Information has been difficult to come by. Local media are often harassed by the police, and international reporters have struggled to get inside. Authorities barred internet access for several months after Aug. 5. While it returned in March, mostly at lowered speeds, the has once again banned high-speed internet for the next few weeks, ostensibly to curb protests and reporting from the region. A survey of Kashmiri college students found 90 percent were in favor of a complete withdrawal of Indian troops. Kashmiri leaders who have expressed anger over the abrogation remain under house arrest, including former Chief Minister .

The phrase of "crackdown" that the Indian army uses really is a euphemism of mass destruction. And rape. And brutalisation. That happens all the time. It's still happening now. … The decision to treat all Kashmiris as if they're potential terrorists is what has unleashed this, the kind of "holocaust" against the Kashmiri people. And we know ourselves, from most recent events in Europe, how important it is to resists treating all Muslims as if they're terrorists, but the Indian army has taken the decision to do the opposite of that, to actually decide that everybody is a potential combatant to treat them in that way. And the level of brutality is quite spectacular. And, frankly, without that the jihadists would have had very little response from the Kashmiri people who were not really traditionally interested in radical Islam. So now they're caught between the devil and the deep blue sea, and that's the tragedy of the place.

Supposing a country 7 times smaller than its neighbour; faced with a question. Either you surrender, or you fight till the end. I ask myself this question. And my belief is ‘La ilaha illAllah’, there is no God but one. We will FIGHT! I am not threatening here about a nuclear war; it is a worry. It is a test for the United Nations. You are the one who said Kashmir right to self determination. This is not the time for appeasement like that in 1939 in Munich. This is the time when you, the United Nations, must urge India to lift the curfew; to free the 13,000 Kashmiris who have disappeared meanwhile and this is the time when the UN must insist on Kashmir’s right to self determination!

There were six hundred thousand Indian troops in Kashmir but the pogrom of the pandits was not prevented, why was that. Three and a half lakhs of human beings arrived in Jammu as displaced persons and for many months the government did not provide shelters or relief or even register their names, why was that.

I feel the reason is the same—normalizing an Islamist mindset. Kashmiri terrorists are inspired by nothing but the two-nation theory. They are fighting for Nizam-e-Mustafa, that is, the Shariat rule. And they have been fighting for this for decades. And to hide this fact, smokescreen of ‘Kashmir is a political problem’ is created. Human rights, army deployment, rigged elections—everything is talked about and analysed threadbare, except the Islamist mindset that drives and keeps terrorism alive.

It is clear that India has not behaved at all well in Kashmir; that the Indian military forces seem like, feel like and behave like an occupying army; that there are too many accusations of violence, rape, and murder for it all to be made up; and the Pakistani side has constantly exacerbated the situation by the use of jihadist groups, and by the funding of groups like Lashkar-e-Taiba, Jaish-e-Muhammad and so on.

Again, the operation of the curfew was made to work in favour of the Muslim assailants and to the detriment of the Hindus and Sikhs who might want to protect their houses from burning. Muslim goondas or even Muslim policemen set fire to Hindu and Sikh houses during curfew hours, and no Hindu or Sikh was allowed, on pain of being shot, to come out of his house to fight the fire. This happened both in Lahore and Amritsar. The police stood guard while Muslims broke open Hindu and Sikh houses and shops and carted away the loot, at great leisure. The dumps for such looted property were known to and guarded by the Muslim police. The police went shares with the looters. Hindu and Sikh officers were generally held under terror by Muslim policemen, and in some cases were attacked, or not protected when attacked by Muslim mobs, as in Amritsar, Dera Ismail Khan and other places. Sometimes rifles and rounds were supplied by Muslim policemen to Muslim mobs. Muslim policemen went about in lorries and jeeps sniping at Hindus and Sikhs, and in several cases asking men to come out of their houses on some pretext and then shooting them dead. This happened in a number of cases in Amritsar, and in other places.

The Indians and Pakistanis exchange insults and beat their chests in order to inflame a 60 year old rivalry, and claim that their respective countries can offer the people they have occupied—and make no mistake, it is an occupation, and an illegal one to boot—a better future than their enemy can. But far from wanting to offer, and indeed being able to offer the Kashmiri people economic security, all that they are supplying the ordinary people of Kashmir are untold war crimes and misery. It is a sickening example of murderous aggression against a whole peoples for the sake of pride, and one that was being largely overlooked by the world until the spectre of nuclear holocaust came over the continent.

Curfew was imposed, which confined Hindus and Sikhs to their houses while Muslims went about freely, setting fire with police help to Hindu and Sikh houses, killing and looting.

If anyone from Pakistan goes to India to fight jihad...he will be the first to do an injustice to Kashmiris, he will be the enemy of Kashmiris.

The entire Hindu population of the Valley of Kashmir... has been languishing for the last five years in makeshift tents. In the face of inhuman cruelty and terror inflicted by Muslims, these people had to leave their hearths and homes. .... During these five years [1989-94], there have been three Prime Ministers in the country, but not one of them had a day's time or the decency to even visit any of these camps. Why? Because the sufferers are Hindus. The Government of India has not even stated categorically till this day that it is committed to the safe return of these people to their own homes and properties.

This is complete rubbish. They did this a month and a half ago when there was another incident. We want peace in South Asia. We want no terror in South Asia. We don't export terror. We have zero tolerance for terror whether it is within India or outside India. Pakistan is only taking half measures in the fight against terrorism. Pakistan is paying the price for not heeding our advice.

In the curfew if the Hindus and Sikhs came out, they were arrested, while Muslims went about armed, freely doing whatever mischief they liked. Stabbing of Hindus and Sikhs went on with the police looking on. Hindus’ and Sikhs’ houses were set on fire; even when the culprits who did this were arrested, the police did not take cognizance of the offence. A secret order was issued by Mehar Ghulam Mohammed, Inspector of Police who went from Amritsar, to the Muslim policemen to kill all non-Muslim policemen. Muslim police constables shot dead at sight any Hindu or Sikh.

...Hindus too have begun to suffer, thanks to a new belligerence of the Muslims who have been under siege for ten weeks. The repeated recovery of huge caches of weapons from Muslim pockets forced some of the ministers to ask Modi about the steps the police was taking to flush out these armouries. What is adding to the knife-edge tension is the growing evidence that the violence has a deliberate pattern and there’s a motive to keep the flames from being doused. Violence seemed to have been brought under control by the second week of March until sporadic attacks on Hindus in Ahmedabad, Bharuch, and Modasa in the midst of the state school board examinations reignited the embers. But it escalated on Ram Navmi day when a police constable was killed in Ahmedabad’s Gomtipur area. The sudden spurt of violence followed a call given by local Muslim leaders to students from the community to boycott the rescheduled state school board examinations failed. Significantly, among those who were exhorting the students to boycott the exams were five local Congress leaders besides members of the radical Islamic movement, the Tableeghi Jamaat. Local BJP leaders point to other incidents to suggest there was a method in the mayhem. Hours after Defence Minister George Fernandes led a peace march in Ahmedabad violence broke out on the route he had taken. The area had not witnessed any riots in the recent past. Strangely, the rioting stopped a day before Sonia Gandhi’s peace rally in Ahmedabad on May 1. But, on May 5, a day before the Rajya Sabha debated the censure motion, and barely 24 hours after Gill took over his Gujarat assignment, violence erupted again. This time Muslim rioters attacked Bhilwas locality in the Shah Alam area. Says political analyst Vidyut Thakar, “A pattern is visible in the new round of violence. There is an impression that it has to do with the Modi-hatao campaign...”