Reuters journalist Zeba Siddiqui recounts her experience, on twitter, of spending time recently in Kashmir, which still faces a communications blackout. In the following thread of tweets, Siddiqui explains why situation in the occupied valley remains tense, with locals wanting to speak out against the Indian atrocities:
“I’ve returned after 9 days under the communications blackout in Kashmir, and one word that has stuck with me is “zulm.” From teenagers to the elderly, so many asked: “Kyun kar raha hai India itna zulm hum par?” / “Why is India committing such oppression on us?”
A thread of my reporting findings and the voices of people in Kashmir, so many of whom are desperate to speak out. “We have no voice. We are exploding from within,” a young man asked me in Soura, a neighbourhood residents say is under siege.
“If the world won’t listen to us too, then what should we do? Pick up guns?” the young man asked. Residents of Soura are keeping a round-the-clock vigil at entrances into the area, and have created makeshift barricades to keep off security forces.
Reuters had reported 10,000+ people gathered in anti-India protests in Soura on Aug. 9 – info the Indian govt initially rubbished, before video footage of the protests emerged. At least two more large protests have happened here since.
During last Friday’s protest, I saw elderly women look up at the sky and pray aloud for freedom from Indian rule. A drone hovered overhead and kids pelted stones toward it. A teenage girl had “we want freedom” written in henna on her hands.
Things were hardly peaceful. In retaliation to a stone-throwing incident in an area, residents said forces went in one night and smashed people’s windows with stones. An elderly man whose truck was damaged asked: “Why is India doing this to us?”
On Eid, there was an eery silence on the streets of Srinagar. The two main places where people traditionally gathered for Eid prayers – the Eid Gah and the Jamia Masjid – were locked down. It was the biggest Muslim festival and there were no signs of festivities.
Inside a small mosque in Barzulla, where women were quietly assembling for Eid prayers, an elderly woman sitting in a corner leaned towards me as I was taking notes, and said: “See what they have done to our Kashmir? People can’t even go to the Eid Gah. India is zaalim.”
“What are we celebrating? I can’t call my relatives to wish them Eid, we can’t go out to buy things. So, what kind of celebration is this?” another woman in Kashmir said.
On Aug. 15, India’s Independence Day, as Modi trumpeted the abolition of Kashmir’s special status in a speech from the ramparts of the Red Fort in New Delhi, Kashmir was still under lockdown – forcibly silenced. Some residents called it a “Black Day.”
An Independence Day parade organized at Srinagar’s Sher-i-Kashmir cricket stadium was attended by less than 500 people, largely security and government officials. A troop of professional dancers called in from Jammu danced to patriotic music.
Barely any civilians were in sight at the stadium. A short walk away, as helicopters surveyed empty streets, Gulam Ahmed, 70, sat outside a shuttered shopfront. “I haven’t worked in 10 days. I am sick but have no money to buy medicines,” he said.
Dozens of people have been injured in Srinagar’s Soura alone in what residents describe as daily battles with security forces. Many don’t go to the hospital, fearing arrest. When I visited the area last week, residents said security forces were trying to enter from one side.
Three victims with multiple pellets lodged in their torsos were at the second-floor room of a house where a young physiotherapist who had no training in treating such wounds was taking the pellets out. “If we have to live here, we need to know how to do this,” he said.
At Srinagar’s Shri Maharaja Hari Singh Hospital, I met an elderly man who lay staring at the ceiling, a part of his kurta soaked in blood. A shawl shop owner, Rasool was stepping out of his house when he was hit with at least 20 pellets, his son said.
In Srinagar’s Bemina, shattered glass lay outside broken windows of many houses. Women pulled us into their homes, desperate to show broken furniture and damaged vehicles from what they said was a raid by security forces the previous day.
Women complained of being assaulted and verbally abused. One showed me a bandaged toe where she said she’d been hit by a rod. Some people from the area had been detained after a stone-throwing incident nearby, residents said.
This Kashmiri woman tearfully said her three-month-old son was asleep on the carpeted floor close to the window in her home when security forces barged in, breaking the window glass, and beating her husband before taking him away.
In Srinagar’s Maisuma area one morning, as I asked an elderly woman what Eid had been like, a 12-year-old girl standing next to her spoke up. “Can’t you see all these Eid celebrations happening here?” “Everyone is so happy in Kashmir. Look!” she said, pointing to an empty lane.
Close to there, sitting by the side of a street manned by several paramilitary police personnel was this elderly man. I’ll never forget what he said, unprompted, as we approached him: “Who will come to bury my body if I die here today?”
