UN report: JeM, Hizbul recruited children in Kashmir

Militant groups JeM, Hizbul recruited children in Kashmir during clashes with security forces: UN report

The United Nations report noted “grave violations” and said at least three incidents of recruitment and use of children by terrorist groups were reported in Jammu and Kashmir during clashes with the security forces.

Source: https://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/militant-groups-jem-hizbul-recruited-children-in-kashmir-during-clashes-with-security-forces-un-report/story-Aj24sGjBemKmTQR6TEd2MK.html

June 28, 2018: Pakistan-based banned terror outfits Jaish-e-Mohammed and Hizbul Mujahideen recruited and used children in Jammu and Kashmir during clashes with security forces last year, according to a UN report on Thursday.

The annual report of the UN Secretary General on Children and Armed Conflict, covering the January-December 2017 period, said globally, over 10,000 children were killed or maimed in conflict last year while more than 8,000 were recruited or used as combatants.

The report covers 20 countries, including war-torn Syria, Afghanistan, and Yemen and also the situation in India, the Philippines and Nigeria.

On the situation in India, the report of UNSG Antonio Guterres said children continued to be affected by incidents of violence between armed groups and the government forces, particularly in Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand and during tensions in Jammu and Kashmir.

Noting “grave violations”, it said three incidents of recruitment and use of children by the two terror outfits were reported in Jammu and Kashmir during clashes with the security forces.

“One case was attributed to Jaish-e-Mohammed and two to Hizbul Mujahideen,” the report said, adding that “unverified” reports also indicate use of children as informants and spies by the security forces.

The UN said it continued to receive reports of recruitment and use of children, including by Maoists, particularly in Chhattisgarh and Jharkhand. “Naxalites reportedly resorted to the use of a lottery system to conscript children in Jharkhand,” it said, adding children continued to be killed and injured during operations of security forces against armed groups.

Citing government data, the report said 188 civilians were killed in Maoist-affected regions, but no disaggregated data on children were available.

In March this year, a 15-year-old boy was killed during clash between the security forces and Lashkar-e-Taiba terrorists in Padgampora village of Pulwama district.

Guterres asked the Indian government to put in place measures to hold perpetrators of child recruitment and use to account and engage with the UN to end and prevent violations against children.

In Jharkhand, the report said, suspected Maoists attacked a school in Khunti district, partially destroying it. With regard to military use, the occupation of over 20 schools was documented by the Central Reserve Police Force in Srinagar, Kashmir, in April.

“Increased tensions in Jammu and Kashmir reportedly also led to closure of school for varying periods, including in Rajouri (65) and Poonch (76) districts,” it said.

In Pakistan, the report said, the UN continued to receive reports of the recruitment and use of children, including from madrassas, also, the alleged use of children by armed groups for suicide attacks.

In January, Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan released a video showing children, including girls, being instructed how to perpetrate suicide attacks.

The report said while age-disaggregated data on civilian casualties were limited, incidents of children killed and injured in attacks in Pakistan by armed groups were reported.

It cited a suicide attack in Sehwan, Sindh Province in February in which at least 75 people, including 20 children, were killed. Also eight attacks on educational facilities and students, including four targeting girls’ schools.

In March, unidentified people vandalised the Oxford Public School, located in Ghizer Valley in Gilgit-Baltistan, and threatened to bomb the school if female teachers did not cover themselves. Also, a girls’ school located in Qila Abdullah in Balochistan Province was damaged in an IED attack.

Guterres said he is “concerned” by the continued attacks on schools by armed groups, particularly the targeting of girls’ education. He called on the Pakistan government to prioritise measures to deter future attacks on schools.

In Afghanistan, there were 3,179 verified cases of children being killed and maimed in 2017 in the conflict-related violence. An increase in child casualties resulting from aerial operations remained a concerning trend, with 27 child casualties resulting from cross-border shelling out of Pakistan.

With reports of over 21,000 violations committed against children in 2017, Guterres expressed outrage over the rise in the number of children affected by fighting globally.

“Boys and girls have once again been overly impacted by protracted and new violent crisis. Despite some progress, the level of violations remains unacceptable,” he said in a statement.

The UN Chief reiterated that the best way to address this horrific situation is to promote peaceful solutions to conflicts and called on all parties to exert maximum efforts in this regard.

