Kashmir: facing multiple assaults.

Just about every aspect of life for Muslims in occupied Jammu and Kashmir is under assault by India's ruling BJP.

The year 2022 saw Indian actions aimed at disempowering its Muslim population by reshaping Kashmir's demographic landscape and measures to systematically erode Kashmiri culture, language and religious identity.

Properties were confiscated and new land laws were introduced that would seize land from locals and give it to outsiders. The media has been muzzled, and journalists jailed and prevented from travelling overseas. Human rights abuses, including extrajudicial killings and torture, continue with impunity while the entire leadership of the All Parties Hurriyat Conference (APHC) remains in detention. More paramilitary forces were inducted into the world's most militarised region.

A more egregious example of repression such as that in Kashmir can hardly be found anywhere in the world. Yet this grim situation is met by silence from countries that claim to be standard-bearers of human rights. Meanwhile, Pakistan's international campaign to expose this is fitful at best, preoccupied as it is with multiple crises at home. Islamabad's Kashmir diplomacy is now limited to just sending letters to the UN.

Although the occupied territory has seen violent oppression for over seven decades, Delhi's unilateral action on Aug 5, 2019, opened a more brutal chapter in Kashmir's tortured history. The Indian government illegally annexed the state of Jammu and Kashmir, bifurcated it, and integrated it into the Indian union. This was in blatant violation of UN Security Council resolutions. There are 11 resolutions on Kashmir. Specifically, it was a contravention of UNSC Resolution 38, whose para 2 clearly states that neither party to the dispute can bring about a material change in the situation in Kashmir.

A prolonged lockdown and communication blackout was imposed, the military siege tightened, public assembly was banned, the press silenced and Kashmiri leaders, including pro-Delhi politicians, jailed to prevent a popular upsurge against the move that robbed the Kashmiri people of virtually all their rights.

Since then, the BJP government has taken a number of steps -administrative, demographic and electoral - to disempower and disenfranchise Kashmiris and change the Muslim identity of Kashmir. Several actions mimic Israeli settler policies in occupied Palestine. In May 2022, India's Delimitation Commission announced a plan to carve out new...