Kolkata, September 07, 2019 (PPI-OT): Noted Indian activist and Secretary of the All India Progressive Women’s Association, Kavita Krishnan, has said that the military dictatorship of India in Kashmir is a massive human rights violation. Kavita Krishnan, who was part of a civil society team that managed to enter Kashmir valley last month, addressing a news conference in Kolkata said that Kashmir had been placed under a lockdown for over a month now, with no end in sight. She said such a prolonged lockdown of entire people, entire territory, is unprecedented. It is a massive human rights violation, she added.
She also displayed her team’s short film ‘Kashmir Caged’, documenting their experience in the Valley. Besides Krishnan, the team had activists, Jean Dreze, Maimoona Mollah and Vimal Bhai. The team was able to enter occupied Kashmir, because it went unannounced, on August 9, four days after the Indian government revoked special status of the territory. The team had stayed in the valley till August 13, recording the testimonies.
Krishnan called most outrageous the indefinite and illegal arrests and torture of children. She said that wherever the team went, it received extensive schooling from ordinary people on the history of Kashmir dispute and saw anger and dismay at the manner in which the Indian media was whitewashing it, while the Indian government was trying to give it an India-versus-Pakistan spin, with no place in it for the voice of the people of Kashmir.
“Kashmir was already one of the most heavily militarised regions in the world. But now, by placing Kashmir under a military dictatorship, the Modi government has told the world that India is a banana republic…. The lockdown on communications is not a ‘minor inconvenience’ – it is a grave violation not only of India’s own Constitution but also of international human rights conventions,” she said.
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