The UN’s expert on Children and Armed Conflict, Virginia Gamba, said 66 parties to conflict are listed this year - three more than in the 2016 report - with nine government forces and 57 armed groups being named.

“Among the most significant violations registered in 2017 were killing and maiming, recruitment and use and attacks on schools and hospitals, all of which registered a rise in comparison to the previous year,” she told reporters at the United Nations.

Also worrying is the number of children detained for their alleged association with armed groups, she said, adding such as, over 1,000 children in Iraq are held for their suspected affiliation with the Islamic State terror group.

She also said there were some positive developments, like release of over 10,000 child soldiers from armed groups and forces.

(This story has been published from a wire agency feed without modifications to the text. Only the headline has been changed.)

Child 'Warriors' of Kashmir - by Sushant Sareen

Child 'Warriors' of Kashmir

Radicalisation of children in Kashmir and why that is the single most disturbing development in the last 100 days of Kashmir unrest.

By Sushant Sareen | Oct 17, 2016

Source: https://www.newslaundry.com/2016/10/17/child-warriors-of-kashmir

Child Soldiers flanking Ummat-e-Islami leader Sarjan Barkati (Sarjan Ahmad Wagay), the pied-piper of Kashmir, known to have coined slogans like "One Solution, Gun Solution, Gun Solution".
Image Source: Sarjan Barkati Official Facebook Page

In all the political and security-related heat, dust and noise that has been generated over the disturbances in Kashmir, the single most sinister development – the emergence of ‘child agitators’, or if you will, ‘Child Soldiers’, most of them teenagers and some in their pre-teens – seems to have somehow got side-lined. The pernicious phenomenon of Child Soldiers is neither new nor unique to Kashmir – it has manifested itself in many conflict theatres around the world, including Sierra Leone, Congo, Somalia, Syria (ISIS), Pakistan (most suicide bombers were teenagers). But wherever it has manifested, it has had devastating consequences for the society’s equilibrium and coherence. Not just Kashmir but also rest of India will pay a very heavy price in the not too distant a future if this issue isn’t addressed with the sensitivity, seriousness and sincerity it deserves. And yet, the entire issue has been reduced to anecdotal narration instead of having become a matter of central concern for both state and society.

The first time I heard of this phenomenon was at a round table discussion in Delhi where a senior Kashmiri journalist narrated, with a mix of horror and admiration, the story of a ‘checkpoint’ manned by 12-14 year old kids who were stopping all movement on the road. When they learned of a family travelling for Haj, they requested them to pray for their ‘shahadat’ (martyrdom). Another anecdote was about a particularly desperate family pleading with one of the kids (of around 12 years) to let them pass, he said he would need the nod of his ‘commander’ who was a 14 year old kid! Since then, there are any number of accounts of these ‘child soldiers’ who are beyond everyone’s control and have, in a sense, redefined the state of unrest in the Valley. Stories that evoke memories of the Cultural Revolution in China are now fairly common place in Kashmir, the only difference being that the Red Guards were under control of Mao and his coterie while in Kashmir the kids are pretty much running amok. They are assaulting teachers, browbeating officials, extorting money from traders, and deciding who gets to travel past their checkpoint and who must turn back. While many of these kids allegedly are getting paid for doing what they are doing, there doesn’t seem to be any real command and control system guiding them. There are also reports that many of these kids are junkies and get their high from opioid based cough syrups, which they sometimes buy from the proceeds of the money they get and often just snatch from local chemists.

The separatist leaders, whose own kids go to elite schools and are mostly kept out of harm’s way, are not just pretty blasé about this phenomenon but are actually quite encouraging it. Some of them, even as they publicly rave and rant about deaths in police firing, are in private quite smug over the deaths of kids – most of whom were not as innocent as they were made out to be and were in fact involved in launching murderous assaults on security force personnel when they fell to police firing – because that keeps the cycle of violence in play. In any case, these separatists no longer call the shots on the streets of Kashmir. But even if they did call the shots, it would be quite pointless to expect them to make any positive or sensible contribution to prevent kids from taking to streets. What is of greater concern is the dumbed-down, self-serving and rather lazy analysis of the phenomenon by allegedly seasoned observers of Kashmir. Essentially, they explain this phenomenon by saying that these are children of conflict. Asides of the fact that in India in general and in Kashmir in particular, there is no culture of doing serious psychological and sociological study of conflict and violence and how it impacts society – much of what passes off as serious analysis is really nothing more than anecdotes, stories and observations often tainted by ideological predilection of the narrator – the facts also don’t support the theory of children on conflict.

