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.

As-Salaam-Alaikum from DC and a special welcome to Aamer Ahmed Atozai whom I
am looking forward to meet in person soon.

 Last month, I attended an event at GWU called “1st Annual Convention on
Forgotten Genocides.” It was hosted by the International Commission for Human
Rights and Religious Freedom which is led by members of the Indian American
extreme Hindu right.
 The organization is well funded by the RSS and the Indian diaspora. Several
Kashmiri Hindus co-moderated the event. One leading participant has an
organization called HinduAction. He and several Kashmiri Pandits attacked me
once on the street after a Kashmir event at the Middle East Institute where
Masood Khan was the main guest.
 He spoke about the genocide of Kashmiri Hindus and how Kashmir would never
be able to reclaim its ancient Bharat glory until Hindu majority was “restored” in
both regions and not just Jammu.
 He also spoke about the 1971 Civil War in East Pakistan and how his group was
lobbying to have it declared a genocide of Hindus committed by Pakistan.
 Other genocides discussed were the alleged Armenian Genocide in Turkey, the
current situation of Armenians in Azerbaijan, and alleged ethnic cleansing of
Kurds by Turkey.
 There were no Kashmiri Muslims or any other Muslim groups invited. Hindutva
lobbies, Armenians, Bangladeshi Hindus, and most recently anti-Palestinian
Zionists have formed a powerful lobbying coalition in DC.
 I want to talk about this today because at every Kashmir event we talk about the
crimes against humanity in the Valley which of course have been happening
unabated for decades. But few ever talk about Jammu and its own sordid history.
 As we have just celebrated the 76 th Anniversary of the creation of AJK, it is
crucial to remember what happened in the past since many of AJK’s founding
fathers were Muslim refugees from the Jammu region.
 Having lived in the Valley and having visited AJK, I cannot stress enough the
difference between the two, and that we all must appreciate the rights people
have on the Pakistan side. Here it goes:
Jammu Genocide: The Forgotten Human Carnage
 In 1992, Bosnian soldiers stormed Srebrenica where over 40,000 people had
sought shelter from the raging war in the region. About 23,000 Muslim women
and children were deported in 30 hours, and 8,372 innocent Bosnian Muslim men
and boys were mercilessly murdered. The ‘Srebrenica massacre’ is widely
acknowledged as the biggest war crime perpetrated on European soil since WW
II, for which Ratko Mladic, the “Butcher of Bosnia”, was convicted by an
international war crimes tribunal for crimes that were “amongst the most heinous
known to humankind”.

