‘I don’t feel any purpose in life now’

Mirza Iftikhar Hussain, 40 
Namchebal, Srinagar, Jammu & Kashmir

WHY: Arrested for alleged involvement in the 21 May 1996 Lajpat Nagar blasts in Delhi. He was at that time in a rented room in Bhogal but police said they caught him at the railway station after a tip-off
WHEN: 14 June 1996
WHERE: Bhogal, New Delhi

Photo: Baba Umar

LAST YEAR on 9 May, amid the din of cheering friends and tearful relatives, 39-year-old Mirza Iftikhar Hussain walked slowly into his ancestral Srinagar home after nearly 14 years. The handicrafts dealer got pats on his shoulder, winks and hugs. Behind his back, he was the subject of ‘do-you-recognise-him’ remarks.

“Those who were kids all those years ago took time to recognise me,” says Hussain. “It wasn’t a problem for the elders though. They had waited 14 summers for my return.”

At the time of his arrest, Hussain, who used to run a Kashmir arts shop in Mussoorie, UP, was in Delhi. His younger brother Mirza Nissar Hussain (then 18), also an arts trader, was shown arrested on 17 June 1996 from Mussoorie. For the next 13 years, 10 months and 25 days, Hussain remained incarcerated, mostly in the high-security cell in Tihar Jail, facing trial on charges of possessing explosive substances and arms.

After a lengthy trial, District Judge SP Garg of the Patiala High Court declared Hussain innocent and acquitted him of all charges, along with three other accused, finding the police investigation full of holes. This was on 8 April 2010. Hussain’s younger brother was, however, convicted and awarded death sentence.

For his part, Hussain himself finds little meaning in being ‘free’. “I couldn’t attend my sisters’ weddings. Our business sank permanently. And Nissar (his brother) will never come out of jail. What price this freedom? Will I get back what I lost?” he asks, as he rests his arm on friend Riyaz Ahmad’s shoulder in the lawns of a Srinagar lower court.

Ahmad, 40, was among the few friends and neighbours who saw the family’s glory and decline in a span of a decade. “They (Mirzas) had a name and presence in the handicrafts market. But after 1996 they lost everything. The status they had acquired slipped through their hands like dry sand,” says Ahmad.

While the brothers were locked up, the world Hussain left behind didn’t stand still. Nor did his family. His unlettered mother, three sisters (unmarried then) and younger brother Mirza Zaffar endured emotional and financial hardships. “Zaffar quit graduation and started teaching in a private school to support the family,” he says.

Hussain is oval-faced, tall and well-built. However, his complexion is sallow and he is fast balding. While in jail, he completed one year of IGNOU’s commerce degree and then the Bachelor’s preparatory programme exam. But “I wasn’t mentally strong enough to get the degrees. I abandoned studies thereafter,” he adds.

After prolonged incarceration for a crime he didn’t commit, Hussain says he can’t even feel anger any more. “Things rarely make me angry — because I don’t feel any purpose in life now,” he says. And, after a long pause, adds: “I want to tell you that if you make a promise, you have to fulfil it. At least 10 percent of it, if not entirely.”

Hussain is referring to Chief Minister Omar Abdullah’s announcement of rehabilitation made immediately after his release, which he says was a “hollow pledge to impress upon the media that he cares”.

“Leave aside rehabilitation, I applied for a loan to purchase a loom costing around 3.5 lakh. The bank refused. And they (government) talk about rehabilitating youth and promoting khadi and village industries in Kashmir,” he says.

Hussain is wary not only of mainstream politicians but of separatist leaders too. “No one visited our family. There was no medicine for my old mother. My sisters had a tough time finding a proper match and my brother suffered. But there were no freedom fighters to help us. At least they should have helped my family,” he says bitterly

Baba Umar is a Correpsondent with Tehelka.
babaumar@tehelka.com

(c) Tehelka

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MAMA I AM IN LOVE

In memory of Sameer Rah, 7 years old martyr

One fine afternoon he came rushing

Innocence on his face all gushing

He was emphatic with something great

Enthused this way was not in his trait

He had seen perhaps something unseen

His face was shining with an angelic sheen

He came rushing for his mother and said

Mama I want to reveal something I never had

Ma, I am in love, for which never did I dream

Ma, I know I am still not in that young team

I am a child, but I feel the love inside my soul

This struggle is taking on my mind a big toll

Mother said, my kid I still cannot believe

You still cannot put your hand through the sleeve

Go my lad take it easy and have a tight sleep

I still have the whole house to keep

But he kept on saying the same

Mother do u want to hear her name

Mother I am in love with my death

They will come to stop my breath

Mother I am going to die for my undone crime

Mother let me go, I am left will little time

And he came out of the lap and walked towards the street

Composed and calm he went for his love to greet

They came and took him away in their rage

They beat him till he was out of his cage

He cried at their kicks and buts but did not run

They plugged his mouth with the butt of the gun

He breathed his last after being tossed upon a stone

He met his love, and his mother did not mourn

For he is a lover who did not betray

Martyrs never die, Allah did say

His death gave us a new grave

More Sameer’s shall be consumed in this wave

Till mothers let leave their lads off their laps

Cruel guns shall roar for them perhaps.

