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Indian troops, Kashmir protesters clash as top rebel killed

UN resolution on Kashmir ? The right of determination that you have been violating since 47?
UN resolution also says that Pakistan must vacate its part of occupied Kashmir for right of determination to start, when are you guys planning on doing that. Because it seems you guys are preventing Kashmiris from their GUARANTEED right for self determination as per UN
 
Satire but unfortunately it will be true

Five people turn up at the funeral of Nobel Prize winner in Kashmir
Published on July 9, 2016by manithan

Srinagar: Nobel Prize Winner for Literature, Mir Hamid Qureshi, aged 56, passed away yesterday due to heart attack.

Mir Hamid was portrayed as a famous face in the valley by the Indian media for the past 20 years, but most of his books were used by the Kashmiris to wrap around a stone before pelting it. Many Kashmiris do not know of him and had never heard about his achievements in the field of Literature.


“Indian news channels are planning to show the crowd gathered for slain terrorist as that of Nobel Prize winner’s, to convince Indians that Kashmiris are peaceful people who hate terrorists”, claimed the cameraman who returned few hours later.

“Nobal? Cricket? Even India cheetad our pious biraders from Bangladesh last year with that Nobal. Why does he got prize because of Nobal? Also, we know only Zaid Hamid, not what you said Hamid!”, wondered one University graduate from the city here.

When we reached his home, where his body was kept for public viewing, we realised the real meaning behind the term ‘public viewing’. The whole street was so empty that even people walking few miles away can still see his body. It was a total shock to see the situation unfolding before our eyes. Because back home, in Delhi, news channels were showing photos of Mir Hamid and excerpts from his books were praised. Many Intellectuals belonging to the Award Wapsi brigade were extolling his works and few even cried on the live relay. “Kashmir lost a jewel today. Whole of Kashmir is crying”, tweeted Burqa Butt, a famous Kashmiri cheerleader.

Confirming whether we had arrived at the correct address, we entered the small house of Mir Hamid. His lifeless body was kept in middle of hall and around four people were sitting around him. We pulled one man named Ahmed from that ‘crowd’ and asked him few words about the Nobel Prize winner.

“Chup! I came here to get back the five thousand rupees that I had lent him once. You see two of his daughters. I had been asking them from morning and they aren’t even turning my side. If they do not give me back my money, I will take that Nowall medal from that table.”, an angry Ahmed stared at the medal and then at Mir.

Unwilling to disturb the legend’s daughter, we met with another woman sitting on one corner. We were shocked when she introduced herself as CBNC news reporter. She further said, “I should have realized when they did not show footage of his funeral. Fooled by coverage down south, we thought we will have a big crowd for his funeral and can do a one hour story on it. But, only when we landed here, we got a bite of reality. The cameraman left with the van to cover a crowded funeral for a slain terrorist, two kilometers from here. So, I am waiting here for him to return.”

“His daughters do not have four people to take him to graveyard. That is why, the funeral is still going on. Can you please lend a hand?”, asked the same journalist.
 
Valley of 'martyrs': Burhan Wani, like others before him, knew he was going to his death
In the local imagination, the new militancy in South Kashmir is about a doomed struggle against an oppressive state.
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Image credit: Danish Ismail/Reuters
Ipsita Chakravarty and Rayan Naqash
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Burhan Muzaffar Wani, aged 21, was killed in an encounter in Kokernag in South Kashmir on Friday. The Hizbul Mujahideen commander had left his home in Tral at the age of 16. Few expected him to survive this long.

Most militants from South Kashmir join up knowing they will die in a few months or a year. Days before Wani was killed, a police officer described him as "a commander without an army". Almost all his close associates had been taken out by security forces.

One of them lies in the Martyrs Graveyard in Karimabad, a village in South Kashmir's Pulwama district. Twenty-nine-year-old Naseer Ahmed Pandit was a police constable who absconded with a gun on March 28, 2015. He was killed by security forces in April. Waseem Malla, another local militant, died along with him.

Till a few days ago, a banner was strung up on a tree above the graves, filled with pictures of Pandit. Large crowds had turned out at the funerals and militants reportedly sent their comrades off with a gun salute. That night, unidentified people went on a rampage in the graveyard, flattening many of the tombstones. Locals allege security forces were behind it. This week, the army reportedly took down the banners. It led to clashes between security forces and locals, angered by the desecration of a revered landmark.

Now there will be another grave in South Kashmir, another site where mourners will gather with tributes. Of all the local militants who joined up in the last few years, Burhan Wani was the most famous.

