The Longest Quarantine

When the battle against Coronavirus began in different parts of the world, eight million Kashmiris had already spent six months locked inside their homes in one of the worst military clampdowns in many years. In August 2019, India revoked Kashmir’s autonomy imposing an unprecedented curfew with phones and Internet completely suspended. Nearly 9,000 children and teenagers were arrested. With severe curbs on Internet, and schools closed for more than a year now, Kashmiri children are faced an unusually long spell of isolation. The COVID-19-induced lockdown in Kashmir was essentially a militarised lockdown with neighbourhoods manned by hundreds of Indian soldiers and streets blocked by barbed wire barricades. Experts warn that the long isolation will have a negative impact on the emotional well being of Kashmiri children who are already traumatised by years of war.