In Kashmir, tales of torture remain suppressed by “fear and threats” – By Anando Bhakto 

Amid reports in the foreign media about how the security forces in Kashmir are using torture as a tool to stifle dissent, people in the valley suspect that it could be the tip of the iceberg. “Our right to report torture cases has been taken away” is the refrain in the locked-down South Kashmir districts of Pulwama and Shopian and in Bandipora and Sopore in the north, where this reporter travelled earlier this month.

People in the hinterland underscored the point that the forces had warned them of “reprisals” if they talked to the media about the “cycles of night raids and illegal detentions, including that of minors”. Recently, a Turkish state international news channel came out with a report of torture of a 26-year-old boy from Hirpora village in Shopian, 65 kilometres south of Srinagar.

As per this report, the boy was blindfolded, pushed into a vehicle and taken to the Army’s 66 Rashtriya Rifles B Company camp at Chowgam. At the camp, the report said, he was “stripped naked, waterboarded and forced to drink copious amounts of a horribly smelly liquid” before the soldiers tied him to a pole and inflicted blows on him and administered electric current.…

https://frontline.thehindu.com/dispatches/article29724488.ece

SEE ALSO:

• ‘Each gulp is a dagger’: Five poets respond to the altered reality of Kashmir after the lockdown – By Shikha Malaviya (Oct 20, 2019, Scroll.in)
  https://scroll.in/article/940900/each-gulp-is-a-dagger-five-poets-respond-to-the-altered-reality-of-kashmir-after-the-lockdown
• The Kashmir Quagmire, Rising Islamophobia and Hindu Nationalism – By Fareeha Shamim (Oct 17, 2019, The Diplomat)
  https://thediplomat.com/2019/10/the-kashmir-quagmire-rising-islamophobia-and-hindu-nationalism/
• I just returned from Kashmir. This is what I saw – By Ratna (Oct 18, 2019, Dailyo.in)
  https://www.dailyo.in/voices/article-370-curfew-in-kashmir-kashmir-lal-chowk/story/1/32023.html
• Silent anger: Kashmiri civil disobedience has become a headache for Delhi – By Bharat Bhushan (Oct 14, 2019, Business Standard)
  https://www.business-standard.com/article/opinion/silent-anger-kashmiri-civil-disobedience-has-become-a-headache-for-delhi-119101400106_1.html