Two generations

Two rows of tombstones line the Martyrs Graveyard in Karimabad. In front, white marble slabs bearing dates from the 1990s. Behind them, gleaming black stones bearing more recent dates, from 2015, 2016. Two rows, two generations of young men who were claimed by militancy. Karimabad, a quiet village of 581 families, has lost 24 youths to the armed struggle in the last 25 years.

In the late-1980s and 1990s, they took up arms to fight for azadi, freedom, various shades of it. It ranged from the avowedly secular Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front’s aim of an independent Kashmir to the Hizbul Mujahideen’s dream of merging with Pakistan to the Lashkar-e-Taiba’s fevered visions of an Islamic state.

But the men who left two decades later, abandoning comfortable homes, jobs or college degrees, what of them? As the idea of azadi aged in the Kashmir Valley, it ran up against the might of the Indian state, which clamped down on the armed movement as well as civil protests. It has given rise to a dour militancy, whose immediate objective is to resist the state. Ask the families of militants why their sons left home, ask former militants why they decided to run away, ask ordinary people in south Kashmir why they support militancy and you promptly hear one word: “zulm”, oppression. “Azadi” comes later.

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The Martyrs Graveyard in Karimabad, in South Kashmir. Credit: Sameer Mushtaq.
Zulm

In the Kashmir Valley, zulm is not just something oppressors do. It is a sense of subjugation, of being under siege, that has become a condition of life. “Zulm is a loaded term in Kashmir,” said Suhail Masoodi, director of the Centre for Research and Development Policy in Srinagar. “It has become a language. Anything that people feel has an adverse impact is called zulm, from the larger level to the smaller.”

An age-old sense of being wronged has become part of a new political vocabulary. According to some histories that circulate in the Valley, Kashmir has been occupied for centuries, first by the Mughals conquerors, then by the Afghan invaders, then the Sikhs, then the Dogras and, finally, the Indian state, commonly called the “Markaz", or Centre, working its stratagems from Delhi.

“After the Mughals, Kashmir lost its independence, it became connected to the Lahore sultanate,” a historian in Srinagar said in passing, while speaking of other things. Centuries later, while other parts of India fought for independence from the British, Kashmir sought to be free of the Dogras. But after 1947, the Dogras transferred power to Delhi. And so, according to many Kashmiris, the “occupation” continued.

“If the 1947 issue hadn’t happened then where would the zulm arise?” demanded Nisar Ahmed Parray, whose brother, Ishaq “Newton” Parray, joined the Hizbul Mujahideen and was killed in an encounter this year. “Kashmir said resolve the issue, but neither India nor Pakistan will listen. We Kashmiris are being ground between the two.”

After the rise of militancy in 1989, zulm acquired new resonances. Delhi rushed in the army and various paramilitaries and imposed the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act in 1990. It ushered in an era of civilian massacres, enforced disappearances, illegal detentions, torture centres, alleged fake encounters and mass rapes.

These incidents are recounted over and over again in the Valley, a well-worn litany of wrongs. In Bijbehara, where the Border Security Force gunned down at least 51 unarmed protesters in 1993, a graveyard came up overnight in what had once been a park. “Lest we forget," says a memorial plaque laid by Mohammad Yaseen Malik, president of the JKLF. A description of the massacre follows, though the words have faded over time. But a witness to the massacre still tells his son what he saw – broken bodies, pools of blood, a teenaged uncle clutching his torn stomach and crying that his parents would scold him for joining the protests that day.

After the militancy was crushed by security forces, a new generation of Kashmiris grew up without any personal experience of crackdowns and massacres. That changed with the protests of 2008 and 2010, when thousands of stone pelters took to the streets and security forces returned the volley of rocks with gunfire. In the summer of 2010, over 100 people were killed, many of them teenagers. In October 2010,Burhan Wani left his home in Tral to join the Hizbul Mujahideen.

In recent years, agitation by human rights groups have sharpened awareness about these violations. Today, “zulm” is embodied by the heavy security presence, the barbed wires and guns that bristle at busy markets. The word is applied to a range of experiences, from violent encounters with the army and police to curbs on the internet to barricades across a street.

“People say Kashmiris have become zulm parast (accepting of tyranny),” sighed Masoodi.