Kids who are 14-15 year today were born around the turn of the century, and the pre-teens even later. This means that most of these kids were around 2-3 years old around 2004, the year from which violence levels fell steeply year after year until 2015-16 when they started to rise once again but still remains far below the violence levels of the preceding decade. Clearly, if there are any children of conflict they are the ones who were either born in the 1990s or were growing up in those years, and not the ones born in the early 2000’s who grew up at a time of relative peace. In other words, more than being children of conflict, these kids are victims of conditioning (at the level of family, a sample of which comes from videos doing rounds on social media showing toddlers shouting slogans and behaving as ‘mujahids’) and indoctrination at the level of society, mosques and even schools. Many of these kids come from less than privileged backgrounds and live in a social milieu where peer pressure, braggadocio and faux bravado coupled with inadequate parental supervision or control pushes them along the path of violence to earn social respect and acceptability. While kids manning the barricades mouth the slogans of ‘Azadi’ and strut about like soldiers, it is too much to expect a 12 or 15 year old to understand the connotations of that term, much less be able to articulate the concept with any degree of coherence and clarity.

The separatists and their sympathisers and supporters are quick to point to these child soldiers as a sign of how even kids have risen up against India, but more discerning sections of the Kashmiri population see this as a societal breakdown and fear the short, medium and long term consequences of this phenomenon if it is not addressed and arrested. There is also a loathing developing against the high-handedness of these child soldiers who insult, even beat, elders. From a security point of view, this is an extremely dangerous development because it is precisely such kids who in other parts of the world have become suicide bombers. Jihadist terror outfits find these kids excellent cannon fodder. For the army and police officers, these kids create a serious dilemma. It is one thing for the security forces to fight terrorists who attack them and quite another for them to take on and fire on kids even if they are part of or leading a murderous mob. In the long term, unless weaned away from the destructive path they have embarked upon, these kids will become an even bigger security threat than what they are now. The bottom-line is that neither Kashmir nor India can afford to lose the GenNext of Kashmir to the fires of jihadist separatism.

The big challenge before the state and society is how to deradicalise these children. Arresting them and putting them through the mill is hardly an answer. In fact, many of these kids who have been picked up by the police and kept for a few days in police stations have come out even more hardened. The juvenile justice program is totally ill-equipped to tackle this problem. This means that something more innovative and effective will have to be considered. One such suggestion (from journalist Praveen Swami) is to pull these kids along with their families out of the environment in which they are caught and put them in rehabilitative facilities located within Kashmir for a few years. The kids can then be put through proper schooling and counselling and the parents can be given some employment or imparted some skills which help them once they go back home.

Clearly, the situation as it exists on ground in Kashmir cannot be allowed to fester endlessly. Ignoring or underplaying the phenomenon of child soldiers will only imperil security of the state and stability of society in the future. Instead of waiting for greater virulence to erupt in the months and years ahead, it would make more sense to start taking corrective measures and do whatever it takes to pre-empt the approaching tempest.

Valley has only one juvenile remand home for youth detained for violence

Scores of Kashmiri youth were detained for violence – but Valley has only one juvenile remand home

by Rayan Naqash

Published: 17 Nov 2016, Scroll.in

[Source: http://scroll.in/article/820727/juvenile-justice-in-kashmir-beatings-in-lock-up-bribes-and-detention-with-adults]

The state's failure to implement laws for minors may have endangered an unknown number of youth who were detained during the summer unrest.

On a chilly October evening, a crowd in Srinagar banged on the gates of a police station, demanding the release of a teenager who had been detained for attacking vehicles. Policemen came to the gate, batons in hand. As the boy’s angry relatives heckled an officer, the policemen dealt them a few blows before pushing them away. Curses were exchanged as the crowd finally dispersed.

An elderly woman, the grandmother of another detainee, sat on a shopfront opposite the police station. She pleaded for her grandson to be released, claiming he was only 11 years old and had been abandoned by his mother after his policeman-father had died in an encounter.

Inside the police station, officials said parents lying about the age of their children was common practice. The detained boy, they said, was at least 16, and not 11, because his father had died in 2001.

The two boys are among the scores of young Kashmiris, many in their teens and pre-teens, who took to the streets during the protests that raged across Kashmir after the popular Hizbul Mujahideen commander Burhan Wani was killed by security forces on July 8.

