{"id":14833,"date":"2022-01-06T07:04:27","date_gmt":"2022-01-06T07:04:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dailykashmirpost.com\/eng\/?p=14833"},"modified":"2022-01-06T07:04:27","modified_gmt":"2022-01-06T07:04:27","slug":"graveyard-on-a-hill-where-do-kashmiris-dead-go","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dailykashmirpost.com\/eng\/2022\/01\/06\/graveyard-on-a-hill-where-do-kashmiris-dead-go\/","title":{"rendered":"GRAVEYARD ON A HILL: WHERE DO KASHMIRI\u2019S DEAD GO?"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Kashmir is plunging into an uneasy silence, the blood is flowing on the streets, but the dead are missing.<\/h2>\n
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The graves dug near homes by fathers still lie empty, covered in dirt. \u201cMy son is 3-year-old; am I raising him to be killed in a gunfight?\u201d asks a distraught mother. A sister sits by the window in Sopore, waiting for her brother who never returned home. Not even in death.<\/p>\n

Amid cries, a testament of mourning is missing. Where do Kashmir\u2019s dead go?<\/p>\n

Among other areas, we found some in Wudder Payeen village of north Kashmir\u2019s Handwara \u2014 90 kilometers from Srinagar. When a teenage girl first saw a militant\u2019s body, little did she know that it would change her life forever. She couldn\u2019t return home alone but with trauma. The slain militant\u2019s face stuck with her for months before she sought medical treatment.<\/p>\n

Sometimes, it still gets difficult for her. But for nearly 500 households in the village, the silence of death is perpetual. Barely meters away from her home, a barren piece of land, on the top of a hill, has metamorphosed into a graveyard as the village became a confluence of Kashmir\u2019s battered conflict.<\/p>\n

On the border of the road, between the two curves, a slope is stuffed with more than hundred bodies of the militants killed by the government forces in the last two years across Kashmir.<\/p>\n

Ghosts of graveyard\u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n

In the aftermath of August 2019 clampdown by New Delhi, when the BJP government revoked limited-autonomy of Jammu and Kashmir and degraded it to an union territory, policy towards militancy was also changed.<\/p>\n

The government refused to hand over the bodies of the militants killed in combat and started burying them in discreet graveyards, far from Srinagar, in remote areas of north and central Kashmir. But as it happened: not only militants, but the government didn\u2019t return the bodies in\u00a0alleged custodial killings<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0extra-judicial gunfights<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cEarlier, the [authorities] were taking the bodies to the Rajwar forest for burial,\u201d said a local resident. \u201cIt is a dense jungle with no inhabitants living around the place. In most cases, the police themselves used to perform the last rites.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThey used to bury 2-3 bodies together in one grave in remote areas, mostly in forests,\u201d said an old man from Wudder Payeen village. \u201cAround two years ago, one grave, which had two bodies in it, had got filled with water. So, the local residents decided to find land and do proper burials.\u201d<\/p>\n

Disturbed by this, the villagers said that to assure a dignified burial to the militants brought in their village, they offered the administration their own piece of land for the last rites.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe couldn\u2019t bear the thought of how these militants were buried in absence of proper Islamic rituals,\u201d one of the villagers told\u00a0The Kashmir Walla<\/i>. \u201cSo, all the villagers made a collective decision that we will take it upon ourselves to do the last rites of militants brought here.\u201d<\/p>\n

Most graves are covered with plastic sheets. Some have tombstones with details: name, parentage, residence, and date of death, inscribed over it.<\/p>\n

Some of the militants that were initially buried in the Rajwar forest, before the burial site were shifted to Waudder Payeen, include Pakistani born Lashkar-e-Toiba commander Naveed Jatt.<\/p>\n

The designated graveyard in the village now has 114 bodies of militants, killed across the valley in the last two years, including the former TRF commander Abbas Sheikh from south Kashmir\u2019s Kulgam.<\/p>\n

Guardians of the dead<\/b><\/p>\n

When Kashmir is dwindling into the silence of a graveyard, with\u00a0recurrent tales of insanity in deaths<\/a>, the local residents of Wudder Payeen village have become the guardians of the dead.<\/p>\n

Whenever a body arrives in the village, local residents, including a local cleric, gather to perform the last rites. Shrouds are always kept ready for the bodies, who have dotted this slope of a land now locally known as \u2018martyrs graveyard\u2019.<\/p>\n

But during each funeral and burial, the police don\u2019t allow the people to click any videos or photographs. \u201cWe are not allowed to take photographs or videos,\u201d said a local resident. \u201cWe do the last rites as per religion and respectfully bury the dead. At times, some of those who take part in these funerals were summoned for questioning too.\u201d<\/p>\n

People are also scared of the authorities, thus the graveyard or the burials are talked about in hush. After the families hear about their relative\u2019s burial in the Wudder Payeen village, they travel dozens of kilometers to see the grave.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey also bring tombstones with them and we help them,\u201d said a resident. \u201cSeveral of these graves have tombstones now. It is for Allah; we offer them water or tea, or whatever they need.\u201d<\/p>\n

But when the government forces patrol the streets, the villagers keep their distance fearing harassment. And the silence spreads again, while a father continues to wait for a grave \u201cto sit next to and cry, mourn\u201d and promises to \u201cbury him in the death of a night, in silence\u201d.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Fahad Shah | The Kashmir Walla<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Kashmir is plunging into an uneasy silence, the blood is flowing on the streets, but the dead are missing. The graves dug near homes by fathers still lie empty, covered in dirt. \u201cMy son is 3-year-old; am I raising him to be killed in a gunfight?\u201d asks a distraught mother. A sister sits by the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":14834,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41,36,40],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-14833","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-international","8":"category-kashmir","9":"category-latest-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailykashmirpost.com\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14833","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailykashmirpost.com\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailykashmirpost.com\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailykashmirpost.com\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailykashmirpost.com\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14833"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dailykashmirpost.com\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14833\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14835,"href":"https:\/\/dailykashmirpost.com\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14833\/revisions\/14835"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailykashmirpost.com\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14834"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailykashmirpost.com\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14833"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailykashmirpost.com\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14833"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailykashmirpost.com\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14833"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}