 What is completely forgotten by genocide scholars is that Jammu & Kashmir had
witnessed the worst human carnage long before the ‘Srebrenica massacre.
 In November 1947, thousands of Muslims were killed in what is commonly known
as the ‘Jammu genocide’ by paramilitaries led by the army of Dogra ruler Hari
Singh and aided by the RSS. The death toll in this genocide was 28 times higher
than in Srebrenica.
 This pre-planned ethnic cleansing was carried out to secure an area bigger than
Bosnia, Croatia, and Serbia put together for India.
 The Times of London reported then that “237,000 Muslims were systematically
exterminated by the forces of the Dogra State headed by the Maharaja in person
and aided by Hindus and Sikhs. This happened in October 1947, five days before
the Pathan invasion and nine days before the Maharaja’s accession to India.”
 Muslim subjects from different parts of Jammu were forcibly displaced by the
Dogra Army in a pogrom carried out over three weeks between October-
November 1947.
 The massacre of more than two lakh Muslims was state-sponsored and state-
supported. The forces from Patiala Punjab were called in; the RSS was brought
to communalize the situation and kill Muslims,” wrote PG Rasool, author of ‘The
Historical Reality of the Kashmir Dispute’.
 Late Ved Bhasin, a renowned journalist from Jammu, experienced first-hand the
large-scale killing of Muslims by communal marauders throughout Udhampur
district and even in Bhaderwah.
 According to Bhasin, the RSS played a key role in these killings. Muslims were
also massacred in Chhamb, Deva Batala, Manawsar and other parts of Akhnoor.
 In Kathua district, there was large-scale killing of Muslims and reports of women
being raped and abducted.
 Terrible carnage took place later when the Muslims of the Talab Khatikan area
were asked to surrender. They were shifted to the police lines at Jogi Gate,
where the Delhi Public School is now situated. Instead of providing them with
security, the administration encouraged them to go to Pakistan for safety.
 The first batch of several thousand of these Muslims was then loaded in about 60
lorries to take them to Sialkot. Unaware of what was going to happen, these
families boarded the buses. Troops escorted the vehicles. However, when they
reached the outskirts of Chattha on the Jammu-Sialkot road, a large posse of
armed RSS cadre and Sikh Muslims pulled the Muslims out of the vehicles and
killed them mercilessly, with the soldiers either joining in or looking on as idle
spectators. The news about the massacre was kept a closely guarded secret.
 The next day another batch of Muslim families was similarly boarded into
vehicles only to meet the same fate. Those who somehow managed to escape
reached Sialkot to narrate the horrific tale.
 Bhasin recalled an incident where Mehr Chand Mahajan, the Maharaja’s Prime
Minister of JK, told a delegation of Hindus who met him in Jammu to demand parity with Muslims. One of them asked him how they could demand parity when
there was so much difference in the population ratio.
 Pointing to a pile of Muslim bodies he said, “The population ratio too can
change”.
 As a result of this planned ethnic cleansing, Muslims who had been a majority
(61 per cent) in the Jammu region became a minority.
 The Jammu massacre was undoubtedly a long-planned event. The coordination
of the State forces with the RSS and forces from Patiala clearly point towards
coordination at the highest levels in India.
 The third generation of refugees in AJK still lives under the shadows of the 1947
genocide and the sense of deprivation vis-a-vis their homeland of Jammu. The
Indian-sponsored propaganda machine continues to highlight the right of
Kashmir Hindus to return to their homeland after their alleged forced migrations
but does not mention a word about the right of Jammu massacre victims to return
to their ancestral properties and the graves of their forefathers.
 After the genocide in Jammu 76 years ago, the Indian government is now
executing a similar pattern through settler colonialism in IIOJK. Since Aug 5,
2019, they have normalized a settler colonial project by uttering in a massive
changes in the constitution and other laws which have paved the way for non-
Kashmiris to settle, buy land, and seek jobs in Muslim majority regions of the
former state.
 Meanwhile, the crimes against humanity committed in Jammu in 1947 still await
an independent and impartial international probe to reveal the actual loss of lives,
the number of rapes, the quantum of torture, the number of plundered properties
and their present status, and the number of refugees to measure the real
miseries and sufferings faced by the Muslims of Jammu.
Why is this still important today?
 The 76th anniversary of AJK’s founding day was just celebrated on October 24.
Meanwhile, in IIOJK, the governor reiterated what India’s Defense Minister
Rajnath Singh keeps saying: that the Indian government’s northward journey will
only be complete after incorporating AJK and GB and restoring to India all of
Jammu and Kashmir’s boundaries to those once enjoyed by the Dogra State.
 India says both AJK and GB are part of Indian territory, and Delhi has been
demanding that Pakistan vacate it. India says under Modi it would finally
implement the resolution declaring AJK and GB Indian territory passed
unanimously by India’s Parliament in 1994. Most Hindus in Jammu support this.
 Among other things, the coalition of Hindutva and other anti-Muslim lobbies in the
US has begun advocating this as the final solution to the Kashmir Dispute.
 Farfetched, you may think. But that is what most of us thought about the
abrogation of Article 370 in August of 2019.

 It is imperative that all of us never lose our eyes on the ball which is to
consistently advocate the Right to Self Determination of the Kashmiri people,
including of the Muslims refugees of Jammu and their families who were forced
to leave their homeland in 1947.
 And like the Hindutva lobbies have already done here in DC, I urge all of you to
reach out to other communities who have suffered like the Kashmiris or
sometimes even worse and would be willing to join our advocacy efforts.
 This may include Turkish diplomats, Black Lives Matter, and Freedom for
Palestine lobbying groups, among others. Many marched with us in 2019 when
we had huge protests in DC and NY and hearings in Congress.
 Let’s learn from what the Hindutva groups are doing and stop sitting in our silos.
Many Kashmiris say that only Kashmiris should speak for Kashmiris. I disagree.
Democracy is a number game and we desperately need to increase ours.
Today, I wanted to especially thank my close friend Madiha Shakil Khan from
Rawalakot who lectures at Muzaffarabad and has written extensively about the
Jammu massacre. She provided many of the details. She has not only been
my eyes and ears but is a never-ending inspiration for me. She told me earlier
this week:
 “The current movement in AJK began with protests over electricity bills and inflation.
These were sensitive governance matters that various sub-nationalist groups started
rallying against. To support these protests, funding was required, and individuals
with connections to “RAW” stepped in. They managed to give this “movement” a
higher profile than necessary. Additionally, some nationalist groups also began
working to undermine Pakistan through this movement.
 News about the actions of these nationalists has been circulating on Indian media.
However, this does not mean people from AJK are voicing anti-Pakistan sentiments;
it is the result of Indian funds working behind the scenes. People residing outside
AJK engage in activities aimed at tarnishing Pakistan’s image globally. They use this
protest at the UNHRC to say people are turning against Pakistan. While it’s true that
inflation has significantly increased, this issue is not unique to Pakistan; it’s a global
concern, as evidenced by the statistics.”

