On February 17, 2013, 25-year-old Muhammad Ali Murtaza from Aghaar, Kotli, the son of a Kashmiri Imam of a masjid in Lahore, was brutally tortured and killed by the Pakistani Army.
His crime? He was visiting his cousin sister's home in a village in District Kotli near the LOC. Before he could reach her home, he was picked up by the Pakistan Army from Chattar and handed over to the ISI. That was the last he was seen alive. His body was handed over to the family on February 19, only after the Pakistani Army insisted that the coffin should not be opened and must be buried intact; the burial should take place before midnight itself and Ali's death should be portrayed as due to Indian Army fire, even though the body had no gunshot wounds.
A post mortem concluded that extreme torture was the cause of Ali's death. Torture marks showed that his legs were drilled, his feet were nailed and most of his body had overt signs of beating and torture.
So much for Muslim protectors of Muslim Kashmiris.
And for the record, while the Indian Army has the legal cover of the AFSPA (Armed Forces Special Powers Act), the Pakistan Army doesn't need any such cover, since it is totally unanswerable to any forum, including the Supreme Court of Pakistan.
On May 13, 2013, barely two days after general elections in Pakistan, Arif Shahid, chairman of the pro-independence All Parties National Alliance (APNA), was gunned down in Rawalpindi by the ISI.
In various parts of POK, protest were held in which protesters showcased banners with slogans against the Pakistani Army and the ISI, which they blamed for the killing. In the resultant police action, several were injured.
Shahid had relocated from a profitable job in the Middle East to POK in the late 1990s to fight against the subjugation of his people. The focus of his unrelenting campaign was that the struggle in Jammu and Kashmir was not jihad, that development in POK was being held hostage to the proxy war that Pakistan was waging in India, that the status of POK and Gilgit Baltistan was as much to be determined as the status of Jammu and Kashmir.
An outspoken critic of Pakistan's Kashmir policy, Shahid was a prolific writer and a brilliant orator. His various books documented, much to Pakistan's discomfort, the denial of basic rights to the residents of POK and Gilgit-Baltistan, and the violation of their human rights.
Not surprisingly, he was banned him from travelling abroad and his passport confiscated. The Ministry of Interior told a court in December 2012 that his documents had been confiscated due to his "anti-state activities and on the recommendation of the director-general of the ISI intelligence service". A case was also registered against him for publishing a monthly magazine which the government alleged contained anti-Pakistan material.
By his assassination the Pakistani state hopes to put the lid on the growing discontent in POK and GB. But this is unlikely. The flame that Arif Shahid has lit, is now too bright to be snuffed out. For over six decades, the people of POK and GB have been fed a daily lie that their lack of empowerment and pitiable living conditions were all for a greater cause. Arif Shahid was the loudest voice among a growing group of activists who demolished that myth and showed that the policy of the Pakistani state for what it truly was- Pakistan was greedy for Kashmir and did not give a damm for the Kashmiris.
Unfortunately, all these incidents of Pakistan-state sponsored terrorism have been deliberately ignored by separatists in Jammu and Kashmir. There were widespread protests all over POK against these gruesome murders. But, from the leaders of Jammu and Kashmir, there was a stunning silence, proving their loyalty once again to the Pakistani state.
With their eyes permanently focussed on Pakistan, working out permutations and combinations for the new equations that would impact them personally, the entire spectrum of the so-called 'true' leaders of Kashmir have turned a blind eye to the continuing acts of gruesome state terrorism across the LOC. Those who claim to speak for the rights of the Kashmiris should stop to reflect on their own positions and attitude and realise that their silence is deafening.
The portents are ominous. Shahid's has been the first assassination of a pro-independence Kashmiri leader in Pakistan, flagging a further shrinking of the Pakistan state's tolerance of any kind of dissent. His assassination, even before the civilian government of Nawaz Sharif has taken office, is a chilling signal to it to keep off the Kashmir issue and that the existing policy of violence and proxy war would not only continue, but be strengthened. General Kayani's reiteration of this to Nawaz Shairf, just in case he hadn't got the signal, is noteworthy.
While the results of the Pakistan elections have reduced the liberal space in that country, in POK, whatever liberal space was there, has been snuffed out with the assassination of Arif Shahid. India needs to note and prepare for the growing intolerance in POK and that all that it would entail.
Attn: News Editors/News Desks: The views expressed in the above article are that of Mr.