(C) Koshur Mazloom with tearful eyes

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Pushing the Kashmiri to the wall, again

By Shivam Vij

In the first week of June, I sat at a shopfront with a group of shopkeepers of Kalarus, a small town in Kupwara district in north Kashmir. In 1999, they collected money and bought land for a martyrs’ graveyard, one of many such in Kashmir. Whenever the Indian army killed militants trying to infiltrate from Pakistan to the Indian side of the Line of Control, they would hand over the bodies to the Kupwara police, who would give it to these people to bury after the autopsy.

by Shivam Vij

“Look up at the mountain peak,” said one of them, “It is snow clad all twelve months. It is the LoC, 70 kms from here. Do you think anyone would cross that wearing the traditional Kashmiri Khan dress?” And yet, most of the hundred odd bodies in the graveyard had come wearing clothes unfit for snow. And, most of them had so many bullet marks on the face that they were unidentifiable.

This May, however, three bodies came whose faces were not mutilated, only one of them had a bullet mark on the face. They got mug-shots taken and gave them to Kashmiri Uzma, an Urdu daily. Some distance away in Handwara their families saw the photos and went to the police station. These were their missing sons; they had been taken to the LoC to work as porters for the army. This case is by no means an aberration, just that it came to light so conclusively it could not be denied by the authorities.

The ‘encounter’ had taken place at Machhil on the LoC on April 29, bodies exhumed after protests on May 30. This is only one of many encounters at Machhil in 2010, and many more have taken place elsewhere. India had maintained over the past few years that infiltration and militancy were down to record levels as Pakistan had turned off its support to the militant groups. What has changed in 2010? India and Pakistan are talking peace despite 26/11 being just a year old, and there is no change in the prevailing internal situation in Pakistan. This can’t surely be the time when Pakistan will re-open its support for the Kashmir insurgents?

What has changed is that the decline of militancy gave people the space to breath and reflect, and they refused to accept the Indian version that after the defeat of militancy all was over, and that we were now in a post-conflict situation. For the third consecutive summer now, therefore, the people of Indian-administered Kashmir have been taking to the streets, demanding azadi and pelting stones on soldiers and policemen they see as “occupying forces”. This is taking place despite that fact that Pakistan’s hold on even the separatists is at its lowest ebb and India has managed to win over and/or discredit various factions of the Hurriyat Conference. In such a scenario, there has been increasing pressure on Delhi to, at the very least, demilitarise in response to the decline in militancy.

The Indian Army is not only not in favour of repealing or amending the Armed Forces Special Powers Act that gives it impunity in all its actions in Kashmir and the north-eastern states, but has also on record stated its objections to be called back to the barracks. This supports widespread allegations in Kashmir that Indian forces have vested interests in Kashmir; earning monetary rewards and medals for killing innocent people and passing them off as militants is only one of them.

As Kashmir was protesting the Machhil fake encounter, a young boy, Tufail Ahmed Matoo, 17, was killed in Srinagar by the local police. They fired at him from such a close range that he died with a half-inch hole in his skull. He was returning from tuition, and even though the local police were chasing stone-pelters, the precision with which he was killed cannot be a mistake.

Why was Tufail Ahmed Mattoo killed? It may just be police frustration, but conspiracy theorists in Kashmir say it could be a way of diverting attention from Machhil.

Far from offering regret and ordering enquiries into Mattoo’s killing, the state government pretended as though all was fine. Stone-pelters had to be dealt with and such mistakes would take place. That’s when a vicious cycle of protest-death-protest started. In 18 days 11 civilians died, mostly minor boys, one of them 9 years old.

Kashmir’s summer of discontent has to be seen in the context of the post-militancy situation. As India was claiming victory in Kashmir, the people rose in revolt in 2008. 62 innocent protestors were killed.  There were protests all summer in 2009 against a double rape and murder case in Shopian, committed allegedly by either the local police or Indian forces. 32 (check) protestors were killed. In Shopian I met one of the members of the local committee asking for justice. They said they did not want to link this to azadi, they wanted justice under Indian laws. But when justice was denied, everybody said the only solution was azadi.

By this summer India has come down very hard on stone-pelters, arresting and killing countless. Protests have been responded to with bullets, curfew, banning media, even arresting those active on the internet. Delhi has made it clear it is not serious about engaging the separatist leadership, even though it has been pretending to be pen to dialogue since 2003. As a result, angry youth are not even in the control of the Hurriyat leaders.

It is clear that Delhi is not going to make any concessions to the people of Kashmir. The troops that Kashmiris see as a problem are for Delhi the solution. The Kashmiri common man feels frustrated to hear about Indo-Pak talks as though the Kashmiri people don’t matter. Not all of the infiltration encounters this summer have been fake, and there are rumours of more Kashmiris trying to cross the LoC into Pakistan. Delhi is pushing people to pick up the gun again, and perhaps it prefers that to non-violent protests for azadi that attract international attention.

Delhi, it seems, prefers to deal with an insurgency. Crushing non-violent protests makes India seem bad even before its own people, and that’s why the disinformation campaign through the Delhi media.

Another round of militancy in Kashmir, however, would mean that India will be able to portray itself as a victim of terrorism, especially if Pakistan re-opens the militant tap to Kashmir after Obama exits the Afghan theatre. It will be easier for India to crush another armed struggle as it is much better prepared to do so now that it was in 1989. Sadly, all signals are that Kashmir is headed for another bloody decade.

Source ( http://shivamvij.com/2010/07/29/pushing-the-kashmiri-to-the-wall-again/)

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