STONED

The Amarnath Yatra began yesterday with some 3000 brave hearts being flagged off from Jammu. This was despite the fact the Kashmir has seen one more planned "summer of discontent". One should not be surprised at all with the timing of the "spontaneous outpouring of the anger of urban -jeans,chic t-shirts, Nike shoes and Reebok caps youth". The master mobster Syed Ali Shah Geelani had warned the government of large scale protests if the period of the Yatra was not reduced to 15 days. True to his word Geelani showed that he meant business. With covert and overt support from Pakistan (to where he bows when in prayer) he unleashed the power of what he is known best for-the Islamic mobs.

It is not Geelani that baffles us here but all those parents who send their children to riot, to lynch, to kill,to throw petrol bombs and to pump out all their adrenalin on the streets of Kashmir. I didn't know this was a way of channelisng pent up sexual energies in the new radicalized Islamic Kashmir .What kind a parent would send his son to indulge in riot I often wonder. But then there is a history to it.

Kashmiri Muslims are adept in the art of Stone throwing. The last I heard was that some Malik is writing a book on Zen and the art of stone throwing. Throughout the sixties, seventies and eighties when there was no "occupation force" the Kashmiri Muslims would indulge in this "sport" by throwing stones at each other. The Sher-Bakre (supporters of NC and supporters of Mirwaiz) would almost indulge in this Kane-Jung(stone wars) almost religiously and come what may every Friday post the Nimaz this would be a permanent fixture and would delay my return from the school because the Alikadal bridge would be hostage to this stone war. So to believe that they are throwing stones because they are mourning or protesting would be out-rightly comical if it wasn't terribly tragic.

There is no doubt in anyone's mind why all this is happening now. The answer is simple that the separatists no matter what they say see the Amarnath Shrine as an extension or a connect of India with Kashmir. They do not see the same in case of let us a Kheer Bhavani Shrine because even today it is not frequented so much by non-kashmiri hindus.

They feel that all the gains of cleansing that they clinically achieved so far are seemingly frittered because lacs of pilgrims from the mainland are visiting Kashmir and thus the connect lives on. It frustrates them to no end but at the same time they cannot openly oppose the Yatra because they do not want to be seen as foot-soldiers of the ideology of Islamic Hate that their mentors like Syed Sallaudhin, Hafiz Saeed and others stand for.

At the same time Pakistan and other donors ask for some performance for the money that they are giving the separatists so here we are.

The other reason for stone throwing is that Pakistan and its cronies in Kashmir have realized that is simply impossible to beat India by force of Kalaishnikovs. So this route of Intifada (the Palestinian model) looks more real. In all this Kashmiri Muslims do not understand the damage they are doing to themselves. Imagine a young man in teens or even younger who is made to believe that a solution to a problem lies in throwing petrol bombs and stones. What kind a society are we creating. We have already seen effects of violence in Kashmir when one Kashmiri Muslim boy killed another simply because he thought that his friend was wooing his girlfriend. It is this belief that violence is answer or a solution that is dangerous and fraught with problems.

As a fellow Kashmiri I would request with folded hands to all Kashmiri Muslims not to give their children a stone or a petrol bomb but a book. Don't let them get used by mobsters like Geelani. Ask him where are his children and grand children. Are they throwing stones too?

It is time Kashmiri Muslims realize the enemy within. It is time the people like Shabnam Hashmi do not just lecture the state on being humane but also tells these Islamic mobs not to lynch security personnel, not to burn temples, not to encroach on properties of Kafirs and not to think of a stone as a solution.

PS: I will today re-read Wazoo-i-khoon of Mansur bin hallaj who too was stoned to death at the directions of someone who was a Geelani of those days. The Stone throwers live on......

Separatist Paid Goons target Security forces in Kashmir

Security personnel run for cover as armed riot mob targets them.

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The New Stone Age

The Other side of the story in Kashmir: Blame it on Police

A J&K Police Constable is mercilessly beaten by a street goon.

A paid good targets J&K Police vehicle with stones.

A gang of paid goons attacks a lone J&K Police constable.