Thank you so much for having me here.

Thank you for having me here again and As-Salaam-Alaikum.

As the last time, I will not be speaking about past human rights violations in Kashmir which of course have been horrific and have remained unpunished to this day. There is much literature on the subject, and thankfully many activists continue to highlight these atrocities in many international forums, making sure the victims are not forgotten. Just last spring I spoke at the University of Muzaffarabad about what I personally witnessed in Kashmir.

Today again I would like to describe the current situation and the complete absence of CIVIL AND POLITICAL RIGHTS in the Valley which has dehumanized and traumatized Kashmiris to such a degree that they are now mere shadows of themselves. A Valley of Zombies it has become. The changes in Kashmir have left people in deep distress, dilemma, disempowered and completely dispossessed. As Anuradha Basin describes it in her book “The Dismantled State,” Kashmir has been turned into a “giant prison” with people trapped inside like “mice in mousetraps”. She explains in detail the use of harassment, intimidation, detention, humiliation, raids, molestations, and psychological traumatization to prevent a law-and-order situation. The institutionalization of fear, she writes, makes protesting or any other form of dissent impossible.

Consider this:

•           Since the illegal annexation of Kashmir on August 5 of 2019, the Indian State has assumed complete control over all information, absolute control over the internet, total control over media, control over internal propaganda and all external disinformation campaigns.

•           It has placed even larger numbers of security forces and local informants in every nook and corner of the Valley, making it impossible for Kashmiris to trust anybody and forcing them to stay at home even without curfew, out of fear for saying the wrong thing anywhere to somebody who might turn them in to the authorities. Prisons are filled to the brim and people across ideologies, parties and classes are made to sign a bond to walk out on a promise of good behavior. The pro Freedom leadership stands arrested and the Hurriyat office has just been repossessed by the state.

•           The Indian State is all powerful and cannot be resisted because it  has the gun and the power to arrest anybody under draconian laws. Like in Nazi Germany in the 30s and 40s, these are the semantics of total speech control, total thought control and ultimately total behavior control. And in many ways, it is much worse than the human rights violations committed in the past. Many of them were part of a civil war like struggle, and the people were expressing their will while fighting. Now the control over the  people is so absolute that this will has been crushed and with it their ability to resist.

•           On Indian media, there is constant force-feeding of a steady diet of lies presented to the world at large. Normalcy has returned to the Valley and Kashmiris are liking it, India says. To support this claim, it has hired smart propagandists, some even foreign, to paint the wrong picture of the situation. It has produced films like “The Kashmir Files,” which portray Kashmiris as blood- thirsty Islamist terrorists killing all others and especially non-Muslims in their way with the help of Pakistan. There was  a much circulated article by a fellow of the American Enterprise Institute about the “new normalcy” in Kashmir, and how Kashmiris are enjoying their new path to peace and development and total integration with India. While researching his piece, he was housed by the Indian army in Srinagar, and his local guides were collaborators trained and funded by Indian agencies.

•           Meanwhile, all other journalists or visitors who might be able to report the truth are being kept out, and visas are no longer possible to obtain by any outsider planning to assess the real situation. Much of the Kashmiri diaspora has been silenced for fear of their relatives at home being harassed or arrested by the police. This happened to Danielle Khan who has been working with me. Her Kashmiri husband’s Indian passport has now been reported as “lost,” which is one way for the authorities to make travel impossible for Kashmiris. He does not have his American citizenship yet and is now stuck without being able to visit his family back home. There are more reports of passports of many local journalists being canceled as a time-tested draconian measure to stop them from talking and writing. Last week at least 10 Kashmiris, including academics, students, and journalists, were notified their passports had been suspended. This includes a close friend and former journalist who has been pursuing a master’s in creative writing at Cornell and now cannot finish his program. The list is expected to grow in the coming days.

