Kashmiris in India is confronted with violence after deadly attack

Shabir Ahmad Dar, a resident of Kashmir in India, has been selling Pashmina scarves for more than 20 years.

The complicated -embroidered featherweight scarves are a favorite with his customers in Mussoorie, a hill city in the northern state of Uttarakhand, where he works.

For his buyers, the scarves are a sign of luxury. For DAR they are a metaphor for home; The traditional patterns layered with history and a sign of his Kashmiri identity.

But lately the same identity as a curse feels.

On Sunday, together with another seller, DAR was publicly harassed and attacked by members of a Hindu right group, who were reportedly furious by the Murder of 26 people in a popular tourist place Last week in Kashmir. India has blamed Pakistan for the attack – an indictment of Islamabad is denied.

A video of the attack shows the men who abuse and villain to Dar and his friend while plundering their stall, located on a busy boulevard.

“They blamed us for the attack, told us to leave the city and never show our faces anymore,” said Dar.

He says that his goods, worth thousands of dollars, are still there. “But we are too scared to go back.”

As the indignation spread over the attack, the police arrested the three men on Wednesday, but released them a few hours later after they had charged a fine and asked them to apologize to DAR and his colleague.

But Dar had already left at that time, together with dozens of other Kashmiri sellers from Shawl, who, after having lived in Mussian, say that they no longer feel safe there.

Many survivors of the Pahalgam attack – the deadly aimed at citizens in recent years – said the militants were specifically aimed at Hindu men, which led to an outpouring of anger and sorrow in India, with politicians about party lines that demanded strict action.

Since then there have been more than a dozen reports from Kashmiri suppliers and students in Indian cities that are confronted with intimidation, slander and threats of right -wing groups – but also from their own classmates, customers and neighbors. Videos show that students from the campus are being chased and beaten on the street have been online.

On Thursday one of the survivors, whose naval officer Husband was killed in the militant attack, appealed to people Not to go after Muslims and Kashmiris. “We want peace and only peace,” she said.

But safety problems have forced many Kashmiris such as Dar to return home.

Ummat Shabir, a nursing student at a university in the state of Punjab, said that some women in her neighborhood accused her of a “terrorist who should be thrown away last week”.

“The same day my classmate was forced by her driver from a taxi after he found out that she was a Kashmiri,” she said. “It took us three days to travel back to Kashmir, but we had no other option. We had to go.”

Mrs Shabir is back in her hometown, but for many others even feels no longer safe at home.

As the search for last week’s perpetrators continues, security forces in Kashmir have held thousands of people, closed more than 50 tourist destinations, sent extra army and paramilitary troops, and Various houses blown up belonging to families of suspected militants that they accuse that they have “terrorist relationships”.

The harsh action has aroused fear and unrest among citizens, many of whom have called the actions a form of “collective punishment” against them.

Without mentioning the demolition, Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Omar Abdullah said that the culprits should be punished without grace, “but lets innocent people not become ancillary damage”. Former minister -President Mehbooba Mufti also criticized demolition and warned the government to distinguish between “terrorists and citizens”.

“When the tensions escalate, we are the first to dupe it. But we are still being treated as suspects and expected to put our lives on hold,” another student told the BBC.

Yet this time the play feels a lot worse, says Shafi Subhan, a scarf seller from the Kupwara district in the region, who also worked in Mussian.

In his 20 years of affairs there, Subhan said that he had never confronted a public threat – not even after the 2019 terror attack in the Pulwama district, in which 40 paramilitary police – Troopers were killed.

Before him, Mussianie felt at home, a place where he found peace – even though he was hundreds of kilometers away. He said he shared an emotional bond with his customers who came from all parts of the country

“People were always nice to us, they wore our clothes with so much joy,” Subhan recalled. “But on that day when our colleagues were attacked, nobody came to help. The audience just got up and watched. It hurt them physically – but emotionally much more.”

At home in Kashmir, peace has long been vulnerable. Both India and Pakistan fully claim the territory, but manage individual parts, and an armed uprising has been stewed in the region rated by India for more than three decades and claims thousands of lives.

Caught in between are citizens who say that they are stuck in an endless Limbo that feels particularly stifling when the ties between India and Pakistan are under pressure.

Many claim that in the past military confrontations between the nations were followed by waves of intimidation and violence against Kashmiris, together with an important security and communication limitation in the region.

In recent years, violence has fallen and officials have pointed to improved infrastructure, tourism and investments as signs of greater stability, in particular since 2019, when the special constitutional status of the region was withdrawn on the basis of Article 370.

But arrests and security operations continue and critics claim that calmness is at the expense of civil liberties and political freedoms.

“The needle of suspicion is always on the local population, even if the military has decreased in the last one and a half decades,” says Anuradha Bhasin, the editor-in-chief of the Kashmir Times newspapers. “They always have to prove their innocence.”

While the news of the murders spread last week, Kashmiris flowed into the street and held candlelight vigor and protested Marches. A complete closure was observed a day after the attack and newspapers had printed black front pages. Omar Abdullah apologized publiclysaying that he “had failed”.

Mrs. Bhasin says that Kashmiri refund against such attacks is not new; There has also been similar conviction in the past, although on a smaller scale. “Nobody there has approved civil murders – they know the pain of losing loved ones too well.”

But she adds that it is unfair to put the burden to prove innocence on Kashmiris, when they have become the target of hatred and violence. “This would simply use more fear and people, many of whom already feel isolated from the rest of the country.”

Mirza Waheed, a Kashmiri novelist, believes that Kashmiris is “particularly vulnerable because they are seen by another lens”, which are part of the Muslim population of India.

“The most sad thing is that many of them will undergo the indignation and humiliation, lie low for a while and wait until this can oversee because they have a life to live.”

Nobody knows this better Mohammad Shafi Dar, a daily contractor in the Shopian of Kashmir, whose house was blown up last week by security forces.

Five days later he still picks up the pieces.

“We lost everything,” said Dar, who now lives under the open air with his wife, three daughters and son. “We don’t even have any utensils to cook food.”

He says that his family has no idea where their other 20-year-old son is, whether he has become a member or even dead or alive. His parents say that the student left the house last October and never returned. They have not spoken since.

“Yet we have been punished for his alleged crimes. Why?’