NEW DELHI: The latest issue of Eyewitness video magazine, which attempts to tell how the Kashmiris see the reality of their condition, has been censored. The censor panel told the magazine to get the story cleared by the ministries of home and external affairs, as well as the army. Not having enough time it would have been forced to drop the story altogether.
The 13minute film, shown at a news conference here recently, attempts to contrast the Kashmiris” perception with that of the rest of India, by making the following points”.
Kashmiris see the army as their tormentors rather than protectors, the rest of India thinks that the army is doing a great job in suppressing the insurgency. The released hostages are sympathetic towards the militants.
The rest of India thinks of them as killers.
There is communal harmony in Kashmir while the rest of India believes that there is a mass exodus of Hindus from the state because they feel threatened.
The film shows horrifying tales of torture by the security forces. A school teacher, Mirza Muzaffar Shah, claims that while interrogating them, the army applied electrical shocks to his genitals, and then drove a wooden rod up his rectum. Another victim, shopkeeper Manzoor Ahmed Naikoo, says that the army tied a cloth around his penis and section fire, And then drove rod through his rectum. The magazine says that both the men have suffered deep perforations in their intestines, stomach, liver and lungs. ‘The magazine also says that on October 14, the BSF shot dead 10 people in Draogam village. Of these six were innocent (four of them allegedly shot in cold blood).
Article extracted from this publication >> November 15, 1991
