Under the watchful eye of a paramilitary armed with an automatic pistol, Shahid Farooq leaves a polling station in Asham village, Bandipora district, Kashmir, on Tuesday 1.Ahem October. “Kashmir is fed up with Modi. “We need change, which will only happen if we have our own government.”says this engineer, who remembers the vain promises of peace and employment for young people made by the Indian Prime Minister.
Kashmir voted for the first time in ten years, thanks to the intervention of the Supreme Court, to elect its regional assembly and the elections that ended on 1Ahem October is a test for the Indian Prime Minister, five years after his brutal seizure of power in the Himalayan region.
On August 5, 2019, ten million Kashmiris woke up deprived of all means of communication (Internet, telephone, mail) to columns of soldiers deployed on the streets. Narendra Modi had just unilaterally repealed article 370 of the Constitution, which granted broad autonomy to this region, the only Muslim-majority region in India. In the following days, arbitrary arrests and disappearances increased.
The revocation of the special status was accompanied by a change in status: Kashmir was divided into two distinct administrative entities, on the one hand, Jammu and Kashmir, to the west, and Ladakh to the east. Both were downgraded to Union Territories of India, rather than states, administered directly by the Delhi government.
The repeal of Article 370 has been on the agenda of the Indian far-right for decades. Nationalists dream of “Hinduizing” this region by encouraging the settlement of populations from the rest of the country. Thus, the government lifted the ban that prevented non-Kashmirs from acquiring land, applying for jobs and voting, with the aim of changing the demographic composition of the Himalayan region. For five years, the authorities have pursued a systematic policy of modifying land rights.
Development of Hindu religious tourism
The International Federation for Human Rights, which published a voluminous report on the situation in Kashmir on Tuesday, October 2, believes that the land confiscation campaign, for reasons of“illegal invasion”launched by the Jammu and Kashmir administration in 2023, it covered an area equivalent to that of Hong Kong. Thousands of Kashmiris were expelled and their properties destroyed. Land has also been grabbed to develop Hindu religious tourism, through pilgrimages, and the authorities plan to acquire new spaces to double the population of Srinagar, capital of Jammu and Kashmir, by 2035.
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