•           In February , a close journalist friend from the Valley called me after having spent several days in detention for simply knowing me! It followed a new dossier that the JK Police and the Indian State produced against some of us because of our links to Pakistan. They labeled us Pakistan sponsored “handlers” of terrorists in the Valley and directing violence by militants. My friend used to run an online news portal which I helped edit. It was a vehicle for the young to write their hearts out about their resistance to India. Fortunately, he was released but he no longer believes that anybody outside is willing to come to the aid of Kashmiris. I have never heard him being so despondent.

• This week there is a report in The Wire that Ajit Doval, the Indian NSA,  is seeking support from the rulers of the UAE to exert pressure on Pakistan not to retaliate when Indian troops enter Azad Kashmir. A temporary stay is planned, with the aim of achieving another electoral victory for Modi in 2024. This report is based on a statement of the former Governor of IIOJK, a member of the BJP who was in charge of Kashmir on August 5, 2019. It is something I have been warning about for many months.
• In addition to the bogus redistricting of constituencies that was completed early this year and heavily favors Hindu majority Jammu, Delhi is now planning to map Azad Kashmir and GB for legislative representation on the Indian side! It will also include seats in the Indian Parliament for those regions. RAW supported activists from AJK are helping with the process.
• Demographic changes are in full swing under the guise of poverty alleviation for landless Indians who are being settled in Kashmir.   

All of the above is of course only Act 1 in a sordid play in which India was seen hosting the tourism segment of the G20 meeting in Srinagar earlier this year. That was a perfectly choreographed chapter of Indian occupation pornography possible only after the place was completely sanitized of ordinary Kashmiris who were forced to stay indoors. The next and perhaps final act will be occupying Azad Kashmir and GB.

And this is why I am speaking to you today. I am speaking to ask you again to help us raise awareness about the real situation in the Valley and urge lawmakers to stop turning a blind eye to the dangers India’s settler colonial actions are presenting for the entire region. To that end:

•           The diaspora must get the message out about the inhuman conditions under which Kashmiris are forced to live. They must talk about the total absence of civil and political rights of any kind, and the continued human rights violations if anybody dares to speak up or resist.

•           The US in particular cares about civil rights, much more than human rights. It is a language they understand from their own history. It is why our appeals to hold hearings about Kashmir succeeded in the fall of 2019.

•           Help us point out how the Kashmir dispute is still an international one, a recognized legal dispute involving Pakistan and the Kashmiri people. The dispute has not been solved and normalcy has not returned and no amount of Indian propaganda will make it so.  

•           Help us explain how an already intolerable situation has become even worse and foreign diplomats brought in by India will not experience the real conditions.. During every high-level visit to Kashmir, frisking and arrests begin weeks before and  people are  harassed both inside and outside their houses and their movements are severely restricted. The upcoming Independence Day in IIOJK will trigger the same lockdown again while people are being forced to fly the Indian flag from their homes.  

•           Organize seminars around the issues so people can talk about Pakistan’s and the Kashmiris’ legal position in-depth and how the positions have not changed. 

•           Help us sustain an effective social media campaign. Tag lawmakers, the State Department, Human Rights Organizations, and Foreign Ministries.

•           Do anything except be silent. We can speak up, organize, mobilize, and demand truth and justice for IIOJK unlike Kashmiris who no longer have the opportunity to do so. They depend on us to be their voice.

And one more thing:

• Some have been likening the current political instability in Pakistan to what has happened in IIOJK. This really offends me! There is no genocide in the making in Pakistan! Over 100,000 Kashmiris have been killed since 1989. There were mass rapes, mass disappearances and mass graves. Thousands and thousands have been in jail with no possibility of being released. And now nobody can say anything any longer about anything or go on YouTube or Twitter  to express dissent. It does not compare at all! One issue is really about human rights. The other about civil and political rights which can be restored through elections. Know the difference! In Kashmir, elections are not the objective and justice may never come!

Thank you very much!

Thank you for having me here and As-Salaam-Alaikum.

Today I will not be speaking about past human rights violations in Kashmir which of course have been horrific and have remained unpunished to this day. There is much literature on the subject, and thankfully activists continue to highlight the atrocities all the time, making sure the victims are not forgotten. Just a couple of weeks ago I spoke at the University of Muzaffarabad about what I witnessed in Kashmir.

