In Custody: Kashmiri Journalists Behind Bars

Sahil Maqbool winces through his tender smile with the kind of vulnerability typically seen in people who have endured either great public humiliation or private tragedy. In his case it’s been a heavy dosage of both. The 44-year-old Kashmiri journalist and poet says he was deceived by men he trusted, thrown in jail, and, according to him, brutally tortured after his arrest on Sept. 16, 2004. Mr. Maqbool had been making his living as an investigative journalist in India’s troubled region of Kashmir. “I lost everything,” Mr. Maqbool says from the lobby of a houseboat in Srinagar, the morning sun beating down on Dal Lake behind him. “I lost my sources, my contacts. You can appreciate the importance of such things. I even lost my family home that I had been maintaining for years. My camera. Laptop. Passport. Everything. Gone.”

LoC Tensions: Need Facts, Not Hype

Beena Sarwar: 

News about the death of two Indian soldiers at the Line of Control in Kashmir on Jan 8 triggered anger in India. Yes, a Pakistani soldier had been killed just two days earlier. But his body had not been mutilated. He had not been beheaded. For that is what Indian reports said, creating hysteria and leading to the beating of war drums: the bodies of their jawans had been mutilated, one of their heads was missing, and Pakistan was responsible (small mercy, authorities asked Indian journalists not to use the word ‘beheaded’ but ‘decapitation’).

India seemed to erupt in a storm of anger, outrage, and indignation, betrayal and hurt, and calls for retaliation against Pakistan. Understandable. Imagine the reaction in Pakistan had it been the other way around.

Someone’s son, brother, father, husband… Lance Naik Hemraj, Lance Naik Sudhakar Singh

But things are not always what they seem. The only facts out there were that there was an escalation of tensions along the LoC, Lance-Naik Aslam of Pakistan was killed on Jan 6, two Indian soldiers died on Jan 8 (at the time of writing, on Jan 10, another Pakistani soldier has been reported killed).

Beware the dogs of war

If our politicians cannot defend the ceasefire, the biggest gain of the India-Pakistan dialogue, they should stop claiming they represent Kashmir’s best interests.

Nirupama Subramanian

The killing of two soldiers on the Line of Control, and the gruesome manner in which Lance Naik Hemraj met his end, have shocked and anguished all Indians. But in all that has been said by political leaders and by the men in uniform, there is a strange omission. Not one of them has yet thought it important to stress that despite the violations, how vital the ceasefire has been to changing lives on the ground for people living on both sides of the LoC — the Kashmiris that both India and Pakistan claim to speak for, and whose best interests both nations claim to represent — and what a crucial anchor it has been for peace efforts in the region over the last decade and therefore how important it is to secure it.