Naeem Akhtar
The other day I received a call from an unknown number. On the other side was a voice that sounded noble, gentle and somewhat harassed. It was a professor asking for suggestions to convey few things for redress.
He narrated how he let home after learning that no curfew was in force. He said his dignity and self respect was compromised at least twice in his ‘peaceful’ encounters with the security forces that according to government are only enforcing restrictions ‘strictly’. “Bey izzat kar diya ek bhoodey aadmi ko inhon ne (dishonoured an old man)” he said. “Why this fa?ade of announcing no curfew and putting people to harm if one can’t move about?” was his simple query.
Obviously I had no explanation for this massive fraud on the people of the valley. Such daylight frauds can pass without a comment only in Kashmir.
The media seems satisfied with the government description of situation. Nobody questions the meaning of restrictions when they are as severe as curfew and more dangerous for the vulnerability its puts people in.
Calling curfew by a milder term ‘restrictions’ is part of a public relations exercise not unique to this government. It was in fact devised by its distant and closely related family predecessor, the Gul Shah dispensation comprising the breakaway faction of NC and the Congress. After having earned notoriety for long spells of curfew on a population aghast at pulling down of highly popular Farooq Abdullah government through defections the chief minister G M Shah other wise called Gul shah earned the nickname Gul Curfew.
His spin doctors soon coined the new regime of unannounced curfew and called it ‘strict enforcement of section 144’. That was to avoid adverse publicity outside the state while in effect it was shoot or beat at sight.
Pity that the current administration has to take cue from the most unpopular government that ever ruled the state, for its survival.
A poor reminder that only 19 months back it was projected as perhaps the most divine long term arrangement for J&K. Life seems to have come full circle for Omar Abdullah government that used media as the only prop so far but is suddenly threatened by its situation reports.
Could the old adage be amended to read: those who live by media die of it?
Kashmir story unfortunately is woven only around the number of deaths in protests. The debate revolves round the instigation theories and mortuary statistics. How many killed? Or, nobody killed. The argument is over. Death on streets is a grossly inadequate index of life in Kashmir for quite some time. No one ever refers to complete militarization of the state apparatus and brutalization of security forces as a result of total dependence on them. Other organs of governance having effectively collapsed during past one and a half years it is police that has to deal with all situations 24×7.
No human beings can carry out that job without becoming insensitive to life, dignity and self respect of fellow humans. And the result is kill, arrest, beat, abuse, ransack, tear smoke, rubber bullet, murgha bano, soi shallakh, curfew, restrictions, in response to slogans, stones and sentiment. And government knows no other way than telling life threatening lies to keep itself afloat even as a cruel joke. Actually, as a hate object.
(The writer is the chief spokesman
of Peoples Democratic Part