Minors in lock-up

Close to four months on, with the protests having ebbed, attention has turned to the arrests made during that period of turbulence. On October 7, newspaper reports in Kashmir, quoting Special Director General of Police, Coordination and Law and Order, SP Vaid, said that 4,318 people had been arrested, 925 of whom were still in custody. Since then, according to unofficial estimates, the number of detainees has risen to 6,500, of whom between 1,000 to 1,500 are estimated to still be in custody.

An unknown number of juveniles – who are 18 years or younger – are among the arrested and do not figure in the official records. Several of them have been bailed out or sent to juvenile homes. At least two minors were reported to have been arrested under the Public Safety Act by showing them to be adults. This law, under which a person can be detained for up to two years without judicial intervention, was amended in 2012 to bar the detention of minors.

According to advocate Wajid Haseeb, executive magistrates who sanction warrants under the Public Safety Act rely on police dossiers and do not conduct an independent investigation to ascertain whether the accused is a minor. “If the police think no one will produce on records a birth certificate, they mention the age as 18,” he said. “We then plead in the High Court if we have a document [proof of date of birth] and the warrant will be quashed.”

The manner and conditions of incarceration are now a matter of debate. A police official in Srinagar said the usual practice is to send minors – below 16, according to him – to juvenile homes or keep them separated from adults while still in lock-up.

First-time offenders, the official said, are let off with a scolding, after their families give the police a written undertaking that their wards will not indulge in stone-pelting again. “The parents and imams from neighbourhood mosques are called to the police station and asked to reprimand the boy,” he said. But repeat offenders are booked.

However, lawyer Mir Shafkat Hussain rejected this claim. He alleged that juvenile detainees are kept in police lock-ups with adults before being produced in court “on the whim of the police”. He added, “Every parent says their child was detained for 20-25 days before being taken to a court.”

In Srinagar’s lower court, minors mature into adults while following up on their long-drawn-out cases, which range from stone-pelting to mob violence and arson.

Hussain, who has helped many protestors seek bail, said a majority of those detained for stone-pelting were minors, who were often harassed in lock-up. Many detainees were also first-time offenders, he added.

Overcrowded facilities

Reports of families of detainees being charged for food surface each time arrests are made on a large scale. This summer was no different.

The lawyer Wajid Haseeb said the state covers the cost of only those detentions that are in the books. “This is why they charge money from parents for meals,” he said. “Nobody is going to pay if the detainee is not in any record.”

Special Director General of Police SP Vaid acknowledged the reports of families of detainees being charged, but said funds had been released to all senior superintendents to pay police station bills. “Where I get proof [that relatives are being charged money], I will come down very heavily on the police stations and station house officers,” he said.

While scores of minor offenders were detained in the past few months, there is only one juvenile observation home in the entire Valley – a facility with a maximum capacity of 50 at Harwan in Srinagar. Officials of the social welfare department, however, said the number was not static and there had been several occasions when the home had been overcrowded.

Tariq Ahmad, Srinagar district officer for social welfare, said there had been a steady stream of juveniles to the observation home during the early days of the unrest. “But in recent weeks, the numbers have gone down and now, only about five boys accused of stone-pelting remain,” he added.

In 2013, the state passed the Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Act. It also agreed to implement the Centre’s Integrated Child Protection Scheme. But it failed to do so fully, leading to the lack of infrastructure to deal with juvenile crime. Lawyers and activists said this was harming minors as they are now detained with adults.

A lawyer, who did not want to be identified, said most juvenile detainees came from poor households with little education and no political awareness. “Once you slap PSA [Public Safety Act] on a juvenile, he cannot go for education or jobs,” he said. “So he does this [stone-pelting]. What else can he do?”

Lack of training

Rouf Malik, who heads the child rights group Koshish, linked the magnitude of protests this summer with the practice of detaining juveniles with adults, saying it affected behaviour patterns and enhanced tendencies among such minors to commit crimes. “They come out as reactionaries,” he said.

A 2011 study by the Delhi-based Asian Centre for Human Rights, Juveniles of Jammu and Kashmir: Unequal before the law and denied justice in custody, found that minors in the state are “assumed to be adults and are detained in adult detention facilities, placing them at very high risk of abuse”. It went on to say that “the lack of juvenile facilities, such as juvenile homes, means that detained delinquents are routinely detained in police lock-ups or in prisons with adults”.