Instead, today I would like to describe the current situation and the complete absence of CIVIL RIGHTS in the Valley which has dehumanized and traumatized Kashmiris to such a degree that they are now mere shadows of themselves. A Valley of Zombies it has become. The changes in Kashmir have left people in deep distress, dilemma, disempowered and completely dispossessed. As Anuradha Basin describes it in her new book “The Dismantled State,” Kashmir has been turned into a “giant prison” with people trapped inside like “mice in mousetraps”. She explains in detail the use of harassment, intimidation, detention, humiliation, raids, molestations and psychological traumatization to prevent a law-and-order situation. The institutionalization of fear, she writes, makes protesting impossible.

If silence and subdued resistance are the government’s goals, the campaign has worked, if only partially. The entire pro-freedom leadership, which long sought an end to Delhi’s rule, has been largely decimated. Yasin Malik, chief of the JKLF, was sentenced to life imprisonment in May 2022 for funding terrorist activities. Syed Ali Shah Geelani, who was under house arrest for years, died at the age of 92, his body buried in haste by Indian armed forces to prevent mass protests. The head of the pro-freedom All Party Hurriyat Conference, Masarat Alam Bhat, has been imprisoned since 2015, while its former chairman, Mirwaiz Umar Farooq, continues to be placed under strict house arrest whenever the state deems it necessary.

Consider this:

• Since the illegal annexation of Kashmir in August of 2029, the Indian State has assumed complete control over all information, absolute control over the internet, total control over media, control over internal propaganda and all external disinformation campaigns.
• It has placed even larger numbers of security forces and local informants in every nook and corner of the Valley, making it impossible for Kashmiris to trust anybody and forcing them to stay at home even without curfew, out of fear for saying the wrong thing anywhere to somebody who might turn them in to the authorities. Prisons are filled to the brim and people across ideologies, parties and classes are made to sign a bond to walk out on a promise of good behavior. The pro Freedom leadership stands arrested and the Hurriyat office has just been repossessed by the state.
• The Indian State is all powerful and cannot be resisted because it  has the gun and the power to arrest anybody under draconian laws. Like in Nazi Germany in the 30s and 40s, these are the semantics of total speech control, total thought control and ultimately total behavior control. And in some ways, it is much worse than the human rights violations committed in the past. Many of them were part of a civil war like struggle, and the people were expressing their will while fighting. Now the control over the  people is so absolute that this will has been crushed and with it their ability to resist.
• On Indian media, there is daily force-feeding of a steady diet of lies presented to the world at large. Normalcy has returned to the Valley and Kashmiris are liking it, India says. To support this claim, it has hired smart propagandists, some even foreign, to paint the wrong picture of the situation. It has produced films like “The Kashmir Files,” which portray Kashmiris as blood- thirsty Islamist terrorists killing all others and especially non-Muslims in their way with the help of Pakistan. Most recently there was an article by a fellow of the American Enterprise Institute about the “new normalcy” in Kashmir, and how Kashmiris are enjoying their new path to peace and development and total integration with India. While researching his piece, he was housed by the Indian army in Srinagar, and his local guides were collaborators trained and funded by Indian agencies.
• Meanwhile, all other journalists or visitors who might be able to report the truth are being kept out, and visas are no longer possible to obtain by any outsider planning to assess the real situation. Much of the Kashmiri diaspora has been silenced for fear of their relatives at home being harassed or arrested by the police. This happened to Danielle Khan who is working with me.
• Just last week, my closest journalist friend from the Valley called me after having spent several days in detention for simply knowing me! It followed a new dossier that the JK Police and the Indian State produced against some of us because of our links to Pakistan. They labeled us Pakistan sponsored “handlers” of terrorists in the Valley and directing violence by militants. My friend used to run an online news portal which I helped edit. It was a vehicle for the young to write their hearts out about their resistance to India. Fortunately, he was released but he no longer believes that anybody outside is willing to come to the aid of Kashmiris. I have never heard him being so cynical.

All this is of course only Act 1 in a sordid play in which India sees itself hosting the tourism segment of the G20 meeting in Srinagar in its final act. And this is really why I am speaking to you here today. I am speaking to ask you to help us raise awareness about the real situation in the Valley and urge lawmakers to not agree to attend such an obscene event. It would be like listening to chamber music at Auschwitz, which was organized by the death camps for visitors to show that the camps were really labor camps where inmates continue to play music in their free time.

