Kashmiris must archive the human rights violations happening in the valley. We are suffering perhaps the most brutal repression ever witnessed by humanity. I can’t recall any documented proof in which deliberate blinding was used as a State policy to subdue a mass uprising. We may or may not be able to secure our freedom but our future generations deserve to know the struggle and the brutal repression we suffered in our quest for freedom. The best way to do so is to document each and every event- no matter how big or small. We must take the initiative to build a permanent museum to house the landmark events, starting from the accession with India to all major events, including the human rights violations suffered in the last seventy years. If we fail to do so, history and those who have suffered and sacrificed everything for Kashmir will never forgive us and our future generations and the world will never know about the miseries and atrocities that we suffered at the hands of the Indian security forces.
While we have entire museums dedicated to the Holocaust, there are hardly any museums dedicated to the Palestinian Nakba. The differences exhibits make in creating an impact are quite evident from these two major world events. During the partition of India too, thousands of Hindus and Muslims were massacred. However, one of the least discussed genocide is what happened to Muslims in Jammu. Lack of documentations and lack of interviews of the survivors is the reason the Jammu massacre of Muslims remains unknown. We must give credit to Kashmiri Pandits who have done a better job than us at preserving their history. They have made it a point to archive events and any atrocities that were inflicted upon them regardless of the magnitude of these events. They even organized an exhibit in New York to showcase their sufferings which they like to call as their ethnic cleansing. Today, if the World is oblivious to the suffering of Kashmiris, it is mostly due to our collective failure to present them with the graphic details. If we fail to document our history, in particular the events from the past thirty years, our struggle for freedom may be presented to our coming generations and the world as the struggle between good and evil in which Indian forces fought the Pakistan sponsored Kashmiri terrorists. All the human rights violations against the Kashmiri population will be distorted and presented in a way so that the world sympathises with the oppressor and the oppressed and their sympathisers are projected as terrorists who deserved what they got. To counter this narrative, a museum dedicated to the contemporary Kashmir’s history must be built in earnest. Such a museum should house pictures, videos, graphic illustrations, historic documents, interviews with the survivors etc. so that everyone comes to know about the miseries that were inflicted upon us. The world of today responds to proof. People need evidence. They no longer believe in what you say. We need to show the world how callously our blood is being spilled, how our world is being blinded purposely and how our women and men are being robbed off of their dignity. We need to give them the evidence they demand otherwise our struggle too will be named as an armed uprising which needed to be suppressed at all costs lest it destroy the entire humanity.
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