The recent exposure of “encounter killings” of innocent working people, youth and students in Jammu & Kashmir has only confirmed that the "war against terror" being waged by the Indian State in the J&K is a fascist war against the people of that state to crush the opposition to the Centre. There is irrefutable evidence that a carpenter and two street vendors from a south Kashmir village were killed last year in cold blood by the Ganderbal police during joint operations with a CRPF unit and Rashtriya Rifles (RR). This first exposure has already led to the revelation of several more cases of similar cold blooded murders of innocent Kashmiri youth.

There should be no doubts in any one's mind that this is still only the tip of the iceberg, and very little more of the iceberg is likely to get exposed. The Central and state governments are doing their best to make it appear as if it is some aberration, some excess, something that the governments at the state and centre have not been aware of. They express "alarm" at these excesses, and cite its cause solely as the greed for monetary awards of some individual police or security officer!

There has been no statement from the Prime Minister, no explanation. The country's Defence Minister has declared, quite predictably, that "human rights excesses will not be tolerated in the armed forces" and the J&K Chief Minister pronounced in the Assembly on Jan 29 "“...The Constitution, Parliament, Legislature, law and governments are for the people and their protection... As such, any security person found guilty of killing any innocent for personal reasons like promotion, rewards or appeasement to bosses would not be spared... (as) nobody is above the law.” It is not surprising that these statements inspire no confidence in the people, especially those like in Kashmir and in the North-eastern states who continue to be victims of state terror since the last few decades.

State terror has become institutionalised in Jammu & Kashmir. Over the last nearly twenty years, the Indian State's army, the CRPF and special police like the Special Operations Group (SOG) have occupied J&K and in the name of fighting terrorism and "safeguarding national security", these forces have killed many innocent people, especially youth. Hundreds of youth have been reported missing by their families and friends. Almost all youth in Kashmir are extremely vulnerable to becoming a "militant from across the border" or a "foreign ultra"; their "qualification" is that they are Kashmiri!

The method employed by the security forces, in identifying and using them for their own ends, is the same - the young man is picked up, tortured and is "persuaded" under threat to work with the security agencies as a "surrendered militant", who is now ready to cooperate with the State; else, he faces a discredited death, forever branded as "anti-national" and a "foreign agent". It is a well-known fact in Kashmir that the Special Police Officers (SPOs) recruit are part of the brigade of surrendered ultras, some of whom are with regular jobs in police or the BSF. Many surrendered ultras today continue to work for the security agencies, especially the SOG, without any designation. However, there is no guarantee of life even as the youth is "cooperating" with the security forces; he can still be summarily dispensed with in a suicide bombing case, where he is the "dreaded militant" who blows himself up. In whichever case, once he is dead, any label and any name can be given and any case built up - in fact, the name of the militant, his outfit and all his past activities are announced even before his blood is dry!

How does the Indian State carry on perpetrating these fascist crimes on the people of a whole region? It does so by labeling every just struggle of the Kashmiri people against state terror as anti-India, extremist, etc. to make people in the rest of the country believe that there is a serious threat from "terrorists" and that the army and security forces have to be given a free hand to safeguard the country's security.. This is the way it attempts to justify state terror, the occupation by force of a civilian population and the continued imposition of the AFSPA. At the same time, those guilty of such heinous crimes are not found guilty and punished, because they are security forces, whose morale has to be kept high and who have to be enabled to carry out their duty!

The people of the State are fighting back against all odds; they have come out on the streets time and again to protest the blatant violation of human rights by the armed forces.

Many people across the country have also been calling for an end to state terror and army occupation of Kashmir.

MEL strongly condemns the cold blooded murder of our youth by the Indian armed forces and calls on the working class and people of this country to come forward unitedly against the fascist rule of the Indian state in these regions. We cannot and must not tolerate this any longer, and hence cannot be silent. Can we allow any more sons of people to be killed for no fault of theirs except that they are Kashmiris? NO, we cannot and we must demand the withdrawal of AFSPA, the recall of the army to its barracks and the disbandment of all special police and security forces.