Special Director General of Police Vaid said that juveniles must be kept in juvenile homes, and that the police execute the law once it has been implemented by the government. “We are trying our best to make policemen aware but they need special training and sensitisation to juvenile problems,” he said. “I don’t think my policemen are so sensitised.”

According to Abdul Majeed Bhat, mission director of the Integrated Child Protection Scheme, the biggest problem in the state is the lack of a Juvenile Justice Board, nominations for which have only just been finalised. Unless the board and Child Welfare Committees are formed, “implementation [of the scheme] is not practical”, he added.

Pointing out that Central schemes were exhaustive and made malpractice difficult, Malik said their non-implementation in the state was disappointing. “Security laws come directly [to Kashmir] but welfare acts such as these are not directly imposed and implemented,” he added.

The Warriors of Dispair - by Debu C

Child Soldiers of Kashmir: The Warriors of Dispair
October 22, 2016
by Debu C

Source: https://www.mapsofindia.com/my-india/government/children-of-kashmir-the-new-triggers-against-the-state



The advantage with children is that they can be moulded in any way as the family or society would like them to be. This can be both a virtue and a curse. The latter, when the family and state together fail the child and that is the first foundation of a failed society, and ultimately, the nation.

Kashmir has witnessed militancy since 1948 in one form or another. What used to be the odd stone pelting at military vehicles passing by once in a while, has now turned into full-fledged armed militancy against the state authority. However, that is neither new nor the biggest challenge for the state and central government. It is the recent phenomenon over the last 100 days of state-wide militant protests, led by stone-pelting children, some as young as 8 and 10 years, that is truly disturbing.

From 2000 onwards, it seemed that the state was limping back towards a semblance of normalcy; led by relatively free and fair elections, increased infrastructure developments like the Baramulla-Banihal rail link, which had been welcomed by local people, and for a while it did seem that Kashmir valley was making slow but steady progress towards order and development.

The lost cause of Burhan Wani

The last 100 days has changed all of that. The trigger to the current spree of stone pelting and violence was the killing of Kashmir-based self-styled Commander of Hizbul Mujahideen, Burhan Wani, by security forces. The separatists saw an opportunity to come back onto the centre stage of Kashmiri attention, stoked state-wide protests and for the first time, children, some as young as 8 years, were used as a shield and fronted the stone pelters.

In another first, women took on the security personnel in challenging them knowing fully well that they would not respond aggressively.

So, how did the Kashmiri society change its values so drastically that it now seems indifferent to children being put on the frontline, before a well-armed and well-trained military force?

Children are dying and children are being scarred for life, but have all stakeholders given a serious thought on the impact of this new development on Kashmiri society in coming times?

Looking into the mind of a militant child

In several conflicts, children have been used and abused in armed warfare across the world by vested interests, who find them easy to influence and willing to act as ‘sacrificial goats’.

Children have been used actively in brutal sectarian warfare in several parts of Africa. They are easy to recruit as most are recent orphans of war or have been separated from their families. Arming them with a promise to avenge the injustice against their parents or relatives is very alluring to an innocent child, who is deeply traumatized, confused and in emotional conflict. Hand him a weapon and he becomes a mobile ticking bomb for his controller.

Besides being coerced into brutal militancy, sexual exploitation by adults only hardens them and they grow up into being even more brutal versions than their handlers. Power at a very young age is as intoxicating as it is to an adult, only that now we have a child dying for a cause that he barely understands.

But if you do survive, then more power and brutality are the rewards. Children initiated into militancy at a very young age learn quickly the way into a brutal world, but no one ever learns the way out of it, unless it happens in a coffin. Burhan Wani learnt that the hard way. But he was at least a young man. What about these young and vulnerable children of Kashmir?

How Kashmir is going South

Kashmir is not quite there yet but make no mistake, the early signs in the making of a suicidal Jihadi is emerging. It all starts with young ‘boys’ playing out for long hours, unsupervised by their parents. With no school to attend, older boys, who mostly happen to be only a year or two older, start the initiation process.

This is further backed by fanatics at the local mosque who validate the older boys’ actions. Soon a chain of command begins to fall in place with initially innocuous tasks such as conducting surveillance of security forces, passing information on their movements, etc., which are rewarded with petty cash and food. Each child is made to feel like a ‘hero’ and soon each level begins to look up to the older level and try and emulate them. And in the process, a childhood gets lost forever.

