Rameez Makhdoomi
Curfews, killings and blinding have hogged the news headlines from Kashmir over the past 80 days and now with situation suggesting that fatigue is setting into agitation, but the non absence of dialogue coupled with rampant arrests, abnormal imposition of Public Safety Act(PSA) on youth it looks evidently clear that a generation has been pushed to wall and agitation has not been dialogued but crushed. Dialogue, Debate and discourse are the heart of democracy and stabbing same in Kashmir to achieve the fake normalcy is bound to leave disastrous consequences.
Analysts are opining that with the feel setting that this agitation has been crushed and not dialogued the urge for violent tendencies among the youth will grow up. State suppression is not answer to the genuine political aspirations of masses but a genuine process of dialogue and discourse.
The dangerous feeling that there is the impossibility of justice in Kashmir ; it becomes very important that meaningful process of dialogue is started and an international mechanism be set up to investigate human rights violations which include enforced disappearances, extra judicial killings, firing on unarmed protestors, torture, sexual violence, and unknown and mass graves. To save the region from imminent destruction it becomes quiet pivotal not to apply band aid to cancer by the state, and thus initiate meaningful confidence building measures (CBMs) so that real normalcy is achieved. Believing that idea of normalcy will follow through barrel of gun, mass crackdown and arrests tantamount to pushing whole nation of Kashmir into wall.
The frustrated and morale down nation of Kashmir is not in the interest of region and world peace at large. Yielding real democratic space to battle of ideas, widening the freedom to dissent and protest are the way ahead in this regard.
But, for the moment it looks unfortunately visible that nation of Kashmir is being pushed to wall via suppression and repression.