Ehsan Ali
The Kashmir conflict has remained a central fault line of South Asian geopolitics, rooted in unresolved territorial claims, competing nationalisms and enduring human suffering. Traditionally examined through military confrontation and diplomatic crises, the conflict has now entered a more covert phase. This stage is marked by strategic silence between India and Pakistan alongside an intensification of Indian state violence in Indian Illegally Occupied Jammu and Kashmir (IIOJK). Post-2019 policies, incidents such as Pahalgam (2025), demographic engineering, discriminatory governance and mass surveillance reveal a shift from governance to systemic repression, masked by narrative containment and diplomatic quietude.
On April 22, 2025, a lethal incident in Pahalgam claimed numerous civilian lives, triggering widespread outrage across South Asia. Rather than responding through transparent investigation or accountability mechanisms, the Indian government’s reaction revealed a deeper architecture of repression than protection. In the aftermath, New Delhi intensified military and paramilitary operations, imposed punitive curfews and launched sweeping arrest drives across multiple districts of IIOJK.
Such measures represented clear breaches of due process and proportionality under international humanitarian and human rights law, including the Geneva Conventions and the UN Basic Principles on the Use of Force and Firearms by Law Enforcement Officials (1990). Human rights organizations reported excessive force against unarmed demonstrators, collective punishment of victims’ families and prolonged communication blackouts, reflecting systemic state brutality and suppression of fundamental freedoms. Rather than addressing underlying causes, Indian authorities used the Pahalgam incident as a pretext to expand coercive control, prolong political restrictions and entrench surveillance. The global response was muted, with Pakistan pursuing legal appeals and India framing the issue as internal, exemplifying post-2019 narrative containment and strategic silence.
Since the post-2019 restructuring of IIoJK, communication blackouts and prolonged internet shutdowns have become routine instruments of political control rather than exceptional security responses. Nearly every episode of protest, political mobilization, or security-related incident has been met with deliberate restrictions on information flows, often lasting weeks or months. These shutdowns extend far beyond social media disruptions; they sever access to news, legal remedies, education, healthcare coordination and emergency services, effectively placing the population in enforced isolation. Such practices directly violate Article 19 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which guarantees freedom of expression and access to information. Despite repeated warnings and communications issued by UN special rapporteurs, digital censorship has been normalized, ensuring that abuses remain obscured and independent documentation is systematically obstructed.
Alongside informational repression, arbitrary detention has emerged as a central pillar of political suppression in IIoJK. Thousands of political leaders, civil society activists, lawyers, students and journalists have been detained under expansive and ambiguously worded counterterrorism frameworks, most notably the Public Safety Act. This legislation allows prolonged incarceration without formal charges or trial, fundamentally undermining due process guarantees. Such practices constitute a clear violation of Article 9 of the ICCPR, which protects individuals from arbitrary arrest and detention. The legal system, rather than functioning as a safeguard against abuse, has been repurposed as an administrative weapon to criminalize dissent, dismantle organized political opposition and entrench a climate of fear, uncertainty and self-censorship.
The persistent and systematic use of excessive force further illustrates the coercive character of governance in the region. Crowd-control practices, particularly the continued deployment of pellet guns, have resulted in mass injuries, permanent blindness and civilian fatalities. These weapons have been repeatedly condemned by international human rights bodies due to their indiscriminate nature and irreversible consequences. Their continued use violates the UN Basic Principles on the Use of Force and Firearms by Law Enforcement Officials, which require that force be necessary, proportionate and strictly limited. The routine reliance on such measures against civilian populations reflects not episodic excess, but an entrenched punitive logic embedded within security doctrine.
Demographic engineering has compounded these violations and introduced a long-term structural dimension to repression. The introduction of new domicile and property laws after 2019 has facilitated non-local settlement and altered residency qualifications, fundamentally reshaping the region’s demographic and political landscape. While Indian authorities frame these measures as administrative reforms aimed at development and integration, their political consequences are profound. They threaten the demographic integrity of the Muslim-majority population, dilute indigenous political representation and erode the collective identity of Kashmiris. Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention explicitly prohibits population transfer and demographic manipulation in occupied territories. In IIOJK, demographic change has become a calculated instrument of structural coercion rather than neutral governance.
Taken collectively, these policies exceed the scope of domestic authoritarianism and constitute sustained violations of international humanitarian and human rights law. Collective punishment, arbitrary detention, restrictions on expression, excessive use of force and demographic manipulation are prohibited under the Geneva Conventions, the ICCPR, the UN Charter and related UN principles. Although India asserts claims of internal sovereignty, the unresolved legal status of IIOJK under existing UN Security Council resolutions complicates such assertions and renders unilateral actions legally contestable under international law.
Despite repeated appeals by international human rights organizations, UN special rapporteurs and formal communications to the UN Human Rights Council, meaningful accountability has remained absent. India’s evasive diplomatic posture, combined with broader geopolitical calculations, has produced a sustained paralysis in international response. Condemnations are issued, reports are filed and concerns are acknowledged, yet enforcement mechanisms remain inactive. This paradox of local brutality and international silence defines the current phase of the Kashmir conflict, where strategic quietude and narrative management suppress urgency, leaving Kashmiri civilians to bear the cumulative costs of repression while the international community remains fragmented and inert.
Ehsan Ali is an MPhil scholar in Strategic Studies from the National Defence University (NDU) and is currently serving as an intern at Kashmir Institute of International Relations He can be reached at ehsaanali3440@gmail.com.
