Daily Herald - Chicago, Illinois, US Newspaper
The exodus began on Jan. 19. Just after Friday prayer, mosque loudspeakers began blasting slogans, saying Kashmir was only for those willing to say, "Allah is great." Mobs encircled Hindu homes. Rioters screamed, "Nizam-e-Mustafa," or "Islamic rule." The Indian government did not respond right away. "We saw it as sporadic violence. We failed to understand the game plan," says Inspector General of Police K. Rajendra Kumar in Srinagar. "When India reacted, it was too late."
In Habbakadal, their neighborhood, militants threw henna into Hindu houses, a powder used to decorate the hands of Indian brides. The accompanying notes said, "Get your daughters ready. We are coming to make them Muslim girls." A poster glued to the Kouls' door said, "Infidels leave Kashmir." By early summer, they were one of only two Hindu families left. When rebels broke into the only other Hindu house and sprayed the family with bullets, Koul's mother called for a taxi.
Rediff.com - Indian News Website
Has Taj Mohi-u-Din heard the venomous threats that were blasted through mosques' loudspeakers during late 1989 and early 1990? Has he seen the advertisements published in Kashmiri newspapers during the late 1980s and early 1990s? Does he know that those advertisements demanded Kashmiri Hindus to leave Kashmir within 24 hours or be killed? Does he remember the slogans in which Islamic terrorists demanded that they want Kashmir without Kashmiri Hindu males but with Kashmiri Hindu females? Does he remember all that? And he has the gall to say that Kashmiri Muslims never wanted the Pandits out?
From Burning Books and Leveling Libraries by Rebecca Knuth (page 77):
In 1989, attacks on the Pandits escalated, and Muslim paramilitaries selectively tortured, murdered, and raped Pandits, using particularly gruesome techniques to underscore their demands that Pandits leave Kashmir forever. The Pandits fled en masse, carrying only a few articles of clothing. Thereupon, the militants plundered and set fire to pandit properties and temples and destroyed their artworks and sculptures. Images of living beings were offensive to fundamentalist Muslims. Books were favored targets perhaps standing for their owners. Sometimes militants piled books up and set them on fire, chanting "death to the Pandits"
From Explore Kashmiri Pandits[/i]
In July 1988, the Jammu kashmir Liberation front (JKLF, a terrorist organization) offically launched its jihad... In late 1989, JKLF began the ethnic cleansing ... In next few months numerous Kashmiri Pandits were slaughtered,..., and Sarwanand premi, an 80 year old poet whose wife and son were kidnapped, tortured, their eyes gouged out, and hanged to death. A Kashmiri Pandit nurse working at the Soura Medical College Hospital in Srinagar was gang-raped and then beaten to death. Another women was abducted, raped, and sliced into pieces by a sawmill.
In the early days of January 1990, masked terrorists filled the streets in Srinagar, waving Kalashnikovs, shooting to kill and shouting anti-India slogans. Inflammatory speeches were made from the pulpits of mosques, using public address systems for calling the faithful to prayers. Walls were plastered with posters and handbills, summarily ordering all Kashmiris to strictly follow the Islamic dress code, prohibiting the sale and consumption of alcoholic drinks, and imposing a ban on video parlors and cinemas. The masked men with Kalashnikovs forced people to reset their watches and clocks to Pakistan Standard Time. Notices were pasted on the doors of Pandit houses, asked them to leave Kashmir within 24 hours or face death. Slogans such as "Be one with us, or run or die" were shouted at Hindus. The government ceased to exist and the Chief Minister Farooq Abdullah fled the valley leaving Kashmiri Pandits to the mercy of the Muslim terrorists.
[i]On January 19, 1990, Jag Mohan arrived to take control of the political situation ... As evening fell the exhortations become louder and louder and shriller. Three taped slogans were repeatedly played the whole night from mosques:
Kashmir mein agar rahna hai, Allah-O-Akbar kehna hai (If you want to live in Kashmir, you have to say Allah-O-Akbar).
Yahan kya chalega, Nizam-e-Mustafa (What we want here is Islamic rule).
Asi gachchi Pakistan, Batao roas te Batanev san (We want Pakistan without the Hindu men, but with the Hindu women).
On the night of January 19, 1990, despondency gave way to desperation as tens of thousands of Kashmiri Pandits across the valley took a painful decision to flee their homeland to save their lives...[i]
Again, the events of 1989-90 clearly indicate that if left alone Kashmir would have turned into a Taliban state. Your freedom struggle, at least between 1989 and 1995, was designed in the backrooms of ISI offices. They were simply trying to do to Kashmir what had already been done to Afghanistan - waging an armed struggle through the exploitation of religious fanaticism in order to wrest Kashmir away - I wrote a bit about this in an earlier post as well.
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