This story from Kashmir is so ghastly
News_ “For ‘demanding justice’ father of minor killed in Srinagar ‘gunfight’ booked under anti-terror law”
Mary scully
This story from Kashmir is so ghastly and gruesome that one doesn’t know where to begin to tell it. On December 30, 2020, occupying forces staged a fake encounter in Srinagar where they murdered three young men and framed them as terrorists: Ather Mushtaq Wani, a 16-year-old high school student from Pulwama; Aijaz Maqbool Ganai, a 22-year-old university student from Pulwama; and Zubair Ahmad Lone, a 25-year-old carpenter from Shopian.
In its characteristic style that is more propaganda or stenographic than journalistic, Indian media took the news releases of Indian military officials and repeated as fact that the three young men were terrorists from the group Lashkar-e-Taiba who were traveling together to Srinagar for ‘subversive activities’ and to ‘provide logistic support to other terrorists’. Can they tell us if the young men were just on the same bus headed for Srinagar and if, and how they can prove sinister intent from that fact? Or sinister intent even if they were riding in the same car? Military officials also claim the recovered damaged cell phones of the young men prove that two were talking ‘to people across the border’ whilst the third was talking to a top commander in Pakistan. Authorities admit that the content of those conversations are ‘difficult to retrieve’ since the mobile phones were damaged. Can they tell us how they know those ‘people across the border’ were guerrilla warfare operatives rather than relatives or friends? Can they tell us the name of that ‘top commander’? Can they tell us how in the hell they could retrieve the conversations if the phones were not damaged when such technology has not been invented? How can they prove the three men were engaged in nefarious activities? They cannot because they were not.
The families of the three men were outraged at the murders and frame ups of their sons. Their many protests have been reported sympathetically in international media and on social media as they insisted convincingly that their sons had no relationship to armed struggle, were in fact on personal errands in Srinagar. They demanded the bodies of their beloved sons back for funeral prayers & ritual burial. The father and family of 16-year-old Ather were particularly voluble.
Now, in an act of stupefying mendacity, J&K police have filed criminal complaints against Mushtaq Ahmad Wani, the father of 16-year-old Ather; against two of Ather’s uncles; and against four others who protested the extrajudicial executions of three innocent young men. The criminal charges are for rioting, “organizing illegal processions under criminal conspiracy”, and inciting violent mobs to anti-national activities. This is the report on the criminal charges in The Kashmir Walla: https://thekashmirwalla.com/2021/02/family-of-minor-killed-in-srinagar-gunfight-booked-under-uapa/
Our response to the labyrinth of lies from the Indian Army and J&K police, to the execution of three young men, to the criminal charges against those demanding justice must be an international chorus of outrage demanding the charges be dropped, the men’s bodies returned to their families, and a formal repudiation of the abduction, execution, and frame up of three young men merely trying to live their lives under colonial occupation.
Stand with Kashmiris and demand the immediate, unconditional withdrawal of all Indian forces from Kashmir.