In Kashmir, not all children who are part of the stone-pelting brigade are organized or even controlled. Many have formed themselves into petty gangs extorting money from locals to feed their own addictions and sense of power. In many cases, what is a simple case of spoilt unsupervised brats acting in a group, soon becomes the target for recruitment by ‘talent spotters’ of various militant groups.

These children are shown propaganda videos that show the power of the gun and the rewards that come with it. ‘Azadi’ is the central theme sold to naïve children who have no clue or idea about mainland India or even the concept of India. They are made to parrot Azadi as their main goal in life; consequences notwithstanding.

But this was never a problem for the self-centered separatists, most of whom have sent their own children to safe havens in metro cities of India or overseas, while they continue to prey on unsuspecting children from weaker sections, as they play out their hidden agenda against the state authorities.

Is there any hope for militant children of Kashmir?

There is. But it will take all stakeholders to commit themselves to the betterment of children. At the moment, there seems very little chance of state authorities, security forces, families of militant children, community leaders and school teachers to come together and discuss the future of these children, away from the influence of parochial politics.

The conflict in Ireland saw children being used by militants to gather information and act as bait to draw British security forces. Though not as brutal as what we see in parts of Africa and now the Middle-East, nevertheless, what seemed impossible sometime back is now a fairly peaceful region; where children pursue what they should be at their age, knowledge and play.

Kashmiri society was never violent, it’s not in their DNA and that should give us hope for a truly inclusive and serious discussion initiated by the authorities, which will surely get a sober response from all stakeholders. A beginning has to be made and it must be made now.

It’s time to once again listen to John Lennon’s song: “All we are saying, is give peace a chance.”

"THE STONE AGE, THE STONED AGE, AND THE AGE OF STONING" - A poem

THE STONE AGE,
THE STONED AGE,
AND THE AGE OF STONING

by Yavar Khan Qadri

The three Ages of Stone

Seven thousand for one

A dozen years for two

Then the first two Ages were done.

The first Age came early

Man, primitive, with flaws

An early Early Man

Under the fear of claws.

So he made better weapons

Improved over bone

Gone was the “primitive”

Man, deftly carving stone.

The Stoned Age came much later

Amidst the first foolish wars

The marijuana & mushroom joints

The roar of the muscle cars.

The Stoning Age is here now

More poignant than others

It's the Age of flinging Stones

In Kashmir, sisters and brothers.

Not that protests are not justified

With all the brute force let loose

It's just that the logic is confusing

By the primitive methods we choose.

Useless the pen's might

Wisdom in its last throes

Submission, demand the leaders

And the miserable Kashmiri bows.

Death, fear, and depravity

Caused by the leaders' behaviours

Are they the biggest crooks?

Nay; they are the 'saviours'!

With astronomical demands

The leaders are many

Their own children safe

They haven't sacrificed any.

That's okay, I suppose

The leaders are exempt

Stone pelting is for the masses

The classes? Only to tempt.

Have we ceased to be human?

Have we declined to think?

Closing our eyes to reality

Never did once we blink.

Some say follow the one

Who does not change his stand

We do have the Devil

Then do we shake his hand.

Admitting these facts is a 'sin'

The cowards can hurt you fast

But once Kashmiris have risen

Their threats won't really last.

So throw onto them

What they throw onto you.

Go on your marches

But invite them too.

Then be amazed by the way

The rhetoric will vanish

The marches and the pelting

They themselves will banish.

Or do nothing

Just suffer and wait

Until they lure you

With yet another bait.

The fact is that kids are kids

Not instruments of war

They need a future

Not a dream that's too far.

Anyone who coerces a child to fight

Deserves to be kicked out from society, outright.

© Yavar Khan Qadri, 25 Sep 2016

"Kashmir’s Child Soldiers" by Shakir Mir

[An excerpt from Shakir Mir's article: "It’s Time to Bring Kashmir’s ‘Miserable Guillotine’ Out from the Shadows", The Wire, 26 Sep 2016]

On Teachers Day, two weeks ago, Javaid Trali, a friend and affiliate of the ruling party, jocularly took to his Facebook, writing, “#HappyTeachersDay to @sageelani, @MirwaizKashmir & Co from children on streets for teaching them how stone age looks like, practically.”