36 Shops of Kashmiri Pandits demolished by Delhi Government

It is a tense night for at least 36 Kashmiri Pandit families in Delhi. Yesterday (June 26th, 2010) morning bulldozers of MCD demolished their shops secretly with heavy Police deployment. They were not even warned to remove their belongings, not even the power supply was cut; which also resulted into a minor fire in few shops which was later doused by fellow shopkeepers and the as usual late fire brigade. Apparently for a road to be broadened for the upcomingCommonwealth Games.

The deserted look of Taploo Market just adjacent to the famous INA Market and right opposite Dilli Haat is terrible. It might not matter to us, demolition might be a daily routine in Delhi - most of which consists of illegal colonies and other such constructions. Sadly the government doesn't dare touch such illegal constructions because of obvious money laundering and mafia rule.

This tragedy is a grim reminder of the exodus of 1990 to these 36 families. In this hour of pain, we as a community need to support and stand hand in hand with our brothers in need.

The shop owners have all legal documents to prove their right over their ownership of these 6 by 7 area shops. Intrestingly, the honorable Courts have almost always favoured these shop owners and even called them Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs), instead of the usual tag of 'Migrants' by the Government agencies.

No relocation plan or compensation has been promised for the victims who lie helpless on the pavements

Two people stand around demolished shops.

Shop owners sitting near the broken structure of their shops.

Some parts of the rubble.

Shop owners find space to sit around in between broken rubble.

A man looks through the rubble of the demolished shops.

A broken shop display board on the road among the rubble reads 'Kaul Sons'.

A victim shop owner sitting besides the rubble of his shop in a praying gesture.

Kashmiri Pandits living in exile stage protest, demand IDP status

Govt Ignored us, Kashmiri Pandits allege 

Protest on World Refugees Day


Ruchika Rai - The Times of India

New Delhi: On the occasion of World Refugees Day, members of Roots in Kashmir — a worldwide youth initiative of Kashmiri Pandits — came together at Jantar Mantar to protest against the indifference of the Indian government to their plight. It has been over two decades since the Kashmiri Pandits were forced to leave their land, following the atrocities of Islamist terrorists. However, both the government and political parties have ‘‘ignored our cause because we are scattered and less in number, thus not fit to be an important votebank,’’ said Rashneek Kher, founder member of Roots in Kashmir.

     The protesters demanded the status of Internally Displaced Persons. ‘‘This will get us international access and aid. The government has turned a blind eye to the exodus of over five lakh Kashmiri Pandits. At least international agencies should be allowed to look into the matter and save our identity. A committee should be constituted to probe into the matter and bring out the true story,’’ said Kher.

     The agitators also urged the media to take up the issue with more vigour. ‘‘The media is full of stories about refugees from all over the world. Only we are ignored. This is a case of ethnic cleansing and the attack on Kashmiri Pandits was indeed an attack on the presence of India in Kashmir,’’ said an angry Lalit Ambardar, who has been pursuing the cause for many years.

     Payal, a banker by profession, was there to support her husband. ‘‘I am a Rajasthani but I can relate to my husband’s struggle to go back to his homeland. Even as a parent I want to make sure that my children have a sense of belonging to Kashmir. After all, that’s where they belong.’’

     And the issue is not only about those who were ousted from the place of their birth. People who were educated enough were able to find jobs in the cities and are living a near-normal life, but almost 50,000 Kashmiri Pandits, who did not have the resources, are still living a miserable life in the valley. ‘‘There is just one toilet for every 100 persons and the death to birth ratio is as high as 14:3. We need an answer to all this,’’ said Kher. 

A Kashmiri Hindu or Pandit attends a rally to mark the "World Refugee Day" in New Delhi June 20, 2010. Two decades after they were forced to flee Kashmir, thousands of Hindu Pandits seek to return to their ancestral homeland, their hopes lifted by a fall in Islamist rebel attacks against New Delhi's rule.

Photograph by Reuters

Displaced Kashmiri Pandits seek special status

IANS

Over 150 Kashmiri Pandits, along with members of civil society, held a silent protest at the Jantar Mantar here Sunday and demanded that the government recognise them as internally displaced persons (IDPs).

The protesters, including children, students and professionals, were dressed in their traditional firhan attire and wore headbands. The children wore dresses with 'Born in exile' written on them.

'We wore white firhans which signified the death of this (Kashmiri Pandit) community and headbands on which was written 'Ignored'. This is how we feel, ignored and left out,' said Rashneek Kher, one of the organisers from Roots in Kashmir, a global youth initiative of Kashmiri Pandits.

