Srinagar, August 26, 2019 (PPI-OT): In occupied Kashmir, lockdown continued across the Kashmir valley and five districts in Jammu region on the 22nd consecutive day, today. People are facing acute shortage of life-saving medicines, essential commodities including baby food as hundreds of thousands of people are besieged while Jammu and Kashmir has become a big jail for its inhabitants.
All internet and communication services and TV channels are closed in the Kashmir valley and Doda, Kishtwar, Poonch, Ramban and Rajouri areas of Jammu region since 5th of August when BJP government scrapped the special status of Jammu and Kashmir. Local newspapers could not update their online editions while majority of them could also not be printed due to restrictions.
Over 10,000 political leaders and workers including top Hurriyat leadership have been detained. The jails and police stations have run out of space and many detainees have been lodged in makeshift detention centres and in jails outside the territory.
Doctors have confirmed that hundreds of patients have been affected by the unrelenting clampdown and communication blackout in the Kashmir Valley. Dr Aijaz, who is a psychologist, said over 40 percent of patients have shown signs of mental illnesses as a result of the prevailing situation.
Indian Administration Service officer, Kannan Gopinathan, who quit his job in protest over denial of basic rights to the people of occupied Kashmir, in his posts on social networking sites said that curfew and communication blockade like things are not acceptable in a democratic set-up.
Communist Party of India General Secretary D Raja in a statement issued in Hyderabad, India, said that the situation in occupied Kashmir was much worse than it is perceived outside the territory. Malaysian Consultative Council for Islamic Organization in a statement deplored India’s Narendra Modi receiving the highest civilian award of the UAE amid the atrocious treatment of Muslim majority Kashmir by Modi-led government.
A United States think-tank has warned the international community that the spectre of nuclear war haunts tensions between India and Pakistan, and the disputed territory of Kashmir could provide the spark that lights South Asia’s nuclear fuse. The think tank, Stratfor, a geopolitical intelligence platform based in Austin, Texas, in a recently-published report, also disputes the classification of the Kashmir issue as India’s ‘internal affair’ or a ‘bilateral’ issue between India and Pakistan. The report warned that the people of Kashmir were promised a plebiscite, decades ago, but it never took place.
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