The valley is again on boil, this time protesting the killings of innocent men. A worrying trend is that youth seem to be the prime target of “security forces”. Youth being at the forefront of most of the protests and demonstrations in the valley is becoming an easy target for these forces who leave no stone unturned in using force, be it lathi-charge, tear-gas shells (killer shells) or for that matter guns, batons or bullets to quill the voice of dissent.
In a democratic set-up, which India claims to have in place, it is the democratic right of the people to register their disagreement. Protests and demonstrations are an effective means to do this. India which claims to be guardian of human rights or for that matter the upholder of animal rights is unarguably losing that status in Kashmir valley where its men in uniform are involved in heinous human rights violations. The centre government needs to re-look its policies viz-a-viz Kashmir. By no stretch of imagination can the killings of the people mostly comprising young men who were done to death by the armed forces in the past couple of weeks be justified. This is indeed because of the immunity given to them by the AFSPA (Armed forces special powers act) which protects these men from any kind of criminal proceedings and thus gives them the criminal license to kill and yet go unquestioned. As long as the inhuman laws like AFSPA and PSA (Public Safety Act) remain in place the men in uniform will enjoy the protection and the valley will continue to loose its innocent men. To make the armed forces more accountable for their actions and let the peace to prevail the government in power needs to fight tooth and nail to get the draconian laws like the AFSPA and PSA revoked or amended. Should the state government be able to do so it will certainly regain the trust of the people who else seem to foresee the recapitulation of the Ikhwan Raj which prevailed in the mid 1990’s when the NC was in power.

Muzamil Makhdoomi
Research Scholar
Department of Biochemistry
University of Kashmir.
muzamilbiochem@gmail.com

Lastupdate on : Sat, 3 Jul 2010 21:30:00 Makkah time
Lastupdate on : Sat, 3 Jul 2010 18:30:00 GMT
Lastupdate on : Sun, 4 Jul 2010 00:00:00 IST