Modi and his hawkish followers did their best to divert the attention of the international community from the Kashmir crisis and isolate Pakistan. But they utterly failed.
Tens of thousands of people protested India’s atrocities in occupied Kashmir on September 27th when Prime Minister Narendra Modi was addressing the UN General Assembly in New York. (ViewsWeek photo)
India cannot camouflage its blackish history of exporting terrorism in South Asia. Modi’s address to the UN General Assembly on September 27, 2019, appeared as an utter mockery to the international community, when he urged them to stand united against terrorism. Modi himself is a recognized terror who killed over 2,000 Muslims in Gujarat in 2002 while he was its Chief Minister. The US denied him visa due to his crime against humanity. US lifted its ban on Modi after he became India’s prime minister. But it doesn’t mean Washington forgot or pardon Modi’s crimes.
Modi, in his address, tried to brand Pakistan as a terrorist country for its support to the Kashmiri freedom fighters. He willfully degraded the Kashmiris freedom struggle to terrorism. If the Kashmiri freedom fighters are terrorists, what were freedom fighters of Bangladesh war of Liberation or those Americans who fought against the British to liberate America? If Pakistan can be branded as a terrorist country for supporting the cause of the Kashmiri people, then India should be branded first as a terrorist country for providing shelter, training, arms and ammunition, diplomatic support to the freedom fighters of the then East Pakistan to cede Pakistan and needs to be punished for this crime. Not only that India also created Chakma and Tamil secessionists to disintegrate Bangladesh and Sri Lanka respectively, who killed thousands of innocent people. India provided them shelter, training (centers on its soil) arms and ammunition, diplomatic support to these secessionists. India is solely responsible for such killings. Even Indian RAW created Baluch, Pashtun, and Sindhi secessionist terrorists in Pakistan and Modi openly asked them to go to India to take training. So which is the country supporting terrorism: Pakistan or India?
India is the lone country in the world that is accused of suppressing its own people, not only in Kashmir, but also in Assam, Tripura, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Manipur, Nagaland, Arunachal Pradesh, even in Punjab that India occupied through duplicity and conspiracy or extending high hopes. These states of India are ruled overtly by democratic, but covertly and virtually Army-controlled administrations.
India even uses its army and para-militias to liquidate the Maoists who are fighting against social and economic injustice, exploitation and deprivation. The Maoists were active in India’s 22 out of 27 states. Now most of these States are free from the Maoists. Where these Maoists withered away overnight? Not only the Maoists, rather almost all the non-Maoist young generation of these states were simply killed or assassinated by the Indian military and secret services. People of these states consider the Indian army worse than the militants. Indian army, even police are relieved of any punishment for any extra-judicial killing in any so-called disturbed regions. They are above the law. Forced disappearances and killing innocent people is legal in most parts of India. So which is a terrorist country: India or Pakistan?
Anyone can easily comprehend how ruthless Modi and Indian army are. They kidnapped or lifted over 13 thousand minor boys, even girls, from their homes only since imposing incessant curfew in Kashmir on August 5 in the Occupied Kashmir and none knows their whereabouts. How Modi could expect that the world leaders could support his cruelties. Why such a long curfew could persist in a democratic country? Did Modi forget that his fore-parents eliminated the Buddhists from India?
Kashmiri resistance against the Indian occupation army is an indigenous struggle for freedom. Local people openly provide freedom fighters with all types of support. People, irrespective of their age, sex and status, side with the resistance. Local people also protest the presence of the Indian occupation forces, chant slogans against them and demand independence. Pitched street battles with Indian forces had become a daily routine before Modi’s August 5 action.
Modi’s supporters kill the Muslims on suspicion of eating beef. Minor Muslim girls are gang-raped and killed. Dalit minors killed for defecating in open spaces, though tens of thousands Indian, even the Brahmins still do so in India. Female tourists from the West are frequently raped in India. Aren’t these equivalents to terrors?
Modi has no face to call the international community to stand united against terrorism, what he indirectly refers to Pakistan. His address at the UN General Assembly was a venture to hide his crimes under his watch. But he utterly failed to convince the world leaders.
Modi and his hawkish followers did their best to divert the attention of the international community from the Kashmir crisis and isolate Pakistan. But they utterly failed. Not a single member-country of the UN sided with India. Even Trump, for whom Modi shamelessly worked as his election canvasser, dismayed him (Modi), reiterating his readiness to mediate the Kashmir dispute. A highly-placed official of the US State Department Alice G. Wales, the Acting Assistant Secretary of the Bureau of South & Central Asian Affairs, expressed concern over the restriction in Kashmir. He asked Modi to release the detained Kashmiris urgently and said, President Trump is ready to mediate if the two countries (India & Pakistan) want so. He added, “India should sit for dialogue with the Kashmiri leaders and take positive measures to hold election there.”
Other than Pakistan, India relentlessly tries to turn its other neighboring countries as its satellite states. With this end in view, India through its agents destabilizes them. It imposed proxy war on Bangladesh. India infiltrated its own nationals into Bangladesh who are engaged in disruptive activities, even overt and covert killings, street fighting, looting banks to cripple Bangladesh in one hand and to show the international community that Bangladesh is infested with the terrorists. India deters real democratic process and indirectly keeps Bangladesh under its paw, installing a non-representative government that deprives the democratic rights, freedom of speech and press, even real justice. Innocent, patriotic forces are branded as terrorists, who are kidnapped or lifted from their houses and killed later.
India also destabilizes Nepal, Sri Lanka, Myanmar, even Afghanistan. This is the high time that the international community take immediate steps to halt Indian hawks, otherwise their extremism can stoke new conflicts in the South Asian region.
The writer is a New York-based senior journalist of Bangladesh origin.
South Asia is not only the home of an amazing variety of different religions and cults, it is also the birthplace of religions such as Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism and Sikhism to name just the largest. Arriving from abroad, Islam, Zoroastrianism and Christianity have contributed an independent South Asian variety to the original belief system.
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