The group demanded that they be recognised not as migrants but as IDP's citing the fact that they were forced to leave their homes and did not come to Delhi or other cities willingly.

'The IDP recognition will help us get international attention and our rehabilitation and relief work will then be taken care by the United Nation Human Rights Council (UNHRC) and not the government of India, which has not done much for us since the last 21 years of our forced exile,' added Kher.

'We want to be identified,' was written on many placards amongst others held by the protesters.

Amal Magazine, a protester, said that by terming them migrants, the Indian government was robbing them of their identity.

'We are refugees not migrants. Give us that identity. If the prime minister can ask the Sri Lankan government to give the Tamils in the island country IDP status, then why not us? We were thrown out of our own homes just because we called ourselves Indians,' Magazine told IANS.

'I am very worried about the new generation. Using guns to do the talking is not a part of our culture. The impression that the young get now is that our silent protests is of no use. When there is violence, people wake up. If the government doesn't pay attention to us, there may be serious repercussions,' said Veerji Wangoo, another protester.

There are around 100,000 Kashmiri Pandits in the Delhi and the National Capital Region (NCR).

'According to government figures, there were approximately 4.5 lakh who were displaced during the exodus in the early 1990s from the Valley. Some were not registered, so I asume there are more,' said Kher.

The protesters also demanded setting up of a commission to probe the exodus, its reasons and the exact number of 'refugees'.

Kashmiri pandits stage protest demanding IDP status

PTI
New Delhi, Jun 20 (PTI) Kashmiri Pandits today staged a demonstration here to demand status of Internally Displaced People (IDP) claiming that they were forced to flee the Kashmir Valley in 1990s in the aftermath of insurgency.
Clad in white firhans and sporting head bands, over 100 Kashmiri Pandits staged a protest march here against the"treatment meted out"to them by the Government."Today being the World Refugees Day, a lot of attention will be paid to plight of refugees in the country. Our main aim is to bring to public focus the circumstances Kashmiri Pandits live in today,"said Rashneek Kher, the founder member of Roots In Kashmir, a global youth initiative of Kashmiri Pandits living in exile, that spear-headed the protest march.

He said that among other things, his team sought to push the government to grant IDP status. Thousands of Kashmiri Pandits fled the Valley in the 1990s when insurgency was at its peak."In 1989, about 14,000 Pandits were in government job in the state and today their number is only 1500. These figures reflect the sad state of the community,"said Rashneek.

The protesters expressed their disappointment over the Government's"apathy"to their cause."We are still classified as migrants by the Government which is a gross violation of the UN Charter for Refugees,"alleged Amal Magazine, a Pandit residing in Faridabad.

"A migrant is someone who has willingly come out of a place but the truth is that we have been pushed out of the state. The administration should show a little more consideration,"he added.

Many of the protestors also pointed to"disparity in the differential treatment"by the Government to the refugees in the country."Sri Lankan Tamils were given refugee status within six months, while we are being ignored for the last two decades. It was the Government's duty to protect the Pandits in Kashmir. Since they failed to do that, the least they can do is grant us the refugee status,"said Sincad Kachroo, a member of Roots In Kashmir.

Plight of the Pandits; Silence of the Pundits by Chidanand Rajghatta(TOI)

The World Refugees Day is coming up again on June 20 and Lalit Koul is
making the rounds of Washington DC wonks and writers, lawmakers and
legislative aides, just as he did before World Human Rights Day on December
10 and the Kashmiri Pandits’ Exodus Day on January 19. In a city where every
cause has a proponent, every émigré and exile has an advocate, “we are
nobody’s children,” he complains. He can’t even rustle up a decent
demonstration on the Hill or in front of the White House. The best he can do
is drum up an occasional letter of support from a Congressman or schedule
the screening of a documentary to highlight his community’s plight. It has
an eloquent title: “...And the world remained silent.”

