Politicians must take on the Islamists’ deceitful politics of death — or risk being swept away.
Early this month, Nigeena Awan was dragged out of her home at Kellar, Kashmir, beaten up and executed with an assault weapon from point blank range. Her father, Mohammad Sharif Awan, was ordered to bury his daughter without ceremony; the Hizb-ul-Mujahideen, which carried out the execution, also warned neighbours against dignifying her death with last rites.
Hours after Awan’s death on June 3, People’s Democratic Party leader Mehbooba Mufti visited Shopian to stage a protest against the alleged rape and murder of two local women — one of them, like Awan, a high school student. She said nothing about Awan’s execution, though. Nor did Islamist cleric Tariq Ahmad, who has emerged as the key leader of the Shopian protests, say anything; nor, for that matter, did the local leadership of the National Conference. No one has called for the men who killed Awan to be found and prosecuted. No one even bothered to visit her family, even though the hamlet of Pahlipora at Kellar is just a 10-km drive from Shopian.
Ever since last month’s rape-murders, the urban heartlands of Jammu and Kashmir’s Islamist movement have been torn apart by violence: the consequence, some claim, of widespread popular rage against the Indian state.
But violent death has visited the Shopian area often, for the most part without drawing comment. In April, 60-year-old Reshma Awan, like Nigeena Awan a member of the Gujjar pastoralist community, was executed by the Lashkar-e-Taiba at Pahlipora. Her son, Mohammad Aslam Awan, was shot and seriously injured while attempting to protect his mother. Last month, Dachnoo resident Mohammad Saifuddin was killed similarly. And a day after Nigeena Awan was murdered, unidentified men shot dead shopkeeper Mohammad Abdullah Gela at his Sangarwani home.
http://newageislam.com/kashmirs-rising-tide-of-hate--/radical-islamism-and-jihad/d/1476
No comments:
Post a Comment