Rameez Makhdoomi
India drumbeats on planet earth that it is the biggest democracy of planet earth. But in Kashmir the behavior of state seems brutally unexplainable and this has turned Kashmir into a virtual Nazi Concentration camp. Eyesight is the most precious gift bestowed to mankind from God but for people who have no sight or limited sight because of a birth defect, disease, or an accident, all of life’s experiences are dimmed and virtually meaningless. But in Kashmir the new method of torture invented has been smashing eyesight via pellet guns thus ruining their entire world.
In fact the tragic tales are many as we have awoken to the recent grim reality of another Downtown boy losing his precious eyesight to indiscriminate use of pellet guns. This is not an isolated case .In 2010, Amir Kabir, 18, of Baramulla suffered a serious eye injury when security forces fired pellets to quell a stone-pelting mob on September. Similarly Mushtaq, a class IX student, lost an eye when he was hit by a marble hurled by a security man. A survey of 2010 by a team of doctors at Ophthalmology Department of Government Medical College had shown that at least 60 persons lost their eyesight because of the pellet guns, slingshots and tear smoke canisters used to quell the protests. Of the 60 cases, 75% were aged 16-26 years, 16% between 5-15 years, and 14% were 27-years-old or above. Ninety-five% of the victims were males.
About 43% of the victims, the study showed, could only perceive hand movements, 6.7%could see only partially, and 18.4%could see nothing with the damaged eye. Shockingly, 40% of the cases were found to be ‘open globe’, meaning the pellets had pierced the eyeball.
The study showed 29 patients were hit in the eyes by stones; 18 were hit by pellets; five by rubber bullets; six by slingshots and two by teargas canisters.
This crime on the bruised souls of browbeaten kashmiri nation looks quiet suffocating and miserable for us. Even beasts have rules of game but it seems in Kashmir the oppressor has no rules at all. At this heartrending juncture we all question where is the conscience of journalists like Barkha Dutt, Karan Thapar, Arnab Goswami etc who day in day out call themselves the champions of democratic ideals. It looks their empathy and compassion for humanity is blindfolded when it comes to Kashmir.
Such cruel handling of protests by law enforcement agencies is unprecedented and makes it clear that Jungle Raj is enforced upon browbeaten masses of Kashmir
Suddenly the conscience of India should wakeup over the plight of Kashmir.