had lost blood,” he said, adding, “Sajad breathed his last breath in my lap after reciting “La Illaha-Illallah Muhammad-ur-Rasulallah (SAW)”.
“Sajad could complete his 10+2 only and could not continue his studies. The death of his two elder brothers forced him to quit the studies and earn livelihood for the family. He learnt the “electricity fitting” and started a shop where he used to rent the tent houses on marriage ceremonies,” said Khalid Hussain, a close friend of Sajad.
Sajad had no sister and his father Nazir Ahmad Ganaie, a farmer is a Muazzin (one who calls faithfuls for prayers) in Jamia Masjid Shopian.
While the body of his son was lying outside the mosque yard Nazir gave the Azan (call for namaz), then recited the Takbeer and offered the Maghrib (evening prayers) prayers in the Jamia Masjid.
After the prayers were over, Nazir addressed the mourners after offering Nimaz-e-Jinaza of Sajad. With tears rolling down his cheeks Nazir said, “India’s autocratic rule over Kashmir has to end at any cost. They (Indian troops) have to leave. Kashmiri’s won’t tolerate them”.
Courtesy and Copyright of Rising Kashmir (Link)
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(from greaterkashmir)
Srinagar, Sept 11: Fifty-year old Rafiq Ahmad felt nothing when a bullet fired by the CRPF troopers him in the shoulder, because, he says, he was numbed by the sight of the CRPF troopers savagely beating a man protecting his child from blows of the troopers.
Rafiq Ahmed was playing chess on August 25 in front of his home in Malbagh, Fateh Kadal when CRPF personnel trooped into the area and started beating up everyone who came in their way. Rafiq is diabetic and suffers from chronic back pain. Thus he was slow to respond to the onslaught of the troops.
But when I tried to run I couldn’t move because I was moved when I saw that a man was protecting his child from their blows. Then CRPF men saw me and made a sign to his colleague who shot at me, Rafiq said.
Whenever I recall that moment, when that father was saving his child, I forget my pain. The faces of the father and the son haunt me, Rafiq said.
Courtesy and Copyright of Greater Kashmir. com [link]
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Bollywood film to focus on rights abuse in Kashmir
Krittivas Mukherjee
(from reuters.com)
MUMBAI, March 6 (Reuters) – A well-known Bollywood filmmaker hopes to prick the conscience of viewers about human right abuses in Indian Kashmir with a movie on police killings of innocent people in staged gunbattles to win rewards.
“Dhoka”, or Betrayal, is the latest offering from a Hindi film industry — the world’s largest by number of tickets sold — that has been forced by a maturing audience to diversify from its formulaic song-and-dance fare into more realistic themes.
Mahesh Bhatt, known as much for his fluffy musicals as for handling controversial subjects such as Hindu-Muslim riots, says “Dhoka” will turn the spotlight on “state atrocities” in the insurgency-torn Himalayan state of Jammu and Kashmir.
“There is a need to speak about the misdeeds of the state, the betrayal of police in each of those regions where human rights are trampled upon everyday,” Bhatt, who is producing the movie and helping daughter Pooja direct it, told Reuters.
“Dhoka” will be partly shot around Kashmir’s verdant valleys and snow-capped peaks but Bhatt did not give a release date.
Tens of thousands of people have been killed or have disappeared in mainly Hindu India’s only Muslim-majority state of Jammu and Kashmir during a 17-year-old separatist revolt.
Kashmiris say some of those who have disappeared are innocent people killed by police in fake gunbattles to claim rewards and earn promotions meant for eliminating militants.
In late January and February, protests erupted in the Kashmir Valley following the alleged killing of five innocent Kashmiris in staged gunbattles by Indian forces, who then passed off the dead men as militants.
Seven policemen have been charged with the killing of one of the men — a carpenter and father of five. Police said they were also investigating the four other cases.
SLEEPING CONSCIENCE?
