Speech at APHC Kashmir Symposium, Muzaffarabad, AJK, Sept 2, 2024

As-Salaam-Alaikum friends and colleagues. Thank you for asking me to participate in this event. I so wished I could be there in person.  

I have spoken so often and in great detail about all the horrific things I witnessed while living in Kashmir, but today I was asked to address why Kashmir was no longer on the agenda abroad as prominently as it had been at times in the past. I thought about it and then decided to talk about Indian Transnational Repression because in my view it is one of the main reasons why Kashmir activism has declined significantly in the US and perhaps elsewhere. The success of any movement depends on the ability of those leading it to keep mobilizing supporters worldwide, and clearly there has been much less activity in that regard in the last couple of years.  

• Now what is Transnational Repression? Freedom House defines it as governments reaching across borders to silence dissent among diasporas and exiles, including through assassinations, illegal deportations, abductions, digital threats, foreign agency abuse, and family intimidation. It is a daily assault on civilians everywhere, including in the US, UK, Canada, Germany, Australia, and even South Africa.

• Because of it, many Kashmiri activists abroad have been lying low for fear of losing their passports, OCI cards, and their families being harassed by security forces back home. After the assassination of a Khalistani activist in Canada and an attempted one of another in the US, some Kashmiris are also worried about meeting a similar fate.

As an example, the passport of the Kashmiri husband of one of my colleagues was cancelled by India last year and he was lucky to qualify for a US one through intervention by our representatives in Congress. Similarly, the State Department agreed to approach the US Embassy in Delhi to tell Indian authorities to stop harassing their family in the Valley. It worked, but both are fearing that they may never be allowed to visit IIOJK again because of their activism. Their families have asked them to stop their activism for now. This couple is one of many here having faced the same problem.

Since then, Muzammil Thakur has lost his OCI card and his car has been attacked in UK. Most recently, he was brutally roughed up by Indian goons after a Kashmir event. The same happened to me here in 2018 after a seminar on Kashmir where Masood Khan was the chief guest.

Muzamil and many others, including me, are increasingly fighting fake dossiers from India and some of us had to involve lawyers and enlist help from lawmakers and relevant government agencies. As a result, many who used to be active have now opted to work underground or let it all blow over.

KAN, my organization, is still active and participates in all hearings before Congressional committees or working groups organized by Human Rights Watch and Freedom House and others, often closed door at our request,  and some of what we are telling is reflected in their reports. We keep networking with Muslim organizations who are raising awareness about Hindutva India and what is happening to Muslims and activists there. But most recently, I have been focusing on Indian Transnational Repression while discussing Kashmir and Kashmiris in all my meetings. In addition to Kashmiri and Indian Muslim activists, Palestinian activists are facing the same or similar threats here.  

And mind you Transnational Repression is not just about physical threats. India is trying to use US agencies to shut us down through the fake dossiers aimed at scaring us into silence for fear of prosecution by our own authorities. Let me give you a personal example.

During my last visit to Pakistan in April, I visited AJK on behalf of KAN. As always, I met members of the APHC, local activists, officials dealing with the Kashmir dispute, and think tanks both in Islamabad and AJK to discuss the Kashmir issue. KAN is registered with the US Justice Department under the Foreign Agent Registration Act, better known as FARA. It allows me to legally interact with elected or appointed government officials in Pakistan and the US and advocate openly on behalf of Kashmir and Pakistan.       

After landing at Dulles airport, I was detained at customs. My mobile phone and laptop were both confiscated. I told the investigating agent that KAN dealt specifically with the Kashmir dispute, that I had lived in Kashmir for 10 years, that I had always been a strong advocate for the resolution of the issue, and that the nature of my activities was reflected in my FARA filings.

He then asked if I knew what he would find if he googled my name. I said, “probably all kinds of fake accusations by Indian agencies aimed at stopping me from testifying in Washington and elsewhere about the grave human rights violations I had personally witnessed in Kashmir.” I told him that the accusations were so ludicrous that I had once contemplated filing a defamation suit against Indian media spreading these lies. A couple of years ago, they reported that I had been a “deep state Pakistani asset” during my entire time in Kashmir and was now “the handler of a Kashmiri terrorist accused of trying to organize the killing of pro-Indian journalists.”  How does one even respond to such vile disinformation?     

