Don’t miss Hafsa Kanjwal, award-winning author of Colonizing Kashmir: State-building Under Indian Occupation, and Azad Essa, award-winning journalist and author of Hostile Homelands, with poet & cultural critic Rahat Kurd, author of The City That Is Leaving Forever: Kashmiri Letters. Speaking in Vancouver IRL!
Saturday May 17, 5:30 – 7 pm
1803 East 1st Ave, East Vancouver, xʷməθkʷəy̓əm, Sḵwx̱wú7mesh & səlilwətaɬ lands
On May 7, India launched Operation Sindoor on Azad Kashmir and Pakistan. This has largely been framed as a “India-Pakistan war,” ignoring the geopolitical expansionism of India and the central struggle of Kashmiris against occupying powers. Kashmir is the most heavily militarised region in the world, with Kashmiris subjected to the daily colonial violence of summary executions, horrific torture, mass disappearances, indiscriminate shootings, arbitrary detention, collective punishment, and more.
The militarization and occupation of Kashmir is not a singular or regional issue; it is intertwined with global imperialism. India and Israel have long collaborated especially since the War on Terror – trading arms and security technology, flagrantly boasting about genocide and ethnic cleansing, annexing land through colonial occupations, mass global disinformation campaigns,and furthering anti-Muslim racial violence. Both regimes are structured through Hindutva and Zionism, similar ideologies of supremacy. The freedom struggles of Kashmiris is linked to struggles worldwide.
With deadly escalations this week, come learn from leading voices about Kashmir, resistance in Kashmir, geopolitics of the region, and implications for global militarization and rising fascism.
Hafsa Kanjwal is the award-winning author of Colonizing Kashmir: State-building Under Indian Occupation, which examines how the Indian and Kashmir governments utilized state-building to entrench India’s colonial occupation of Kashmir in the aftermath of Partition.
Azad Essa is an award-winning journalist and author. He is currently a senior reporter for Middle East Eye, and the author of Hostile Homelands: The New Alliance between India and Israel, The Moslems are Coming, and has written for Al Jazeera, The Washington Post, Foreign Policy and the Guardian.
Rahat Kurd is a poet and cultural critic. With poet Sumayya Syed, she co-authored The City That Is Leaving Forever: Kashmiri Letters during a five-year period of increasing Indian state militarism and repression. Cosmophilia, her first book of poems, considers Islamic art and Kashmiri craft practices.
Accessibility information:
♿ Venue has an accessible entrance at street level, which gives access to hall, washrooms, and kitchen. The washroom door opening is 86 cm, and the stall door is 61 cm.
👶🏾 Child-friendly space, and there is a playroom in the venue that can be used. There is no volunteer childminding on site.
😷Masks required to ensure that the day is accessible to immunocompromised comrades and protects all of us. Masks will be available on-site.
🍲 Light snacks provided.