The G20 event will hopefully be a much-needed trigger for the diaspora to wake up again and get involved. To that end:

• The diaspora must get the message out about the inhuman conditions under which Kashmiris are forced to live. They must talk about the total absence of civil and political rights of any kind, and the continued human rights violations if anybody dares to speak up or resist.
• The US in particular cares about civil rights, much more than human rights. It is a language they understand from their own history. It is why our appeals to hold hearings about Kashmir succeeded in the fall of 2019. We must do it again and try at least.
• Help us point out how the Kashmir dispute is still an international one, a recognized legal dispute involving Pakistan and the Kashmiri people. And that by attending an event which aims to prove that the dispute has been solved and normalcy has returned, guests would actually be taking side in this dispute in favor of India.
• Help us point out how the event would make an already intolerable situation even worse. During past high-level events, Kashmiris were often shot on sight by trigger happy security forces tasked to stop anybody from roaming about. Of course the internet and phone service were always snapped for the duration. Weeks before the frisking began people were harassed both inside and outside their houses and their movements severely restricted.
• Help us get the word out by writing to and calling lawmakers and others who matter and even plan protests wherever we can. However, protests only matter if attended by large crowds as they were in 2019 when Imran Khan spoke at the UN about Kashmir. Almost 50000 came out then and television stations and other media picked it up. Small protests do not work and make us look as though we have no support.
• Organize seminars around only this issue so people can talk about Pakistan’s and the Kashmiris’ legal position in-depth and how the positions have not changed.  
• Help us sustain an effective social media campaign once India has announced the date of the event. Tag lawmakers, the State Department, Human Rights Organizations, and Foreign Ministries of member states of the G20.
• Write articles or opinion pieces against the event if you can.
• Do anything except be silent. We can speak up, organize, mobilize, and demand truth and justice for IIOJK unlike Kashmiris who no longer have the opportunity to do so. They depend on us to be their voice.

And remember Milan Kundera’s words “The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting.” Let’s never forget the plight of the Kashmiris and how we can “never bury the past” or “move forward,” regardless of who suggests it! And no politician should ever say “we have learned our lesson” because too many Kashmiris have died and are still being taught lessons for their undying allegiance to Pakistan.

Thank you very much!

Have a look at the brochure!!!

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Good evening and As-Salaam-Alaikum. Thank you for inviting me to participate in this special event.

For once, I have actually prepared a speech because it is still very hard
for me to talk about many of the things I witnessed while living in Kashmir, and I would
like to remain focused. The memories never fade enough for me to become more
composed when I talk about them. In 2019, when I met Rep Sheila Jackson Lee, I broke
down while telling her about the Machil Fake Encounter. In 2008, I wrote this for a local
Kashmiri daily:
“I saw many of the villagers near starvation because they could not break through the
giant barricades erected around their entire district as part of a collective punishment for
speaking out. All the way home from Baramulla to Srinagar, while seeing new and even
higher barricades being erected and more and more people being rounded up on the
side of the highway, I wondered not only how I could rescue them all, but what might
happen to me if I wrote about what I saw and felt.”
Thank you for giving me the opportunity to speak about it here.
As a German, it is never easy to talk about Genocide. We grew up with images of piles
of bodies found in camps that had been liberated. Much later, I always wondered how
the genocides in Cambodia and Rwanda could have happened after the entire world
had said “never again.” Of course, nobody can ever really imagine the tragedy of
millions dying and often in relatively short time frames. And usually too much
deliberation goes into the mere management of crises to effectively prevent mass
killings anywhere and then to clearly define the meaning of genocide. That is why at
first I had problems using the term “genocide” when it comes to the crimes against
humanity committed in Kashmir. I had always thought it needed to be much more
massive in scale and more concentrated in execution to qualify. But then over the years
and with killings never stopping around me, I realized that genocide is also a process
that can happen in slow motion, and often spread over decades, or even longer. It can
also involve demographic changes not only through mass killings like during the Jammu
massacre of 1947 but also through ethnic flooding as is happening now in the Valley at
an accelerated pace. Therefore, I am now using the term genocide for Kashmir without
a moment’s hesitation. But again like with all genocides anywhere, it is very difficult to
fully envision numbers of the dead and disappeared in their totality. In Kashmir also,
while the statistics in the many reports prepared by Kashmiri civil society groups may
induce a sense of shock, it never quite hits anyone at the core. I have resolved that
tragedy is individual, and while statistics may be meaningful in history books, stories of
individual victims must be remembered and be told again and again for anybody to
really understand the cruelty of the murders. With that in mind, I would like to talk about
some of the killings I personally witnessed while in Kashmir, and also the circumstances
under which they died. And even after being publicized locally, NOTHING ever changed
and NOBODY has ever been brought to book.