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Credit: Rayan Naqash
Police encounters

Yet zulm, the overarching political word, can also be used to elide more specific charges of torture, illegal detention and custodial death. “It is a common term given to all sorts of things,” said one senior police officer from South Kashmir. “Say we get to know there is movement of militants in a vehicle – everybody has to be checked. That checking becomes zulm. I have not seen any unnecessary arrest or unnecessary torture.”

Another security official voiced concerns about human rights violations and the impunity extended to colleagues. But the lines of responsibility led straight to the top, he said, and who dared bring the most senior officials to account? Meanwhile, every other person in the Valley seems to have a personal story of harassment or violence at the hands of the police, including the youth who later became militants.

Twenty-one-year-old Omais Ahmed Sheikh of Chatapora and 17-year-old Adil Sheikh of Bijbehara, were former stone pelters. Adil, killed in an encounter last November, had a stone pelting case against him from 2010, when he had not even reached his teens. His father would accompany him to the court for hearings. Twice, he was detained by the police for a day. Once for wearing his hair long and once for staring at a Special Operations Group personnel, his father said.

Then there was Naseer Ahmed Pandit from Karimabad village of Pulwama district. A constable with the Jammu and Kashmir Armed Police, he was posted in Srinagar to provide security for Altaf Bukhari, a minister from the People's Democratic Party. Earlier, Pandit had been troubled by drug dealers operating in Pulwama district and appealed to the local police to act against them. “They told him, you make some money and give us some of the money,” recalled his father, Ghulam Rasool Pandit. When Pandit did not listen, they called him to the Pulwama police station one night and beat him up.

“When he came back, people used laugh at him in the village,” said Naseer Pandit’s cousin, Zubair Pandit. “Police hoke police ke pitai khaya [you’re a policeman and yet you got beaten up by the police]. That was when he said, I had a Hindustani weapon in my hand, now I will have a Pakistani weapon.” Weeks after the incident and just two weeks after being posted in Srinagar, Naseer Pandit went missing with two rifles. He resurfaced later as the new trainer for the Hizbul Mujahideen.

Burhan and Khalid

Most famously, Burhan Wani and his brother, Khalid, were stopped by policemen and beaten up by security forces when they went out for a picnic one day. Muzaffar Wani, their father and the principal of a local government school, recounted the incident a few weeks ago, sitting in the sunny family home in Tral. “Khalid was older, he showed patience,” he said. “Burhan was young. That’s when he decided to fight the army. We tried to make him understand. We said we’d send him away to Aligarh, to London, he could study. But he wouldn’t listen. Every evening, he would eat his meal and he would say, I was going my own way, why did they beat me? When he didn’t come home one evening, we knew.”

One afternoon last April, Khalid came home with biryani and some meat, which he got cooked. He then went out again, telling his mother he was going for a picnic. Muzaffar Wani was still at the school when he heard there had been firing in the jungles beyond Tral and a Pakistani militant had been killed. He did not pay much attention to it. Later in the evening, a boy went to their home and reported what he had heard at the police station – Burhan Wani’s brother had been killed. It still didn’t register. “His mother had told me that he had gone for a picnic,” said Muzaffar Wani. “But then a second boy came and said he was dead. Then I don’t remember.”

He fell silent for a moment. Then he spoke slowly: “They did not shoot him. They hit him in the back of the head with a rifle butt. There are two pictures of him. In one, you can see his face, blood running down it. In the other, his chin and forehead are bandaged. He did not have a single tooth left.”

The army claimed Khalid Wani had been "operating as an over-ground worker" for the Hizbul and was killed in an encounter. Locals say he was followed because they knew he was going to meet his younger brother. On the day of Khalid’s funeral, two other boys from Tral left to become militants.

Incidents like Khalid Wani’s death and Naseer Pandit’s beating have focused anger on men in uniform. In May and June, policemen were targeted in Srinagar and Anantnag. A couple of weeks ago, the Hizbul Mujahideen put out a notice telling people to stay away from army bunkers and warning that they would intensify attacks in the run-up to Eid. Only a few days later, militants ambushed paramilitary forces in Pampore, killing eight.

The martyrs

“The children who leave, they don't want to be leaders or heroes,” said Muzaffar Wani. “They are drawn to death.”

Most of the new militants of South Kashmir are barely out of their teens and will never live to be adults. It has created the image of a doomed army of youth dashing itself against the wall of the Indian state, with or without the hope of azadi. The sense of historical wrong, says Masoodi, has been overtaken by a narrative of sacrifice.

