WRITE-UPS

Meer Aiyaz Standing outside a tin gate in a black-colored suit, Idrees Jan (39), formerly a government teacher, is searching for someone among the passersby, unlike most teachers of the area who at the moment are busy with online classes at home, thanks to sub-clause (C) of Article 311(2) which led to his termination. Inside his house, cries, wailings, and sobs have ceded, but deafening silence has taken over even though there are twin 11-year-old daughters and a 4-year-old son in Jan's family. “Observing what transpired over a month has shocked them: people visited in large numbers, many of whom were unable to control tears while deliberating on the issue,” said Jan about his children who are yet to make out what exactly has happened. Given there's no other source of income, J...

Manan Shah “When we burnt Al Aqsa Mosque, I did not sleep the whole night for fear of Arab armies! But when the sun rose the next morning, I came to know now we can do anything we want, for we are facing a nation which is asleep”- Golda Meir, PM of Israel, 1969-1974. Ever since, for Israel, the continuous acts of terror and illegal occupation of Palestine have no looking back. One may ask Why? After all, Jewish refugees arrived in Palestine in 1943 with banners saying, “The Germans destroyed our families and homes, don't you destroy our hopes". It was Palestine that offered refuge and therefore, it is high time for us to realize what went wrong! The sister-religions To look into the matter first we should attempt to know the history of Palestine itself. It is one of the oldest c...

Qazi Shibli Raziya, 14- years old, sits quietly scribbling in her notebook and looks up at me as I ask her what school feels like. “I sit alone in the class, and during lunch breaks, I try and hide from everyone else. I cry alone and do not know of any other feeling than being cursed and feeling helpless. I keep wondering what my sin is.” She tells me. A student of a private school in Islamabad (Anantnag) township, Raziya Sheikh lives in a 'Waatal Mohalla' in the South Kashmir township. She had to change her school a couple of years after she, at a teachers' meet along with other students, was asked about her father's work. "My father is a Watul". The students of the school where kids from richer families study, post this incident, looked down upon her and many even distanced themsel...

Kounsar Bashir/ Faizan Mir A young postgraduate student ended his life due to a financial crunch in South Kashmir's Kulgam district. A video went viral on social media, in which this student accused the government of withholding his father's salary, and that this forced him to commit suicide. The boy, identified as Shoaib Bashir son of Bashir Ahmad Malik from Avil Noorabad Kulgam, recorded a video before committing suicide and expressing his reasons for taking such drastic action. He said that life had become miserable because his father had not been paid for two and a half years. "I am sacrificing my life, not only for my father but for all the other teachers/employees who hope that their issues will be resolved," Shoaib said in the 2-minute video. Bashir Ahmad Malik, the decease...

Vikram Raj/ Meer Irfan Three juveniles were taken into custody and booked under the Anti-terror Law Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act UAPA on the 30th of May by the Jammu and Kashmir administration. The Police has booked them in the FIR number 46/2021 under section 13, 16, 18. Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA), 3/4 Explosives Act have been registered against them at Zainpora Police Station. A Police official told The Kashmiriyat that Police has done a thorough investigation and after proper questioning, the role of the three has been established in an Improvised Explosive Device (IED) blast attack that was triggered by Militants on 16 May 2021. The Police identified the three as Shoaib Shafi Bhat, Muntazir Farooq Lone and Tauqeer Ashraf Lone, all residents of the Tur...

Meer Irfan Ghulam Hassan (name changed) often wakes up during the night to loud noises of extraction around the Rambi Ara- a river and tributary to the River Jhelum, located in Shopian District in Jammu Kashmir. Rambi Ara runs through Shopian and Pulwama districts and joins the Veshaw River near Sangam, in Anantnag district, before the confluence finally meets the Jehlum. In the dark of the night, the 50-year-old Hassan, a resident of Nowpora Bala, follows the noise through the thick cover of apple orchards and trees to witness open loot being carried out in the dark of the night. Hassan runs through the apple orchards to find JCBs and extraction machines carrying out massively scaled extraction at the Rambi Ara. Several apple orchards dot the Rambi Ara at both its sides, which...

Mubashir Naik After he was left to die by his family, Ababeel’s volunteers turned out to be Messiah for a suspected covid-19 patient in Doda. Since the last few years, life hasn’t been comfortable in Jammu Kashmir and the Covid lockdown for last two years has added fuel to the fire. Despite all the challenges, many volunteers and NGOs in these testing times have stepped up, sometimes at significant personal risk, to serve their community. Like many NGOs in Kashmir Valley, Ababeel, a Chenab valley based NGO has been working day and night to provide every possible help to people. "Yesterday, we received a heart breaking photo on our whatsApp in which, a critically ill Covid patient was left to die in Kastigarh, almost thirty kilometers away from the district headquarters Doda. The p...

Yameen Dar “Why are we raising our sons, they come and take them whenever they like,” says half widow, who has as 30 years long linger. On 12th April, ’21 in Kashmir, nobody noticed that Zahoor Ahmed Zargar, the youngest among the three brothers and the sole bread earner in the family was taken forcibly by the Police without prior notice or any warrant while he was attending his shop in the Nowhatta area of Srinagar, but the chronicle actually goes way back in the past. ALSO READ: The Search for the Disappeared in Kashmir The year is 1990 one of the three brothers was Mushtaq Ahmed Zargar decides to leave his family, chose a path for himself, and joined one of the militant organizations, its insurgency in Kashmir and this is the story of many households of the Valley. But for the Zarga...

Aniqa/ Zafar Dar Societies around the world are socially and culturally conditioned to be unacceptable of gender identities beyond their comfortable belief of the gender binary. Hence, people who don't identify themselves with either the masculine or the feminine, do not find acceptance among society. People of the Transgender category are the most common example of this unacceptability as their existence challenges the norms of this binarism. Equal participation in the social or cultural life for them is out of the question when they are abused and ridiculed for existing. It never bothers us when a transgender is being made fun of, openly in the public spaces; neither does it occur to us that why is it normal to make fun of them for just being themselves. A video shot around t...

Irshad Hussain/ Zafar Dar "Two women were injured because initially, women resisted the forest officials, the men were working in the fields and the forest officials landed in the area all of a sudden, so panic spread, but the elder women of the locality faced the forest officials and gave them a befitting response," a Gujjar activist said, adding, "nobody can drive us out of these forests, they have been home to us since many ages." Last year, months after the new land laws were drafted by the Central Government, the High court ordered the administration of Jammu Kashmir to map the forest areas in the Jammu Kashmir region and start the process of eviction of the forest dwellers, who perhaps know forest as their only home, for the past many generations. The Forest Department along...