Srinagar, Oct 26: Under attack over her statements on Kashmir, writer Arundhati Roy Tuesday said she only spoke what “millions of people” in Kashmir have been saying everyday for years. “Pity the nation that has to silence its writers for speaking their minds,” Roy said in a statement from Srinagar where she is on a visit.
“Pity the nation that needs to jail those who ask for justice while communal killers, mass murderers, corporate scamsters, looters, rapists, and those who prey on the poorest of the poor, roam free,” she said. Her statement came against the backdrop of the government contemplating taking action against her and Hurriyat leader Syed Ali Shah Geelani under charges of sedition and seeking legal opinion in this regard.
Roy has made two speeches in New Delhi and Srinagar in the past few days in which she sought independence for Kashmir from India.
The writer said she has read in newspapers that she may be arrested on charges of sedition for her remarks supporting Azadi for Kashmir.
“I said what millions of people here say every day. I said what I as well as other commentators have written and said for years.
“Anybody who cares to read the transcripts of my speeches will see that they were fundamentally a call for justice. I spoke about justice for the people of Kashmir who live under one of the most brutal military occupations in the world,” she said.
“I spoke for Kashmiri Pandits who live out the tragedy of having been driven out of their homeland; for Dalit soldiers killed in Kashmir whose graves I visited on garbage heaps in their villages in Cuddalore; for the Indian poor who pay the price of this occupation in material ways and who are now learning to live in the terror of what is becoming a police state,” she said.
Roy, a Booker Prize-winning author, said at a seminar in Srinagar on Sunday that “Kashmir has never been an integral part of India - it is a historical fact. Even the Indian government has accepted this.”
She had also alleged that India had become a “colonising power” soon after its independence from British rule.”
“Yesterday I travelled to Shopian, the apple-town in South Kashmir which had remained closed for 47 days last year in protest against the brutal rape and murder of Asiya and Nilofer, the young women whose bodies were found in a shallow stream near their homes and whose murderers have still not been brought to justice. I met Shakeel, who is Nilofer’s husband and Asiya’s brother. We sat in a circle of people crazed with grief and anger who had lost hope that they would ever get Insaf—justice—from India, and now believed that Azadi—freedom— was their only hope. I met young stonepelters who had been shot through their eyes. I travelled with a young man who told me how three of his friends, teenagers in Islamabad district, had been taken into custody and had their finger-nails pulled out as punishment for throwing stones,” said Arundhati in her statement today.
“In the papers some have accused me of giving ‘hate-speeches’, of wanting India to break up. On the contrary, what I say comes from love and pride. It comes from not wanting people to be killed, raped, imprisoned or have their finger-nails pulled out in order to force them to say they are Indians. It comes from wanting to live in a society that is striving to be a just one,” Arundhati said.

Lastupdate on : Tue, 26 Oct 2010 21:30:00 Makkah time
Lastupdate on : Tue, 26 Oct 2010 18:30:00 GMT
Lastupdate on : Wed, 27 Oct 2010 00:00:00 IST