In Kashmir, child killers are called ‘mujahideen’

Arun Joshi

Brutality in Kashmir lies in violence, but the beastliness lies in not telling the whole truth.

For 12-year-old Atif Mir who was held hostage by Pakistani terrorists in Kashmir as he had an elder sister whom his captors wanted to assault sexually, this represented one of those terrible moments in ordinary Kashmiris’ lives when the so-called warriors fighting for the “freedom of Kashmir” make the whole conflict a personal pleasure-seeking exercise. This ruptures the daily life of Kashmiris unsure when their children would be held hostage and when the “mujahideen” who swear by the piousness of their  cause would cast an evil eye on their womenfolk.

Worse happens, when who matter, including the so-called responsible leaders, shut their eyes to the grim reality for they don’t want to annoy Pakistan and the terrorists that the neighbouring country exports to Kashmir.

The moment, the child’s body was found, social media warriors, wedded to perennial hatred of India, started the game that they are best at: politicising the tragedy. None of them held terrorists responsible for the killing of the boy who had seen nothing of this world except that the marauders were hunting for his sister and harassing the family. The captors were not moved even by the appeal of Atif’s mother Shareefa who reminded them that she had fed them so many times and cited the high Islamic values while seeking the release of her minor son. Nothing moved. It was the helplessness not just of Shareefa, but the Kashmiri mothers who too have become captive to the culture of immunity that the militants enjoy in Kashmir. They are not even censured.

The social media warriors who spare no chance to demonise the security forces could not write even a single word of condemnation. This reality was starker as this class that thrives on the politicisation of the tragedies had filled the social media with the unbridled condemnation when the Army used a villager as a human shield. Shielding terrorists is a bigger crime but these people with squint in their eyes are too corrupt morally, politically and intellectually that they refuse to see the reality when it comes to the brutalities committed by the militants.

They have used the encounter during which the child was held hostage and killed by terrorists to score political points. Some of them did so to whip up their Islamic state ideology driven constituency ahead of the elections next month. Speaking in the language that justifies terror activities, including the imminent threat of assault on the dignity of the young girls, amounts to being partners in the crime. This was clearer when groups that take out protest marches and give shutdown calls at the drop of hat, went into silent mode as if nothing had happened.

That these things come naturally to a conflict zone is a tragedy. But maintaining silence or using the skewed lexicon to keep perpetrators of such heinous crimes in good humour and to treat the child killers as stakeholders in resolving the Kashmir issue is a crime against humanity.