IOK situation remains unchanged, lockdown enters 71st day today

ISLAMABAD, Oct 14 (APP):The situation remains unchanged in the Kashmir Valley and Muslims majority areas of Jammu region where military lockdown and communications blackout entered 71st day, Monday, in Indian occupied Kashmir.

According to Kashmir Media Service, although the occupation authorities have announced to restore some landline and postpaid phones, yet people are finding it hard to come to terms with the ongoing state of affairs due to restrictions and clampdown.

Main markets are shut and public transport is off the roads. Barring a few officials, no one is turning up to offices and educational institutions. Some shops do open for few hours during morning and evening and also roadside vendors are seen on various places doing businesses, but they fail to cater to the needs of general public. People are keeping their shops closed throughout the day and are not attending offices as an act of resistance against the Indian occupation and its August 5 unilateral action.

A group of Sufi clerics from mainland India who were apparently sent by New Delhi on a mission to placate the Kashmiris were heckled, ‘greeted’ with anti-India slogans and forced to retreat during a visit to Srinagar’s Hazratbal shrine.

Nitya Ramakrishnan, Senior Advocate, Indian SC and Nandini Sundar, a professor of sociology at the Delhi School of Economic have said in a report prepared after their visit to IOK from October 5 to 9 that not a single person in the Kashmir Valley is happy about the Modi govt’s August 5 decision. They said the Kashmiris were resisting the move through “satyagraha or non-violent civil disobedience” and almost every single person wanted Azadi.

A joint delegation of the Jamaat-e-Islami Hind and the civil society, which visited the Kashmir Valley from Oct 7 to 10, raised the issues pertaining to the mental health and large scale detentions that the Kashmiris were facing due to the lockdown.

A media report says that a retired Delhi-based professor and activist, Vipin Kumar Tripathi has distributed over one lakh pamphlets in Delhi alone with the aim to educate people on Kashmir. In the pamphlets titled ‘‘Kashmiris Are in Pain, and The Rest of the Country is Celebrating’, Tripathi argues against a muscular approach towards the Kashmiri people.