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No phones, no friends: Cut-off Kashmir children despair in lockdown
SRINAGAR, India, Aug 20, 2019 (BSS/AFP) – In a tiny building in a cramped
narrow lane in Kashmir’s main city of Srinagar, Mohammad Saleem and his
family feel cut off from the world and trapped in their home as an Indian
military lockdown enters its third week.
New Delhi imposed the strict movement and communications clampdown hours
before stripping the restive Himalayan region of its autonomy on August 5, in
a bid to quell any unrest triggered by the controversial move.
The security measures have exacted a toll on the valley’s children, who
are going stir-crazy from the isolation and lack of communication with
friends.
“I can’t study, connect with any of my friends and can’t even go out
because of all these restrictions,” Saleem’s 13-year-old son Shayan told AFP.
“I really miss going to school. We used to play a lot there. We have been
sitting at one place now, what do we do here?”
Father-of-three Saleem said his younger daughter moved to live with her
grandmother as she was “feeling caged”, pointing to a small hall in the first
floor of his home where the family have spent most of their time.
Indian authorities re-opened schools in some parts of Kashmir on Monday,
but classrooms were largely empty with parents keeping their children at
home.
With mobile phone networks still down and only some landlines in
operation, families don’t want to be separated from their offspring without
being able to check on them.
One parent fretting about his children’s studies is local businessman
Showkat Shafi, who has decided not to send his two daughters, aged eight and
13, back to school until tensions ease.
There have been regular bouts of demonstrations in some parts of Kashmir
despite the lockdown, with security personnel firing tear gas and pellet
guns.
“It has become really difficult to live like this,” Showkat, whose dyeing
factory has been shut amid the lockdown, told AFP in the residential district
of Nowshera.
“I don’t know how much longer this will continue. What else can we do now
but ask them (children) to not leave their home and just study or keep
themselves busy.”
– ‘Young live in fear’ –
For Saleem, the outbreaks of violence also trigger another fear — that
he’ll be mistaken as a protester and locked up by the authorities amid a
sweeping crackdown.
His home is next to Srinagar’s main mosque Jama Masjid, where protests
regularly break out. While authorities have kept the mosque shut since the
start of August, they also view this old part of the city as a hotbed of
dissent.
At least 4,000 people have been detained over the past two weeks under the
Public Safety Act (PSA), which allows imprisonment for up to two years
without charge or trial, government sources said.
Meanwhile the family’s food rations are almost depleted and Saleem, a
door-to-door women’s clothing salesman who lives almost hand-to-mouth, hopes
to feed his family by borrowing money.
His daughter Iram is in her first year of college and has dreams of
becoming a teacher.
With no sign from Indian authorities on when they will lift the curfew and
restore communications services, despair rather than hope now fills her
thoughts.
“I can’t study because the internet is down… I can’t go anywhere. Where
do I go? What do I do now?,” Iram told AFP: “Everyone’s future is getting
destroyed. The young here live in fear.
“The moment you go out — you have stone pelting, tear gas, curfew…
there is everything. I feel that there isn’t as much injustice anywhere in
the world than there is for the children in Kashmir.”
BSS/AFP/ARS/1714 hrs