On Oct. 2 at 7:30 p.m. the Muslim Student Association and other students gathered in Borchuck Plaza to hold a vigil for the people of Kashmir, a region between Pakistan and India that has been put under lock down by the Indian government.

  • (Photograph by Karissa Clark / East Tennessean)
  • (Photograph by Karissa Clark / East Tennessean)

Aliza Ishrat, a speaker at the event, said that when the Prime Minister [of India] was elected for his second term, 1 million Indian troops were sent to Kashmir overnight and they locked everyone down. She said that no one was allowed to get out of their house, and no one knew what was happening. When word got out that Indian troops were sent into the Kashmir valley, article 370, a clause in the Indian Constitution that protected the rights of the Kashmiris, was revoked.

“As a result, people all over the country have been raising awareness of this, spreading the word and organizing vigils like this so people can be aware of what’s happening in Kashmir,” ETSU sophomore Afreen Siddiqui said.

Kashmir has been under lock down since August 5, and Afreen said that the Muslim Student Association started planing the vigil a week before it took place, so they could advertise the vigil around campus. ETSU senior Nausheen Siddiqui said that it is important to be paying attention to what is happening to the people of Kashmir.

“It’s definitely critical at this point in time,” Nausheen said. “Because there’s been a shut down on communication, on social media, on technology and all that. So the people living in Kashmir, they literally have no way of contacting people outside of Kashmir. Their family members don’t even know if they’re alive.”

During the vigil, Dr. Haneef Tantary spoke about how the lock down in Kashmir has affected him. Tanatry, who is from Kashmir, has family in the region.

“For the last 55 days I have not been able to talk to my family,” Tantary said. “My emotional state is different. I can’t focus on my work. Being a doctor, I have to be very focused, but at times I don’t know what I am doing because my mind is somewhere else.”

Tantary went on to say that if the world would not focus on what was happening in Kashmir, it would be complicit to the genocide happening in Kashmir.

“There are children,” Tantary said. “There are 10-year-olds, there are 11-year-olds, there are 12-year-olds who are being arrested, and their parents don’t know where they have been taken … It’s an irony that the whole world is not pressuring India to end these atrocities, to end this lock down, to end this gross violation of human rights that are going on there.”