SOS FOR FEEDBACK. SECOND DRAFT OF OP ED

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I have tried to improve on my first draft so changed the structure a bit am not sure which one is better. Please please read and give feedback.

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Nusrat

We have had an exorcism this year. Lawmakers in Indian administered Kashmir secretly organized an exorcism of the new legislative complex after chief minister Omar Abdullah nearly lost his chair on the second day of the session.

Last year former chief minister Ghulam Nabi Azad resigned on the first day of the first evr session in the new complex.

Exorcism, the legislators thought would ward off the “ghosts of the haunted complex” and give the new chief minister who has been struggling to hold his feet through a series of administrative blunders in his eight months of rule, some respite.

Rather than amending the governance, the legislators preferred exorcism, leaving me to wonder if anyone could exorcise our land too.

Chief Minister Omar ran into trouble first in May when two young women were found raped and murdered in Shopian town. A series of events that smacked of an official cover up of the incident sparked widespread unrest in the region. The administration including the chief minister first tried to pass off the murders (suspected on security forces) as simple drowning (in ankle deep waters), but had to give in to widespread unrest. Months later however, the case is still unresolved, and an Indian forensic lab has said the samples sent for DNA testing have been fudged.

The Shopain rape and murders were sure to haunt the chief minister in the legislative session this summer. Even the first day meant for formal obituaries was raucous. Leader of the Opposition Mehbooba Mufti attacked the Speaker (chair) Akbar Lone of the House, snapped his microphone and flung it to one side.

The next day was more chaotic. This time, the ghosts much older. An opposition leader, Muzaffar Baig, accused the chief minister of being linked to an infamous sexual exploitation racket that rocked the region in 2006. Top bureaucrats and politicians of the state had been linked to the racket. Chief Minister Omar Abdullah who claimed of the clean record felt offended and offered resignation (conditional) in protest.

Abdullah survived when his resignation was declined by the state governor, but because he nearly lost his chair, his party men went for an exorcism.

“Since the new complex was thrown open last year, unprecedented incidents have been happening in the house” an unnamed official was quoted by a local newspaper.

Last year Chief Minister Ghulam Nabi Azad bogged down by a shrine land row was forced to resign on the first day of the session in the new complex.

Exorcism brings memories of an earlier exorcism at official level.

PAPA 2 an infamous torture centre of the region was some years back converted into an official guest house cum residence. Since 1990 hundreds of thousands of Kashmiri youth and militants have been bought to PAPA 2 by security agencies, and tortured brutally, some to death.

When PAPA 2 was converted into the guest house, its first incumbent, a top state officer, got it exorcised by priests. It now houses a top politician.

The officers at the helm apparently think that they can exorcise some buildings to ward off the impact (haunt) of the events that may haunt this land for decades. Wonder will anyone go on to exorcise our land too. After all it is the injustices in this land that the offices try to get immune of.

My land has seen death and destruction rule. It is land of thousands of orphans and widows.

It is land of Dardpora village which has some 300 widows alone. It is a land where 8000 people are missing whose parents and relatives sit every month in a public park asking for their whereabouts. It is a land where unmarked graves were discovered in 2008 and countless more lie buried unclaimed somewhere in some unknown graveyards or forests. It is a land of people living in mental trauma. It is a land of massacres. A land where a small boy mistook her mother for a murderer when she came out from a room drenched in blood where his father and brothers lay dead. The boy was too young to understand that his mother was in shock after security forces killed three of their family that night.

A land where one can be arrested, tortured and even killed by the security forces (whose security they are there for I haven’t yet understood) and the perpetrators won’t be even questioned. A land of Kunanposhpoara, where troops raped women inside their houses all night after summoning the men outside for identification. The Press Council of India then called the victims’ lairs accusing the women of trying to defame security forces.
It is a land where people are killed for protesting peacefully. A land where little boys with stones in their hands are showered with bullets and smoke canisters aimed strategically at their heads. A land where civilians are picked and killed in staged gun battles, to be passed off as insurgents. Then policemen share the booty for killing an insurgent. A land of inhuman torture which have left some dead and others scared for life. A land of custodial killings. A land of divided families.

It is all these things that tend to haunt its rulers occasionally and they respond by exorcising their mansions. All I can do is wonder if anyone will exorcise my land too.