“The conscience of the country hasn’t been questioned on these gross violation of rights of the people of Kashmir,” said Bhatt.
The filmmaker is also completing a movie that delves into the mind of a potential suicide bomber in a story set against the backdrop of the 2005 London train and bus bombings.
In the past, Bollywood’s offerings on Kashmir have generally been populist, patriotic fare which cast neighbouring Pakistan and menacing Muslim extremists as the villains, and the Indian security forces as heroes.
But films like “Mission Kashmir” have generally failed to impress critics.
In contrast, “Dhoka” is the story of a young Kashmiri man grappling with the staged killing of someone close to him and aims to highlight the plight of Kashmiris whose lives have been touched by violence.
The conflict has officially killed more than 40,000 people. Human rights groups put the toll at about 60,000 dead or missing.
“Custodial deaths and fake gunbattles of police are a menace in Kashmir,” said Bhatt, who is also known as an activist for creative freedom and religious harmony.
Authorities deny allegations that security forces regularly pick up people in Kashmir and kill them in fake gunbattles.
Bhatt has chosen a Kashmiri newcomer to play the lead in Dhoka, hoping the actor can inject some realism into the film.
Copyright and courtesy of Greater Kashmir. com [link]
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Tags: Bollywood, Freedom Struggle, Human Rights, Hurriyat, India, Indian Army, Innocent Killings, Jammu and Kashmir Police, Kashmir, Kilings, Mahesh Bhat, Massacre, Militants, News, Police, Terrorism, Terrorism in Kashmir
March 1, 1990: When 47 civilians were massacred for Azadi
Mir Faheem Aslam
(from greaterkashmir.com)
Srinagar, Feb 28: In the newly constructed market at Zakoora Crossing, 14 km northeast of Srinagar, it’s hard to find any trace of a carnage the Army soldiers carried out 17 years ago, killing about 30 unarmed civilians after firing indiscriminately on them. But the mayhem still haunts eyewitnesses and survivors of the incident.
It was the afternoon of March 1, 1990—those days entire Valley was up in arms demanding freedom from India and protesting against atrocities by the Jagmohan regime—when a group of about 2,000 people decided to rush to Srinagar office of the United Nation’s Military Observer Group in India and Pakistan (UNMOGIP) to submit a memorandum.
Comprising young and old, the protesters, many of them clad in shrouds, were immersed in the din of Azadi slogans, recalled a shopkeeper at the Zakoora Crossing. In the meantime, he said, a convoy of five Army vehicles led by three Junior Commissioned Officers was returning from Sonamarg to Srinagar but found the road blocked near the crossing.
Initially, the locals said, three policemen who were guarding the crossing told the soldiers to wait for sometime till the protesters pass. “This led to a heated argument between the policemen and the soldiers,” the locals said.
Unprovoked firing
“We still remember an Army official telling the cops ‘give way or we’ll shoot you’,” many eyewitnesses of the incident said. They said three Army vehicles were fitted with light machine guns (LMGs) and as the convoy turned towards the demonstration, the soldiers opened fire. “Soon bodies piled up. I myself counted 11, they had died on the spot,” the shopkeeper, who requested not to be named, told Greater Kashmir. “Later many more succumbed to their injuries. And when I removed some people to the SKIMS, Soura, the doctors said they were no more,” he said. “Army wanted to kill them all because very few people had bullets in legs.”
In all, 26 civilians fell to the soldiers bullets while 50 more were injured in the incident that later came to be known as the Zakoora massacre.
The mayhem continued for more than two hours, with the injured, helpless and hopeless, watching the bloodbath from a distance. None from the civil administration came to their rescue.
Only the locals rushed there ferrying the injured to hospitals, said Ali Muhammad, one of the eyewitnesses, insisting that the protesters had no clash or argument with the Army. “The firing was simply unprovoked,” he recounted.
