...a disputed territory lying between India and Pakistain. After partition, the Paks grabbed half of it and call it Azad (Free) Kashmir. The remainder they refer to as "Indian Occupied Kashmir". They have fought four wars with India over it, the score currently 4-0 in New Delhi's favor. After 72 years of this nonsense, India cut the Gordian knot in 2019, removing the area's special status, breaking off Ladakh as a separate state, and allowing people from other areas to settle (or in the case of the Pandits, to resettle) there....
(IIOJK).
According to the BBC, Shabir Ahmad Dar, a man from IIOJK who had been selling intricate pashmina shawls in the hill town of Mussoorie for two decades, was seen being publicly assaulted and harassed along with a fellow Kashmiri salesman in a video that circulating social media.
In the video, the attackers, who were members of a Hindu right-wing group, thrashed and hurled abuses at Shabir and his friend as they ransacked their stall, located on a busy boulevard.
"They blamed us for the attack, told us to leave town and never show our faces again," said Shabir.
His goods, worth thousands of dollars, remain abandoned at the stall. "But we are too scared to go back," he admitted.
While police arrested three individuals later in response to the outcry over the assault, their subsequent release on bail after paying a fine and issuing an apology to the victims has done little to assuage the fear gripping the Kashmiri community in Mussoorie.
But Dar had already left by then, along with dozens of other Kashmiri shawl sellers, who, after living in Mussoorie for decades, say they no longer feel safe there.
The Pahalgam attack has unleashed a wave of hostility towards Kashmiris residing in various Indian cities.
Over a dozen reports have emerged detailing harassment, vilification, and threats faced by Kashmiri vendors and students at the hands of right-wing groups, and even from their own classmates, customers, and neighbours, the BBC reported.
Harrowing videos circulating online show Kashmiri students being chased off campuses and assaulted in the streets.
In an appeal for peace, a survivor of the Pahalgam attack, whose naval officer husband was killed, urged people not to target Moslems and Kashmiris. "We want peace and only peace," she pleaded.