NEW YORK: Amid growing anger and misery in Indian Occupied Kashmir, the conflict there is turning messier, with people suffering as the disputed territory remains under the repressive military lockdown, now nearing two months, according to The New York Times.
The NYT Tuesday front paged an article, depicting the exasperating conditions in which people are living without phone and internet services as gun-totting security personal patrol the streets threatening to shoot any one who broke the curfew, which has been in force since August 7, when India’s annexed occupied Kashmir.
The newspaper carried 22 large photos interspersed in the article taken by its photographer, Atul Loke, who spent four weeks in Kashmir over two trips in August and September and his account of the situation was written by Jeffrey Gettleman, the Times’ bureau chief in New Delhi.
Here is what the photographer saw, as published in the Times:
“Sporadic protests keep breaking out. Security officers blast shotguns and tear gas into crowds. Dozens of demonstrators have been seriously wounded. Many are scared to go to the hospital, fearing they will be arrested. Instead, they stumble into nearby mosques, their faces bloody, their bodies shaking, to be wiped down and bandaged by sympathetic volunteers.
“The Indian security forces have arrested thousands of people. Most are being held without charges under what is called preventive detention. Almost Kashmir’s entire leadership class — democratically elected representatives, teachers, students, intellectuals, and prominent merchants — is now behind bars.
“The arrests and the blockade have left Kashmiris feeling unsettled, demoralized and furious. Zahida Jan, a high school student, collapsed in grief just talking about her older brother, Fayaz Ahmed Mir, who was arrested in front of her in early August. The family says he is innocent. His job was driving a tractor in apple orchards. They say the reason authorities arrested him was that he had joined a protest nine years ago. They have no idea where he is.
“Children as young as 8 have poured into the streets. With schools closed, they have little to do. Many hang around the mosques. Among the slogans they bark out is: ‘There is only one solution. Gun solution! Gun solution!’
Several young men have claimed that they were tortured by security forces. The Indian government has denied it. The young men, who were arrested on suspicion of aiding the militants, said government soldiers hung them upside down, hit them with bamboo sticks, applied electric shocks and forced them to drink large amounts of a noxious liquid. A month after he said he was tortured, Abid Khan, a shopkeeper, showed deep black lines on his buttocks. He said four soldiers stripped him naked, pinned him down and beat him again and again with wooden poles.
But the tensions are no longer as simple as protesters versus security officers. Kashmiri separatists are conducting their own clampdown, threatening or even attacking civilians in a campaign to destroy any semblance of normality that may be trying to creep back…”
Indian officials have not indicated when they will lift the security restrictions or release people who have been jailed, the newspaper said.