When I was a child, I used to watch these films.

Films about an evil force that rose to power and swept across Europe. Films about wicked and powerful men who believed that they were better than everyone else. Films about armies invading and occupying. Films about soldiers patrolling the streets and demanding: “Ihre Papiere, Bitte” — Your Papers, Please. Films about people who lived in terror, afraid to even whisper about what they really thought. Films about ruthless men who abducted people from their homes and shipped them away to far-off prison camps to die.

As I grew up, I learned the history behind these films.

In 1938, Adolf Hitler marched Nazi troops into Austria. Almost the whole world remained silent while Hitler annexed Austria. A few months later, the Nazis annexed the Sudetenland — with the agreement and approval of the world! Then came Kristallnacht — the night of broken glass — the first Nazi pogrom against the Jews.

Today, we stand witness while the ideological children of Nazi Germany stage an annexation of their own. In India, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh — a fascist paramilitary inspired by the Nazis — has risen to power.

The RSS has already conducted its pogroms while the world stood silent. In 2008, they massacred Christians. In 2002, they slaughtered Muslims. Under the watch of Narendra Modi, thousands of Muslims in Gujarat were brutalized, gang-raped, beaten to death, hacked to pieces, and burned alive by the RSS.

The blood of these innocent victims continues to cry out from the ground for justice.

Yet how was Modi punished for overseeing that pogrom? Instead of punishment, Modi was rewarded with the office of Prime Minister of India. Now the RSS rules the roost.

The RSS — these people who believe that they are better than everyone else — has swept across India. Journalists have been assassinated. Minorities have been lynched in the streets in broad daylight. Those who raise voices of dissent have been seized and thrown behind bars. Under Modi’s regime, writes Indian professor Anand Teltumbde, the RSS has “unleashed the Hindutva gangs to carry out its writ reminiscent of the Black-shirts of Mussolini and Brown-shirts of Hitler.”

Three weeks ago, the world watched as the RSS implemented one of the top items on its agenda with the most grotesque and shameless tyranny imaginable.

As Modi trashed the Indian Constitution and tore up the contract between India and Kashmir, he marched tens of thousands of troops into that small northern region — a region approximately the same size as Austria. Eighty-one years after Hitler’s Anschluss, Modi annexed Kashmir. Now, Kashmir bleeds as it suffers oppression like never before.

Oppression is nothing new in Kashmir — a place which has a vast history of subjugation, enforced disappearances, staged encounters, mass rapes, massacres, and mass graves. Generation after generation of Kashmiris have grown up in a land where abnormal is normal — a land where the people live in fear. A land where ruthless men abduct people from their homes and take them away, never to be seen again.

The weight of the oppression in Kashmir is illustrated by the life and death of Jalil Andrabi. Andrabi, a Kashmiri human rights attorney, wanted to warn the world. Andrabi said, “The magnitude of the atrocities and the crimes being perpetrated on the people of Kashmir is both macabre and heart breaking.” Andrabi reported, “More than 40,000 people have been killed, which includes all — old men and children, women, sick and infirm. The youth of Kashmir have been mowed down. They are tortured in torture cells and, as result of this, thousands of youth have been killed in police custody.”

But what happens to human rights activists in Kashmir?

What happened to Andrabi? In 1996, days before he was scheduled to speak at the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva, Andrabi was abducted by the Indian Army. Twenty days later, his body, tied up in a sack, washed ashore on the Jhelum River. His hands were tied behind his back, eyes gouged out, facial bones crushed. He had been killed with a gunshot to the head.

That was over twenty years ago, when Kashmir still had constitutionally guaranteed autonomy. That was before Modi. And that was before the annexation that took place on 5 August.

Since the annexation, Modi’s regime has dropped an iron curtain over the entire Kashmir.

His regime has mass arrested the entire civil society — politicians (both mainstream and separatist), religious leaders, businessmen, heads of industry, teachers, academics, activists, teenagers, and even children as young as 10 or 11 years old. These people are seized without arrest warrants. They are held without charges. They are not brought to trial — they can’t be because they’re not being charged with anything! Many have even been shipped away to far-off prisons.

The situation is not much better for those who have not been arrested. For three weeks, Kashmir has been under siege. The whole region is under curfew as people are forbidden to leave their homes. Kashmiris are living in an open air prison. Under Modi’s regime, the Kashmir has been turned into a massive concentration camp.

But perhaps the greatest atrocity of all is the communications blackout. Since 5 August, Kashmiris all around the world have been denied the ability to contact their loved ones back home — even just to ask, however briefly, “Are you alive?” This is mental torture.

As Modi conducts his monstrous colonial project, many Kashmiris fear that India wants the land of Kashmir without the people of Kashmir.

Meanwhile, Kashmiris are muzzled. They are suffocating, unable to find any room to breathe as the boot of oppression presses down upon their throats.

Some people say that the Kashmir Issue is a bilateral issue between India and Pakistan. Some people say that the issue is an internal affair of India. I say that the issue is one of Kashmiris and what they want for Kashmir. Kashmiri voices — and Kashmiri voices alone — are the voices which matter when deciding the future of Kashmir.

Yet Kashmiris have been rendered voiceless by oppression. So today, I stand here in protest to demand that the voices of Kashmir be restored. To those who refuse to raise their voices for the voiceless, I say — silence is consent.

Fifty-six years ago, the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. sat writing a letter in the Birmingham, Alabama jail. “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere,” he wrote. Seventy-three years ago, a German pastor who survived a Nazi concentration camp wrote something similar. Pastor Martin Niemoller wrote:

“First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out — Because I was not a socialist. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out — Because I was not a trade unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out — Because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me — and there was no one left to speak for me.”

Speak out for the Kashmir.

Pieter Friedrich is an activist

Originally published in Medium

SIGN UP FOR COUNTERCURRENTS DAILY NEWS LETTER