What has been unfolding in Kashmir over the past three decades is one of the most barbaric and flagrant human rights violations in modern history. Yet, for the most part, the Indian state has managed to sweep the matter—one imagines soldiers hectically mopping away blood—under the rug. No longer. The shameful haste with which Article 370 was repealed, and the shocking “lockdown” on civil liberties that followed, has brought Indian authoritarianism onto the world stage, a pedestal to which it has long been itching to ascend, if not quite in this way. Article after article about the occupation has appeared in the Western press despite the Indian government’s best attempts to create an information blockade. As the Kashmiri filmmaker Sanjay Kak recently remarked, it even seems that some Indians are slowly waking up to the atrocities that have been committed in their name for the past seventy years.

To mark one year of the abrogation of Article 370—a black anniversary, as it were—we asked three Kashmiri writers to reflect on the occupation. Uzma Falak reports on how the Indian government has used the pandemic to extend its siegecraft in the valley. Adil Bhat exposes the complicity of Indian liberals in upholding the occupation. And, in a conversation, Mohammad Junaid delves into the long history of Kashmiri resistance. We hope these pieces offer readers a window into life in occupied Kashmir, and that more will follow elsewhere.

Photo I took in Srinagar 5 years ago, time flies.