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Awakening the reader to the reality |
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Tuesday, 09 March 2010 |
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The world has forgotten about them. In fact even Pakistan has forgotten about them.
It took a brave and determined woman to bring back to life thousands of Kashmiris who are living in migrant camps in Azad Jammu and Kashmir, through the eye of the camera in a photo-book, ‘Life in Migrant Camps of AJK.’
“With the book I aimed to make visible these people as neglected part of the conflict of last decades and encourage them to ask this very question themselves, organise and empower themselves and have their answer ready on the moment India (or Pakistan, or Internationals, or JuD, etc.) poses the question in front of them and giving them not enough time to reply. I hope that, thanks to the partnership work with Mass Welfare Foundation, the people indeed formulate their answer and thus identify their own roadmap for the future, and formulate the conditions and expectations when others offer them a roadmap, and to then clearly answer: ‘What is in it for us?’,” says Marjan Lucas, senior programme officer for Kashmir and Pakistan, at an NGO, IKV Pax Christi based in Amsterdam, giving exclusive rights of the photo-book to ‘The News’, which will be launched today by President of AJK, Raja Zulqarnain Khan.
The 56-page photo-book says it all. The timing could not be better. Only a few weeks ago, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh while on a visit to Indian-held Kashmir, addressed these migrants and asked those who did not carry a gun to return home.
The captivating photographs of the Kashmiri children have one thing in common. ‘Hope’. The older generation reflect ‘Pride’. The children may be sitting and playing on the ground, or laughing with glee as they grab new books on the way to school or barefooted photographed running around, they are like children anywhere in the world.
Quoting one report, the photo-book says that, “Migration from the State of Jammu and Kashmir started during 1947-48 against the backdrop of the partition...the next large scale migration from Jammu and Kashmir took during and after the 1965 war...the current wave of migration began in 1990 and continues even today.”
Another report speaks about the fact that “Many of the migrants themselves opted for the migrant camps of AJK so that they could play their role in the freedom movement of Kashmir and return to their native land in an honourable manner after the settlement of the Kashmir issue.”
As anywhere else it is the youth who are the most frustrated in these camps. Says Billal, “Too many of us are jobless now and lack a clear identity, which makes many of us crazy. We also discuss our dreams and future plans for our parents. IOK is their home, their first, and for most of them their only home. For us AJK is also a home, but our second home.”
The photo-book does a credible job in awakening the reader to the reality that the issue of Kashmir is not about ‘real estate’, it is about the tragedy of human beings, about generations of Kashmiris, determined to continue to struggle for their self-determination, and nothing less. |
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