Trali opened a can of worms. His comment was not off the mark, but given the truth that it was under the government’s orders that the police fired pellet guns, it was a morally tenuous line to simply exculpate the authorities while alleging that separatists were solely to blame. He received an angry comment from a person who wrote, “And thanks to you and your government teaching kids what darkness looks like because they’re blinded by you.”

There were also others who wrote as much. I could not disagree with their point of view. Their words were profound and truthful. But when they tried casting all pellet-hit children as mere passive victims of the “offensive raged by the Indian state”, it became problematic.

The other day, I happened to walk past a famous crossroad in the old city. I saw a troop of children not more than 7, hurling stones and shouting pro-Pakistan slogans at policemen. The cops were merely lounging against the balustrade, grinning in their dismissal of the little, harmless protesters. Their task was something else – to not let the real assailants assemble. A little while later, a group of older boys joined the kids, seething with fury and in no mood to play around. Anticipating a threat, it was then that the police snapped out of their reverie and prepped their anti-riot regalia. I left the scene. I don’t know what happened later. The same evening, I came across a Facebook video in which children pumped their fists in the air, wielding ‘guns’ and sloganeering while marching past a police station near the Shaheed Gunj area of Srinagar, barely two miles away from the secretariat.

I marveled at how callous the enablers of violence can be in letting those children push closer to the vortex of death. Granted that cops fighting protests are just angry bulls let loose, but where is the word of caution? Why is it we feel sorry for children only after they turn into a lifeless mass of pockmarked bodies? Why not do something to stem this possibility beforehand? I have never come across a single instance where separatist leaders issued counsel, dissuading children from joining violent mobs. Had they done so, the children would have been alright today. And reading and studying. And preparing for exams. There was always plenty of room to get our act together and preclude the possibility of children falling prey to the security forces. Unless someone, somewhere calculated that dead children, bloodied children, wounded and disfigured children are a potent way of transmitting a political message.

The last person to try sounding a word of caution, Maulvi Showkat Ahmad Shah, found himself blown up by an IED in 2011. Geelani tried to describe this as the Indian army’s doing but was forced to eat humble pie after a militant group owned up the “mistake.”

- Shakir Mir, journalist

Death of a boy from Harwan: Who is responsible?

by Rajesh Razdan

Nasir Shafi Qazi of New Theed Harwan

Today I read about the death of Nasir Shafi in Harwan area of Srinagar. Nasir was 11 years old. Do you have a 11 year old in your life ? Think about it for a minute.

Nasir’s dead body was found in bushes by the Harwan gardens. His family says he was killed in cold blood by either Police or CRPF. Police says he was a known “stone pelter” with 5 FIRs against his name. The young boy’s family refused to hand over his body for post mortem and he was buried amid speculations.

One thing is clear though. Nasir was not the lone child out there on the streets pelting stones and fighting security forces. There are hundreds like him. As part of Kashmir Files reportage, Barkha informed us about the phenomena of ‘toppers’ leaving home in droves towards highlands to embrace militancy. She also talked about younger faces in stone pelting groups this time around. 

But somehow the conversation stopped there without connecting the dots. You can bring up “political issue” all day long, but you know a society has reached a new level of moral depravity when interring child caskets becomes de rigueur.

Harwan used to to be the place you’d go to commune with the gods, but the gods have long been chased away.

This has happened before. In nineties African despots pushed children as young as eight into their dirty civil wars and the word ‘Child Soldiers’ entered the lexicon.

What we see today on the streets are the Child Soldiers of Kashmir.

In 2006 Thomas Lubango Dyilo, leader of Union of Congolese Patriots, was charged with three counts by ICC (International Criminal Court) related to military use of children in Congo. The charges were: 

• Enlisting children, constituting a war crime in violation of article 8(2)(b)(xxvi) of the Rome Statute;
• Conscription of children, constituting a war crime in violation of article 8(2)(b)(xxvi) of the Rome Statute;
• Using children to participate in hostilities, constituting a war crime in violation of article 8(2)(b)(xxvi) of the Rome Statute.

In 2012, Dyilo was convicted and sentenced to 14 years in prison.

Yet, our Dyilos’ remain free and are openly enlisting everyday. About time those who invoke UN day in and day out are frog-marched in front of ICC.


Note: The text is from a post on Facebook by Rajesh Razdan on 18 September 2016.