‘Can I meet my son’
A shopkeeper at the Zakoora Crossing said a 50-year-old survivor of the carnage, a deaf, often visits the spot where his son, who also was among the protesters, died. “He only says, ‘can I meet my son’,” the shopkeeper said.
Another massacre
On the ill-fated day, 21 more Kashmiris were killed at about 5 pm by the Army soldiers who fired at a bus near Tengpora, Bye-Pass. They too were unarmed. The dead included five women.
Next day, global watchdog, Amnesty International issued a second appeal for urgent Action on Kashmir pertaining to Tengpora and Zakoora. A detailed account appeared in the March 31, 1990 issue of the Economic and Political Weekly of Bombay, which reproduced the text of “India’s Kashmir War” by a team of four members of the Committee for Initiative on Kashmir.
S. Mulgaokar quoted excerpts from the same report in the “Diary of a Recluse” in April 7, 1991 edition of The Indian Express.
Copyright and courtesy of Greater Kashmir. com [link]
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Tags: Freedom Struggle, Human Rights, India, Indian Army, Innocent Killings, Kashmir, Kilings, Massacre, News, Police, Terrorism, Terrorism in Kashmir
Jan 21, 1990: When many Kashmiris left their Saltanats behind
Gaw Kadal Massacre
Zahir u Din
(from greaterkashmir.com)
Srinagar, Jan 20: The day he received the order confirming his appointment as driver in the Cable Car Corporation (CCC), he promised his daughter a joyride in the highest Gandola of the world at Gulmarg. He could not keep his promise. He fell to CRPF bullets at Gaw Kadal on January 21, 1990. The kid, now a grown up girl, has eyes on the stars. Pursuing a career in computers, the brave daughter of a brave father plans to give a good life to her mother.
Saltanat Farooq was preparing to see fourth spring of her life when orphaned. I was greeted with the smell of kerosene when I entered her house at Court Road, a few weeks after her brave father Farooq Ahmad received several bullets on his chest. The stove was not running properly and Sultanat’s mother was trying her best to set it right. The fumes emanating from the burner gave her an excuse to moisten her eyes. I found it extremely difficult to start the conversation. Realizing she might be confused and surprised to see a total stranger in her room, I introduced myself. “Your husband was driver of my elder brother who is an officer in the CCC and has sent me to know about your welfare.” She heaved a sigh of relief.
That was the first day I saw Saltanat Farooq. Totally unaware of what had befallen her family, she talked and talked much to the delight of her aggrieved mother. Saltant knew Johny had taken sugar and his Papa had taken him to task for that. She was aware that the Black Sheep had a bag of wool for the dame who lived down the lane. She also knew that Jack had gone up the hill with Jill. But she was not aware of a harsh reality. “Papa Allah Kay Pas Gaya Hai (Papa has gone to Allah’s house).” Farooq died along with 51 others on January 21, 1990 when CRPF personnel opened fire on a peaceful procession at Gaw Kadal here. The processionists were marching towards Chotta Bazaar area where the troops had committed atrocities and molested many women during a search operation.
I could not muster courage to ask Saltanat when will he return. The conversation had reached a delicate stage. The orphan had hit the nail on its head, the widow was about to collapse and I, who had visited them to play saviour, felt like a withered autumn leaf. I stood up to leave. The widow had prepared tea for me. The tea had a soothing effect. I felt resurrected. Hats off to the brave people of Kashmir. In spite of being victims, they can soothe the so-called saviours.
Meanwhile, the widow was appointed in the corporation and the harsh realities of life started dawning on Saltanat. Last year, I received a call from my brother. He urged me to help Saltanat get admission in a reputed computer institute.
Saltanat now has the world at her fingertips. I forgot to ask her if she had a ride on the highest Gandola of the world.
Copyright and courtesy of Greater Kashmir. com [link]
Copyright concern? email: media.kashmir [at] gmail.com
Tags: Freedom Struggle, Human Rights, India, Indian Army, Innocent Killings, Kashmir, Kilings, Massacre, Terrorism in Kashmir