Friends and families of militants insist the driving force behind this armed struggle is the idea of resistance against an oppressive state. But the terms of this resistance are very often religious. "Islam stands for justice here," explained Masoodi. "And those who fight for it will go to jannat (paradise)." So the local word for militant is “mujahid”, he who struggles in the name of Allah and Islam. And descriptions of what motivated these boys to take up arms range from the quasi-mystical to the explicitly religious.

Newton was the pious introvert who wept over atrocities he read about in the papers. Naseer Pandit was the crusader who fought corruption. His father said he knew Pandit would not come back, he had joined with a certain “zehniyat (mentality)”, as if prepared to die. The father of Omais Ahmed, who joined the Lashkar-e-Toiba last May and was killed in December, has no doubts about what war his son was fighting. “There is zulm here,” he said, “and those Muslims who understand the Quran must be prepared for jihad. Omais understood it.”

Finally, militants are never simply killed in the Valley, they become “shaheed” or martyrs. Pictures and videos of dashing militants often lead into a tragic sequel – pictures of the mutilated militant body. A friend of Omais Ahmed, for instance, flips out his cell phone to show old pictures. There are photographs of the gangly schoolboy, then the buff fighter in combat gear and finally, the bloodied corpse.

Suffering is persistently memorialised in the Valley. It is remembered through pictures, through accounts of encounters and massacres, through vast public funerals and descriptions of such funerals that linger for years, through martyrs’ graveyards scattered across the Valley. It is a grim and deliberate remembering, which has often fed the fires of a violent struggle
 
In the Entire Human History no country has ever been able to suppress the freedom of the majority no matter how strong they were.... I highly doubt India will be able to change the history ....Kashmir will be free in coming future ... it is not an easy job.... nor will it ever be obtained overnight .... it took us short of 100 years to get freedom from British Empire ... The writing on the wall is clear ... all you have to do is just read.
 
Nothing special......
Just Indian military doing routine work.
Hope revenge will be taken ten folds ....
Many Burhan will appear .......
You cannot kill an idea..... and he was one.
And what was the idea
 
Yes, in killings of all terrorists in Kashmir

As per your Official reports there were just 200 fighters. I wonder how much wud it take your Bahadur Sena to complete the tally?
 
As per your Official reports there were just 200 fighters. I wonder how much wud it take your Bahadur Sena to complete the tally?
Care to point out the report.
The only regret is instead of an AK, a carl gustav should have put this one down.
 
As per your Official reports there were just 200 fighters. I wonder how much wud it take your Bahadur Sena to complete the tally?
It will take some time as all those cowards are either hiding among civilians or in jungle
 
Care to point out the report.

Sure Sir. My pleasure. Here is the extract:

"GOC of Army's 15 Corps, Lieutenant General Satish Kumar Dua while speaking to reporters on the sidelines of a function at the inauguration of Nawjawan Club for Youth at High Ground Anantnag in South Kashmir said that over 200 militants are active in Kashmir Valley, but SFs are maintaining pressure on them to ensure peaceful conduct of various functions in the Valley. "There are around 220 militants, over 200 militants in Kashmir", he said."

http://www.satp.org/satporgtp/countries/india/states/jandk/timeline/

Just to make it easy plz scroll to Jan 28, last para.
 
The quotes, the comments, the explosion of collective anguish, the outrage, the rage reflecting the undisguised frustration and the clinging to that one fallen, illusive dream, it would appear that certain people are almost preparing to fight India to the last Kashmiri.

When looked in that light, the wishes and prayers appear more affected, insincere, cynical; less moral but perhaps more ruthlessly practical. Well, I suppose that is to be expected; the alternative being going to war with India, a rhetoric more hollow than pragmatic.

But anyways, our prayers (hopefully) and our lead(most definitely) are with the dead. The promised appointment with God has been delivered, now unto God to judge them.
 
Burhan Muzaffar Wani is the Bhagat Singh of occupied Kashmir

Although the people of Kashmir are ready to demand their freedom by using whatever means available, they do not want conflict. The suffocating presence of the Indian Army, however, will not allow peace to prevail in the region

December 11, 2015, 5:10 pm/ 8 Comments
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http://nation.com.pk/Blogger/zargar-yasir
Zargar Yasir





Burhan Muzaffar Wani is a heroic rebel who has been resisting the Indian state in Jammu and Kashmir in the mesh of Tral’s forests. Wani took up militancy when he and his brother were harassed by the Indian Army. He has, since then, been causing the Indian authority a lot of grief. He has given thousands of army personnel sleepless nights.

