Amit Shah’s Delhi meeting triggers fears of intensified raids in IIOJK
Srinagar: In Indian illegally occupied Jammu and Kashmir, Indian Home Minister Amit Shah is set to chair a high-level meeting in New Delhi tomorrow to review the “security situation” in the occupied territory, amid growing apprehensions that the move will translate into further repression, intensified raids, and increased hardships for Kashmiri poeple.
According to Kashmir Media Service, the meeting will be attended by Indian Lieutenant Governor Manoj Sinha, senior officials of India’s Ministry of Home Affairs, heads of paramilitary forces, intelligence agencies, and top civil and police officers from the occupied territory.
Observers in Srinagar said that whenever such ‘security review’ meetings are convened by New Delhi, restrictions are further tightened, cordon-and-search operations are intensified, properties are seized, and the miseries of the Kashmiri people multiply. India uses the pretext of “security review” to expand its militarized grip over the territory rather than address the root cause of the conflict — its illegal occupation of Jammu and Kashmir.
The review comes at a time when Indian troops have already stepped up raids, on-road frisking, house searches and digital surveillance across IIOJK.
Rights activists noted that India’s security-centric approach has led to arbitrary arrests, torture, harassment, seizure of civilian properties under draconian laws, and collective punishment of entire communities in the name of counterinsurgency. They said India continues to ignore the political and human rights dimensions of the Kashmir dispute guaranteed by UN resolutions.
The people of IIOJK fear that the outcome of the meeting will be a renewed cycle of night raids, detentions, interrogations and intensified militarization, deepening the already suffocating environment in the occupied territory.