Starting in early 2006 and into 2007, my first years in Kashmir, there were a series of
fake encounters which perhaps for the first time ever were investigated. There was
Abdul Rehman Padder, a carpenter from Ganderbal; Showkat Ahmed, a daily laborer
from Budgam, Ali Mohammad Padder, a carpenter from Kokernag, Nazir Ahmed Deka
and Ghulam Nabi Wani, both bakers from Ganderbal. All of them were exhumed for
identification and subsequently declared innocent. Police had picked them up, branded
them Pakistani terrorists, and killed them in fake encounters together with the army and
the CRPF. All the officers received hefty cash rewards and promotions. None was ever
put before a civilian court or prosecuted for murder anywhere. But it was the beginning
of Kashmiris becoming more vocal about crimes committed to them and openly
demanding justice.
In 2008, the massive crackdown following the uprising caused by the Amarnath Land
Row resulted in the death of at least 60 protesters and grave injuries to thousands who
had been unarmed and were protesting completely peacefully without a single stone in
their hand. The most prominent protester killed during the Muzaffarabad Chalo was
Sheikh Aziz, a Hurriyat leader, who was shot by security forces no more than 200 feet
from me. I still remember our panic over how to save his life. Of course the scene was
too chaotic to get him any medical help. Most of the other protesters were young boys
and villagers who were shot dead without ever having been a threat to anybody. Of
course the Indian media claimed that they had been Pakistani militants having infiltrated
into the crowd and shooting protesters themselves to create more chaos and anti-India
sentiment. During that time I spent most days taking journalists around in my own car
because I had a press curfew pass from a local daily and knew that security forces
would not harm a foreigner nor beat up the journalists with me. Much of that time we
drove severely injured protesters, including women and children, to emergency wards of
local hospitals. Among them were several Sumo drivers whose cars had been attacked
with petrol bombs by Hindutva fanatics on the Jammu Srinagar highway and who had
sustained life threatening burns all over their bodies. Many never made it out of the
hospitals. The brutality of the crackdown was the beginning of the Kashmir Intifada
which stretched all the way past 2016 following funerals of local rebels. It was also the
political awakening of an entire new generation of Kashmiris which was much angrier
and more uncompromising than their elders ever were.
In 2009, we woke up to news about the discovery of the bodies of Neelofar and Aasia
from Shopian in South Kashmir. Neelofar was 22 and Aasia 17. Both had been raped,
killed by security forces, and deposited at the banks of a nearly dry riverbed not far from
the local SOG camp. All hell broke loose when the news about their rape and murder
leaked. After the initial forensic investigation confirmed rape and murder of both the
girls, special forces policemen attached to the camp were arrested. A team of crisis
managers was then flown in from Delhi, and soon the entire sordid story was rewritten
by security agencies. The girls were exhumed and a revised forensic examination by a
doctor selected by the agencies claimed that neither of the girls was raped and that they
had drowned on their way home in the “rapids” of the river. When I took a journalist from

