Action against Kashmiri tribals following terror attack in Poonch extrajudicial: CASR

Counterview Desk
The civil rights network* Campaign Against State Repression (CASR) has described the recent action following th terrorist attack in Poonch, Kashmir, in which five jawans were killed, as "extrajudicial killing and torture of Kashmiri tribal men". Calling the security forces' move as as part of "Poonch witch hunt" following the terror attack, CASR quoted the Indian Army as stating that “they have been killed due to their ‘mistake’.”
Even as risking that it could be called anti-national, questioning the alleged action of the Indian Army, whose actions few dare to object, CASR said, "The Indian Army... deems itself to be the judge, jury and executioner in Kashmir while Narendra Modi’s ‘New India’ thumps the claim of being the ‘world’s largest democracy'."

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In the aftermath of the deaths of 5 Indian Army personnel in Poonch, Kashmir at the hands of the People’s Anti-Fascist Front, the Indian army has resorted to torture, extra-judicial killings of civilians and suppression of democratic rights of the people of Poonch village along with the CRPF laying a siege to the village.
The bodies of Safeer Hussain, Mohammed Showkat and Shabir Ahmed were found near the attack site, with the three Kashmiri tribal persons being part of eight persons detained as part of the so-called investigation in the deaths of the Indian Army personnel. Mobile internet services in Poonch have also been stopped.
The families of the three murdered in extra-judicial killings by the Indian Army also argue that the three persons were tortured before their deaths. All three men were labourers with no criminal track record, with even the sarpanch of the village vouching for their credibility.
Several videos have already surfaced from Poonch where the Indian Army is meting out heinous brutalities against Kashmiris of all ages and genders as part of their reactionary vengeance. Not only was no legal procedure for detention followed, since not even an application against these individuals or an FIR was filed against them with the police.
Instead, the Indian Army called several individuals to their camp, picked some of them directly from their residences and tortured them, killing the three aforementioned persons with no semblance of the “law and order” the Indian state claims to be trying to uphold through the continued occupation of Kashmir by its military.
Videos have surfaced of the Indian Army personnel shoving chili powder inside the anus of the detained persons. In another video, a young boy’s motionless body was being protected by an older detained person who was stripped and sprayed with chili powder by the Indian Army. Others were beaten lifeless by the jackboots and plastic canes of the Indian Army personnel.
Media personnel were stopped from entering Poonch, with the CRPF seizing control of the area ensuring no information about the brutalities of the Indian Army leaves the village. While the ruling brahmanical Hindutva fascist BJP had claimed that the abrogation of Article 370 would somehow ‘integrate’ Kashmir with the Indian state, it has only intensified the impunity with which the Indian Army functions and occupies Kashmir for the interests of the Indian state and its ruling classes.
It should then come as no surprise that the People’s Anti-Fascist Front itself emerged after the abrogation of Article 370 in 2019 when the Indian state threw away all pretenses of democracy in Kashmir to establish its direct formal control.

Whether it be in Kashmir, Manipur or Nagaland, the Indian state gladly takes away internet, cellular services and unleashes the most reactionary and most chauvinistic forms of violence upon peoples of oppressed nationalities whose right to self-determination and national liberation the Indian state curtails.

Media personnel were stopped from entering Poonch, with CRPF seizing control of area, ensuring no information is made public

Fake encounters and extra-judicial killings are common practices that the Indian state employs too, whether it be against tribals in Kashmir or Adivasis in Chhattisgarh, Odisha, Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh or Telangana. While the Brahmanical Hindtuva fascist state regularly makes a mockery of democratic and human rights, it is ready to employ the most brutal forms of violence to even terrorize and murder unsuspecting civilians, whether they be in Poonch or Bastar.

In the same time period when the entire world is witnessing the just resistance of the Palestinian people against the occupying Zionist fascist state of Israel, the Indian state is getting further emboldened in its fascist repression of peoples of oppressed nationalities.
When asked by the people of Poonch for the reasons for the murders of Safeer Hussain, Mohammed Showkat and Shabir Ahmed, the Indian Army stated, “they have been killed due to their ‘mistake’.”
The Indian Army therefore deems itself to be the judge, jury and executioner in Kashmir while Narendra Modi’s ‘New India’ thumps the claim of being the ‘world’s largest democracy.’ The killings of Kashmiri labourers like this is not new, with 3 persons in 2020 being killed in Amshipora in a staged gunfight and being passed off as ‘terrorists’ by the Indian Army also being exposed.
The Indian state employs the same policy in Bastar, where various judicial enquiries have found similar incidences where the Indian army killed civilians and dressed them in the fatigues of Maoists and later claimed the dead were Naxalites.
The extra judicial killings and torture are blatant violations of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the United Nations Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment as well as a sheer violation of the democratic rights enshrined in the Indian Constitution.

Campaign Against State Repression (CASR) vehemently condemns the extra judicial killings and torture of civilians in Poonch, Kashmir by the hands of the Indian Army.
CASR demands an immediate judicial enquiry into the matter and the end of the occupation of Kashmir by the Indian Army.
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*AIRSO, AISA, AISF, APCR, BASF, BSM, Bhim Army, bsCEM, CEM, CRPP, CTF, DISSC, DSU, DTF, Forum Against Repression Telengana, Fraternity, IAPL, Innocence Network, Karnataka Jan Shakti, Progressive Lawyers Association, Mazdoor Adhikar Sanghthan, Mazdoor Patrika, Morcha Patrika, NAPM, Nishant Natya Manch, Nowruz, NTUI, People’s Watch, Rihai Manch, Samajvadi Jan Parishad, Samajvadi Lok Manch, Bahujan Samajvadi Manch, SFI, United Agianst Hate, United Peace Alliance, WSS, Y4S

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