What does the #Pahalgam massacre of tourists in #Kashmir remind me of?
A little over 25 years ago, on the evening of 20 March 2000, when US President Bill Clinton had just arrived in New Delhi for a 5 day visit to the region, about 15 armed men dressed in army fatigues entered Chhatisinghpora village in Kashmir’s Anantnag district, gathered its male Sikh residents, and shot dead 38 of them.
While the Atal Behari Vajpayee government (L.K. Advani was HM) blamed Hijbul Mujahideen and Lashkar-e-Taiba for the carnage, there was no incontrovertible evidence.
Five days later, on 25 March 2000, Col. Ajay Saxena, Commanding Officer 7 Rashtriya Rifles (Retired as Brigadier), Lt. Col. Brajendra Pratap Singh 2IC 7 RR (Retired as Col), Lt. Saurabh Sharma of Military Intelligence 7RR (Retired as Major), Lt. Amit Saxena Adjutant 7 RR (later Major) and Nb. Sub. Idrees Khan (later Subedar) of the Indian Army killed five men in Pathribal village of Anantnag district, claiming that the victims were the "foreign militants" responsible for the attacks. Official reports claimed that security forces had, after a gun fight, blown up the hut where the men were hiding, and had retrieved five bodies that had been charred beyond recognition. The bodies were buried separately without any post mortem examination.
Protests soon erupted as locals alleged that at least 17 innocent Kashmiri Muslim villagers had been detained by the police and the army, and were then “disappeared”. They suspected that the alleged “foreign militants” the 7 RR claimed to have eliminated, who they claimed were responsible for the Chhatisinghpora massacres, were actually some of these innocent Kashmiri Muslim villagers.
To cut a long story short, bodies were eventually exhumed and DNA tests established the five men who were killed by the 7 RR and claimed to be foreign militants were local villagers. A CBI enquiry established that the claims made by 7 RR were false and these men were abducted, held illegally in custody, killed in a staged encounter, and their identities were sought to be obliterated by burning the bodies. Even though the Indian Army was compelled to prosecute the accused in a General Court Martial, it acquitted all of the officers and men citing insufficient evidence.
Meanwhile, in 2006, in the introduction to former US Secretary of State, Madeleine Albright’s book, The Mighty and the Almighty ? Reflections on America, God, and World Affairs, Bill Clinton wrote: “During my visit to India in 2000, some Hindu militants decided to vent their outrage by murdering 38 Sikhs in cold blood.”
The book's publisher, Harper Collins, later dropped that statement.
What most people, who have not lived in a conflict zone for decades under AFSPA, do not realise is that many of the massacres in such areas are extremely murky and the perpetrators may not exactly be who the government or authorities claim they are to be. Many such killings are carried out for various reasons – to foment communal/ethnic clashes and destabilize the state government, for political capital to shore up electoral prospects, and for numerous political and geo-strategic objectives.
A series of such killings of innocent family members of top ULFA and NDFB leaders took place in Assam between 1997-2001, infamously known as the “Secret Killings”, which were, in effect, carried out by the police and surrendered militants working for the police. No one ever got prosecuted and convicted for those. My own stumbling on to the information about who were the surrendered ULFA militants and police personnel who had gone out from the Nalbari Police Reserve on the night of killing of Mithinga Daimary’s family in Barama’s Nij Juluki village triggered the relentless state repression that eventually led me to walk the path I was compelled to. Not many people know how I was hounded and became a “criminal” who would be arrested on the drop of a hat on the flimsiest of grounds repeatedly to damage any shred of credibility I may have left.
So, I would be very careful about jumping to conclusions about who carried out the Pehelgam massacre, or the narrative being sought to be shoved down our throats by a mainstream media which is hardly objective and factual.
What it clearly establishes, however, is that if indeed it was a massacre of Hindu tourists by foreign Pakistan backed terrorists, Modi-Shah-Doval are incompetent in their task of “protecting” India and Indians. The alternative explanations are, of course, way more sinister.
My Favorite comedians like #MunawarFaruqui and #SamayRaina slowly adapting the BJP-RSS way .
One has become quite and other has started licking Sanghi ass .
yes #kunalkamra was right ,
there is difference between comedian and STANDUP comedian .
The fact that many idiots are defending Ambanis under my tweet and spewing venom on farmers, proves my point.
Ambanis don't provide people jobs, our taxes & corrupt govt provide ambanis public resources to literally cartelize the market.
Farmers give us food sovereignty.