Delhi to the exact spot where the bodies had been found, he admitted that the water
level was so low that not even a small child could have drowned. But he insisted that it
could not have been rape because the security forces at the camp were Hindus and
Hindus did not rape. After all, he had once written a piece about how the gang rape of
Kunan Poshpara was nothing but a plot by Pakistani propagandists to turn locals
against the army and India. The protests that followed the murders of the girls were
mostly localized but severe enough that dozens of youths were gravely injured and
several died. It was the first time that hospitals were asked to connect the bodies of
dead protesters to life support machines so police did not have to report them as dead
all at the same time. This practice was perfected in 2010 where the death count was so
high that authorities wanted to release the news of killings incrementally.
2010 began with the cold-blooded killings of Whamid Farooq, a 13 year old boy who
was playing cricket near his and my house when a teargas shell fired from close range
broke his skull. Only two weeks later, a 16-year-old boy, Zahid Farooq, was standing at
the roadside talking to his friends after school when a BSF jeep stopped, one of the
soldiers got out and shot him in the head for no reason except perhaps target practice.
Because it happened right outside the CRPF headquarters, it was captured on camera
and the jeep was identified. While the soldier was transferred for “using excessive force
during crowd management,” he was never prosecuted for the barbaric act he had
committed.
Then in May of that year, the news of the Machil Fake Encounter broke. At first there
was an announcement by the army that three Pakistani infiltrators had been killed near
Machil in Kupwara district. But because the families of three boys who had disappeared
began inquiring about their whereabouts, the horrible truth soon became evident:
Shehzad Ahmad, Riyaz Ahmad, and Mohammed Shafi of Nadihal in Rafiabad, all still in
their late teens, had been lured by a local Territorial Army recruit to the army camp at
Machil near the LoC with the promise of a few days of labor for good pay. After the boys
were delivered to the commanding officer of the camp, they were shot in the faces,
dressed in militant attire, and quickly buried after some photos had been taken.
Because the families cried foul, the bodies were exhumed and identified as the local
boys who had gone missing. A few days earlier, the major commanding the camp had
received orders to be rotated out of Kashmir and wanted to earn one more monetary
award and promotion for killing militants before being transferred. While the army did
not deny what had happened, the case was not tried before a civilian court because of
the Armed Forces Special Powers Act. All of the culprits were released on bail from a
military jail after Modi assumed power. For me this was an earth-shattering event. I had
lived in the upper reaches of Rafiabad for a year to work with timber smugglers and
knew two of the three boys and their families very well. I never stopped pursuing the
prosecution of the killers wherever and whenever I could until I was forced to leave
Kashmir.

This gruesome fake encounter and the subsequent killing of a teenager, Tufail Mattoo,
who was on his way home from tuition when a teargas shell almost decapitated him,
were the triggers for the 2010 uprising where more than 140 boys died while protesting
for justice and against the Indian occupation. It was also when we lived through a 4-
month-long continuous curfew that was so severe that anybody attempting to break
through it was shot on sight. Every evening during that time we did nothing but count
the dead.
Following 2010, protests became routine, especially after prayers on Fridays. Scores of
young boys were arrested on a regular basis and only set free after their families paid
huge bribes to the police. Many of the young boys were tortured and humiliated while in
custody. This was also the time when many local young boys began joining rebel
groups because of the treatment they had received while in custody. Much of this was
inspired by Burhan Wani and his group who reminded people that armed resistance
against a brutal occupation was not only sanctioned by the UN Charter but also one
way to fight back after all political initiatives had failed. All of them are dead now. When
Manan Wani was killed, we cried for days. He was our philosopher rebel who had told
the youth that they did not need to pick up a gun but could also pick up a pen as long as
they resisted in some way. He like Burhan had never even fired his gun before being
killed.
Why all this detail, you may ask? Because I think it is so important to go beyond
statistics and remember individual victims who have been killed under the most brutal
circumstances and stand to be forgotten while we mostly focus on their leaders. They
died for the cause of liberation and have to be remembered by us all. They died without
any fault of their own, and because India does not consider Kashmiris human beings
worth protecting. In Kashmir, graves are full of not only unidentified bodies but of those
many of us have known and cared about and will always miss. As Milan Kundera wrote
in The Unbearable Lightness of Being “The struggle of man against power is often the
struggle of memory against forgetting.”
If I may, I would like to conclude this with part of another piece I had written at that time:
“Yesterday, I was sitting near the river under the darkest of curfews, listening to the
wailing voices of funeral singers and distant gun shots, mourning the deaths of boys I
have never known and will never be able to befriend, and longing to sit at the lake again
in the darkness of night where truth can be so easily hidden from someone’s view. The
sky was laden with dark clouds, and rain was falling on the graveyards of the old city
where the dead were being buried. Yesterday, it seemed the sky over Kashmir would
never clear again, and light and sunshine had now permanently vanished from my
portrait of the Valley.
I thought of the people I have met, the respect I have for those who have been
struggling against darkness for so long, the families who have been reduced to tears,
and the complete powerlessness one feels in the face of unstoppable human tragedy. I

wanted to reach out and say to people to please still believe in the faint illusion of
justice, fairness and the triumph of the human spirit. I wanted to assure them that
people did not die in vain. I wanted someone to tell me that the sadness and anger I felt
would fade, making it possible to see bright light again in a place that so often seems to
plunge into permanent darkness. But most of all, I wanted to tell people that I had now
become a Kashmiri, regardless of how unbearable it may be at times, and that their
reality had very much become my own, even if I might never be able to fully
comprehend the full range of its dark colors and hues. “
Thank you for listening.