Farooq Sulehria and Harris Qadeer: Kashmir: Anti-neoliberal intifada convulses the Himalayas

Farooq Sulehria and Harris Qadeer discusses "Kashmir: Anti-neoliberal intifada convulses the Himalayas".

By October, the boycott extended, with more and more consumers joining in. In response, more than 50 key activists were arrested, while the authorities threatened to register anti-terrorism charges against electricity consumers not paying their bills.

These heavy-handed state measures were responded to, on the one hand, by observing a general strike on October 5, and on the other, by extending the agitation. In the next phase, the Peoples Action Committees have announced a mobilization of women on October 10 and students on October 17.

Unsurprisingly, at the time of writing, the government spokespersons have promised talks, while police continue chasing Peoples Action Committee leaders, who have gone underground. Co-author Harris Qadeer is also in hiding to evade arrest. The police, simultaneously, are hesitant to detain activists because police stations where activists are detained are besieged by unarmed agitators. Besides being sympathetic to the demands, the cops don’t want “picket lines” outside their stations. In one case, police were forced to release arrested activists just hours after they were detained.

Meanwhile, the mainstream Pakistani media are avoiding any coverage of the movement. Despite this, Pakistan has also been infected. In certain towns, Peoples Action Committees have been set up, while traders associations in Karachi, the metropolitan hub of the country’s trade, have threatened not to pay their electricity bills. The situation in Pakistan is already explosive. An intifada against years of neoliberal “reforms” is the only option left to roll back the International Monetary Fund-dictated agenda that has pushed millions of lives into misery.

Emphasis Mine

Here we have non-violent protests going on for over five (5) months with very little media coverage. Even these protests are threatened as being treated as terrorism—this term has lost all substational meaning as states use it to denote anyone who opposes them. The importance of expanding grassroot networks, like the Peoples Action Committees, is essential for the non-violent protests to continue.