Some two decades after nearly half a million Kashmiri Pandits were
expelled from what were their homes for millennia, Koul and a small band of
his activist colleagues are fighting to keep world attention alive to their
cause. It’s hard; seemingly hopeless. In a city where Palestinians, Kurds,
Tibetans, Armenians, Burmese and dozens of other ethnic nationalities and
sub-nationalities are fighting for attention, the Pandit cause is just
another blip on the human rights radar. “We don’t have the backing of
Pakistan nor the funding of petrodollars,” says Koul, an info-tech
professional who heads the Indian-American Kashmir Forum, referring
obliquely to the support Kashmiri Muslims get from Islamabad and elsewhere,
“We are just falling through the cracks.”

Indeed, for the 1,500-strong Pandit community scattered across the
United States, it’s not so galling that they have no traction in America as
much as the neglect they say they suffer in India. When India itself is not
moved by half a million Pandits expelled from their homes and turns its back
on 50,000 lodged in refugee camps in the capital, why blame America — or
expats here, they say. It’s like Bhopal: when the people of

India, and their political and judicial representatives, sold them cheap,
why blame others? They rage against Indian civil society, which they say is
all a-bleeding about Kashmiri Muslims, but is unmoved by the plight of the
Pandits. And they note with more than a hint of bitterness that the
government of the day is pressing for rehabilitation of Tamil refugees in
Sri Lanka while concern for Pandits fades.

Their one hope is that like Palestine and Bhopal, the issue will
re-ignite somehow, catch world attention, and activists will pick up their
cause with renewed energy. The genocide of Kashmiri Pandits happened before
the internet age or instant 24/7 television. There were no TV cameras when
the judges and academics were murdered by Islamic militants with the stark
message — get out of Kashmir. There was no Facebook and Twitter and no viral
messaging.

Now technologies and techniques are available, but they lack benefactors
and big name support. The 1,500 Pandits in the US came mostly as students
and professionals, not as political refugees, and so lacked the voice and
the drama that asylum seekers bring. Most of them are too busy making a
career and home to spare time and bandwidth for their homeland.

In fact, some years back there was a poignant situation when a certain
Vikram Pandit became the top honcho of Citibank. Initial joy that finally
one of their own had risen to top of the corporate ladder and might be the
benefactor (in terms of face and voice if not with finance) they were
looking for was followed by dismay when they discovered that he was not from
Kashmir, but from Nagpur; “a Pandit by name, not by blood.”

Indeed, there is a sense of irony that even as the Pandit issue is
fading from the world’s conscience, the term Pandit is more in use than ever
before in the US — where it is spelt “Pundit”. If Koul and his fellow
activists could collect a dollar for every time the term was bandied about,
they would be lolling in lolly. TV talking heads and op-ed columnists are
now routinely referred to as Pundits, and there is a whole new media
subculture of Punditocracy, a term used to describe a group of powerful and
influential political commentators. From a book titled Sound and Fury: The
Making of Punditocracy to the website punditicracywatch.com, it is a much
overused term. Not a day passes without the tribe pontificating on issues
ranging from Obama and the BP oil spill to the Gores’ divorce to World Cup
soccer. Everything, except the plight of the people who gave them the word.
•
chidanand.rajgha...@timesgroup.com

June 20- World Refugee Day

It is ironical that when the Srilankan President came to India recently everyone right from the Prime Minister to the local Tamil politicians stressed on him to ensure rehabiliation of seventy odd thousand Tamil refugees who had to flee Jafna when Srilankan army annihilated the LTTE.Yet when it comes to its own refugess who are numerically much higher than those of Tamils and have been living as refugees now for more than two decades the same milk of human kindness seems to have dried completely.
We the original inhabitants of the Kashmir valley are now in the 21st year of our being refugees in our nation.Pity we dont even get the lip service that the Tamils of a different nation get from our Prime Minister and our politicians.
20th June marks the World Refugee Day and brings to focus the plight of refugees across the globe.On that day newspapers in our country would be full of heart rending stories of people who are refugees from Waziristan,Serbia,Iraq and even Albanians but alas there will be no mention of us.

The silence that marks our being refugees actually is an iconvenient truth that our politicians our media and our secular polity are unable to come to terms with hence they push it under the carpet.
Let us all on this day register our being refugees in our own land,the forgotten refugees,the inconvienent truth and the shame of our nation.

Roots in Kashmir requests you to be there at Jantar Mantar on 20th June,2010,Sunday at 4 PM.

Be there...let this nation know we exist.

-
Sinead Kachroo- 9717058747
Sanjay Peshin - 9910394999