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"I am a foreigner here"

Shujaat Bukhari

A PoK resident speaks of his sense of loss of belonging

SRINAGAR: Farooq Khan Neazi wept bitterly as he spoke about his room at his Barzulla house. As he reminisced about his mother who would lovingly dust his books Neazi could not continue his speech at the first intra-Kashmir dialogue here.

A resident of Baghat, an uptown locality in Srinagar, Neazi left for Pakistan Occupied Kashmir in early 1990 returning here for the first time on Thursday. He was nostalgic about the days he spent in Srinagar. "I have a house here, my room is still intact. This city belongs to me but I am a foreigner here. It was most painful to get myself registered as a foreigner soon after we landed at the Srinagar airport." He broke down saying, "Only till a few years ago my mother used to take care of my belongings but she passed away... "

Recounting his experiences in Muzaffarabad, Neazi said: "I am at the mercy of a havaldar who does not belong to my State. I do not have the right to live and I have to sell my soul to keep going." He said he was confused about his identity. "I am facing invisible torture." He wanted to know why there were no hoardings featuring Pakistan President Musharraf and Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in Mirpur or Muzaffarabad like the one in Srinagar. Expressing his anguish at being part of a divided family, Neazi said the Srinagar-Muzaffarabad bus gave hope but it should be run daily and "all should be allowed to board it."

Neazi, who married a girl in Muzaffarabad, was caught in a peculiar situation when his wife visited her parents and the violence erupted in the Nineties. "She was still holding a Pakistani passport and I had an Indian one." After he moved to PoK his passport was not renewed by the Indian High Commission and for eight years he was without any citizenship. "It was such a difficult period for me. I was neither a Pakistani nor a resident of Azad Kashmir but finally I acquired citizenship." He was unemployed as being a law graduate he could not get the license to practice law in PoK. "I want to come back and live at my own place," he said.

Neazi, who is the chairman of the Coalition of Civil Societies of "Azad Kashmir," said peace was a comprehensive ideology and "all people across the LOC should support it to give a bright future to our children."

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