Kashmir violence: Mehbooba govt must step down, says PDP minister’s wife

Nazki’s tea house, Chai Jai, on the banks of the Jhelum, was inaugurated by Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti earlier this year.

Nazki is also a cousin of top PDP ideologue and Education Minister Nayeem Akhtar, Revenue Minister Basharat Bukhari and Inspector General of Police Syed Javaid Mujtaba Gillani, who heads the J&K Police in Kashmir.

“It is immoral, unethical, tragic and wrong. Whatever has been happening in Kashmir over the last 14 days is terribly wrong. The brutal killings of children, the criminal blinding and maiming of protesters, and the shameless suffocating of an entire population is wrong. It is wrong even if it has been happening over the last two decades or so. It is wrong even if there are ‘far too many agencies at work trying to keep Kashmir burning’. It is wrong no matter what excuse we are fed, day in and day out. It is wrong irrespective of who feeds us the excuses,” Nazki said in her Facebook post.

“And it is wrong in the most fundamental, most shameful and the most damning way. For, it is the children of Kashmir that are being killed on street corners, by the security forces of our country. Who pump pellets into their young bodies. It is in a democratic nation that a whole population is taken hostage for days on end, without basic amenities, without phones, without newspapers. And it is happening under the watch of a popularly elected government,” she wrote.

Stating that the government’s reaction “is wrong, unacceptable and needs rectification”, she said, “the powers that be need to either step up and stop the wrongdoings. Or they need to step down. I guess they just need to step down… what matters most is to keep the faith for our future generations. So that they can know the face of truth. Their truth. Our truth. They can do this. And they should.”

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“They need to step down so that we can be convinced that every popularly elected government doesn’t necessarily turn into an unresponsive monolith as soon as it is sworn into power. That each successive regime in Kashmir does not have to become indistinguishable from the previous one. That our leaders do not all have to transform into horrific, faceless, and voiceless entities,” wrote Nazki.

“Their stepping down may not stop the injustice. But that is not all that matters. What matters more is for them to register a protest. To not become complicit by default. To break the silence and the cycle of waiting and watching. To have a conscience and keep it. To uphold truth if not justice,” she wrote.