Kashmiri journalist Shujaat Bukhari is no more. But he has left behind countless stories as he lived a life of courage and valour – true to the meaning of his first name – despite all the oddities of life in Srinagar, a city that has been under siege for decades.
I can’t stop thinking of him and his family having dinner at an Islamabad restaurant in December last year, when Shujaat was on a tour of Lahore, Islamabad and Muzaffarabad to see his extended family.
Friends at home and abroad helped him in developing the newspaper, but suspicions and accusations around sources of funding for the paper always accompanied him. He also got labeled as ‘pro-Indian military’ for his nearly 22-year-old acquaintance with General Husnain, a former commanding officer in Kashmir. This amounted to the most ludicrous allegation for a person who grew up in profession in extremely hostile socio-political conditions, went on to embrace journalism as a source of livelihood, and made a name for him through sheer hardwork and thorough professionalism.
Little do the finger-pointers realise that maintaining contacts with military, militants, and even criminals, is a requirement of the profession. “Using such associations to brand a professional like Shujjat is extremely unfortunate and totally uncalled for,” said Dr. Nazir Gillani, in his reaction to the brutal murder of the journalist.
Coincidentally, the idea of ‘remote monitoring’, that became the basis of the UN Human Rights report, sprang from a meeting between a six-member delegation led by Syed Nazir Gilani, the president of the Jammu and Kashmir Council on Human Rights, and the UN Commissioner on Human Rights at Geneva in September 2016.
Remote monitoring, Gilani said, was the only way to monitor and document the state of human rights, particularly since the killing of Burhan Muzaffar Wani in July 2016.
As family and friends mourn and wail his loss, one wonders who could be responsible for the gruesome act? And why? Did the first-ever UN report on human rights in Kashmir become the primary motivation to get rid of Shujaat through militants linked to the Ikhwans? – This, according to most Kashmiri observers, is a government-sponsored counter-insurgent group. The Ikhwans are known for targeted killings of all those considered detrimental to Indian interests in the embattled state.
“Yes it’s a tragedy beyond words. Hope the killers are found. Truth is at gunpoint,” wrote the veteran Hindustan Times journalist Vinod Sharma in one his reaction tweets.
The crude matter of fact is: humanity has been on the receiving end since Wani’s execution nearly two years ago. The issue of young and old blinded and bruised by pellets ever since has hardly raised eyebrows in capitals that matter for global politics. Nor did the UN Security Council take up this pressing issue. As the unrest in Srinagar, and its surroundings devours Kashmiri sons like Shujaat Bukhari, geo-politics, it is obvious, trumps human rights in the held Valley, with no end to atrocities.