A few months ago, his brother was killed by Indian forces. “His head was smashed and teeth broken. There was no bullet injury on his body. He was tortured to death,” Muzaffar Wani told reporters.

Some time ago, a video of Burhan Muzaffar Wani, a well-known wanted rebel, was circulating on the internet, in which Burhan and his companions were seen wearing the army uniform and carrying the famous gun AK-47 in their arms.

The video caught international attention, and in parts of India people accused them of terrorist activities. Some called them traitors, and chastised them for spreading terrorism on the land known for its natural beauty. For that section of Indian society, they were terrorists

However, as the infamous Gerald Seymour has said, “Someone’s terrorist is another’s martyr”. For the people of Kashmir, they are “mujahideen”, who are fighting for a cause, for the oppressed people.

The 'true patriots' of India can call them traitors or terrorists but it carries no hard feeling for the patriot born on the land illegally occupied by India. No wonder that they, in general, blame the people of Kashmir for supporting terrorism and terrorists. It has never put us off, as we believe they too were given the same name, when they were under the British rule.

Wani’s struggle is reminiscent of an Indian’s struggle who continues to live on in the pages of history: Bhagat Singh. He took up arms against British imperialism and was considered as a miscreant by the British rulers. The local Indians, however, revered him as a hero.

Burhan, in his video, called upon the youth of Kashmir to join them. He ardently stated that they were in a state of war with India, and now their tolerance was waning.

He said, “We should unite for the sake of our motherland which has been oppressed for the last 60 years.”

When Indian media took notice of it, they carried the horrific headlines for them. They called them ISI agents sponsored by Pakistan to abrupt peace in Valley.

In the videos, we saw a group of young and educated boys from Kashmir who joined Burhan in his freedom cause. They believe that they, one day, will achieve martyrdom and will be remembered by the coming generations of Kashmir. This may sound absurd to many people but in places like Palestine and Kashmir, this feeling reverberates through every street.

In the southern part of Kashmir, known as a hotbed for rebels, every month a young, educated boy is joining jihadist organisations like Lashkar-e-Taiba and Hizbul Mujahideen to fight against the Indian army. The Indian forces are adopting new strategies to tackle the situation but they haven’t been successful, with Kashmiris sacrificing their kith and kin for their cause. The Pulwama district, in the southern part of Kashmir, is especially known for it.

There is a famous saying in Kashmir: if Kashmir gets freedom, then the 1st place which will achieve it will be Tral, a small hamker of Pulwama. Tral is an Islamic place, a hub of Jamat-e-Islami, where each house can boast of a martyr. There is another saying: not a single day goes by which could be commemorated as a bloodless day in the history of Tral.

In several encounters with the Indian military, some of Wani’s friends were eliminated and were given dignified funerals by the people of Kashmir. The overwhelming response by people on the funeral compels many people to fight for the Kashmir cause. Amidst sobs and cries, people shouted anti-India slogans.

It is interesting to note that Israel, despite bombarding the life out of Palestine, has not been called a terrorist nation. Similarly, the Paris attacks led to a global outrage, but French bombing in Syria is largely left out of humanitarian discourse. There are no hashtags for collateral damage.

Moreover, the world has not raised its voice in unison against the Bijbehara massacre, the Gaw Kadal massacre, Chattisinghpora massacre and the list goes on. The brides were raped, the grooms were killed but nobody across the world uttered a single word regarding this. My words may be harsh but the tragedies like Kunan Poshpora sparks fire in my blood.

The people of Kashmir do not need any ulterior reason to join guerrilla war. Tragedies like Kunan Pushpora (mass rape) push them to join in a fight against India and its army. The young guns of Kashmir, when they face the armed brutality, shift their career opportunity and join rebel organizations. I have hundreds of stories to narrate of how army has killed innocent people in the name of terrorism. The brutality by them at several places like Tral, Trehgam, Sopore, Kupwara push people to retaliate back against the action done by Indian army.

Wani endured horrific brutality, which motivates him to oppose the Indian occupation. He inspires bravery in the young guns of Kashmir. Recently, a 10th grader, known as “Newton of Tral” has joined his movement. The young boys believe only on one thing, “Freedom is never given by oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed”.

Although the people of Kashmir are ready to demand their freedom by using whatever means available, they do not want conflict. The suffocating presence of the Indian Army, however, will not allow peace to prevail in the region. What Kashmir needs is a solution that is bred out of inclusive politics, not hostile militarism.
 

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