When India first began creating fake dossiers some years ago, it targeted many Kashmir activists living in the US, UK, Turkey and elsewhere. Most prominent among them is of course Muzamil Thakur. India was then exposed by a European information lab and others showing links of organizations and Indian media to Indian intelligence agencies and the Indian army who were trying to silence Kashmiri voices and their supporters abroad. The agent at Dulles admitted that it was an Indian advocacy group in the US who had submitted the dossier about me to his agency which I assumed to be the FBI.

During further interrogation, he asked me if I was aware that Lashkar was a proscribed terrorist organization in the US and that anybody rendering material or other support to such terrorist groups would be considered a terrorist too. I said I had nothing to do with any terror group and that nobody I knew in Kashmir or anywhere else did. The agent then implied that I was accused by India of arranging funding for terrorists in Kashmir. He further implied that my visit to Pakistan was somehow connected to this activity.

He then asked how many others were in my “terror network” here. I said I had no network and especially not one related to any terror. I told him I would gladly give him a lot of information about organizations related to RAW and the RSS who were terrorizing and assassinating people abroad, including here.

I was finally released after hours of having been accused of being a terrorist facilitator and in violation of US rules based on a completely false dossier peddled by India and its US proxies. And I have not been the only one who has faced this. Most recently Nitasha Kaul, a Kashmiri Pandit who supports freedom for Kashmir and testified in Congress here in 2019, was intercepted at the airport in Delhi and returned to UK where she is teaching at a university. The Indian media then accused her of terror links just as they have in many other cases. She has since lost her OCI card and may never be able to visit her mother in India again.  These are just two examples of Transnational Repression by India. Some of us have built a good network of connections in Washington. Some have also access to lawyers who are very expensive. But what about those who have neither?

With all India has been doing on the ground in Kashmir and now also globally, how then could Pakistan, a legal stakeholder in the Kashmir dispute ever be uninvolved,  especially after India’s illegal actions since 2019. These actions have affected Pakistanis, Kashmiris and all those committed to freedom for IIOJK equally. And Pakistan is the only support all of us rely on ideologically, diplomatically and emotionally. After each statement by Islamabad we are all reassured that this support continues and always will.

Even China reacted militarily in Ladakh to protect its interests from an expansionist India that feels no longer bound by any bilateral agreements. Night after night, Indian channels debate the need for India to take over AJK and GB, both of which India claims as its own territory per a parliamentary act. And the entire Hindutva nation is cheering on a fascist government that promises that it will conquer what belongs to India, with defense analysts and generals saying the army is merely waiting for the orders.

Pakistan recently prepared a detailed dossier proving India’s sponsorship of terrorist activities inside its own country. And that dossier is not fake. Anybody having lived in India and especially Kashmir and following the activities of Indian agencies throughout the region would never ever doubt any of what has been presented in the report. After years of personally witnessing what Indian agencies are capable of in Kashmir and then blaming it all on its neighbor in its never-ending propaganda war against Pakistan, there is no doubt in my mind that all of it is the absolute truth. And it is this truth that must be shared continuously and by all who have access to those who matter abroad. It is what I do.

Most importantly in my present context in the US, and while closely watching the sprouting of RAW’s growing number of anti-Pakistan and anti-Kashmir think tanks and advocacy groups in Washington, I am only just now beginning to understand the challenge India’s hybrid war against Muslims, Kashmiris, Pakistan, and others anywhere represents to all of us on every level, and the need to strike back when and where it counts despite any threats.

In closing I would like to remind everybody that Hindutva extremism and the oppression of Kashmiris has always been there since before the beginning of independent India. What is new is the ever-growing marriage of Hindutva Extremism to intelligence agencies and both acting in tandem to create havoc throughout the region and now in the West. And at the root of it is an expansionist play envisioning a South Asia dominated by India and more specifically Hindus. What has happened to Kashmir was only the opening act. Akhand Bharat is a fictional claim not dissimilar to that of the Nazis who spoke of creating a Lebensraum for the German race, or the Zionists who use the bible as the moral justifications for expansion of territory. I fear that the way Kashmiri Muslims are being marginalized day after day and both ethnic cleansing and demographic change is being implemented as we speak, there will no longer be a Kashmiri Nation as we have known it. August 5th was not a singular event in Kashmir’s dark past, but the beginning of India’s most harrowing stage of  settler colonialism. Since then, the jackboots of Hindutva forces have been marching on throughout the Valley with nobody stopping their advancement despite the pro-freedom sentiment of the Kashmiris not having diminished one iota. Watching what is happening in India and Kashmir silently is criminally enabling. It needs to be exposed everywhere. And despite the Transnational Repression by India many of us are facing here and elsewhere, we must carry on. There is no choice.