Nonetheless, a constellation of martial law, states of emergency, the exception and fascism persists with frightening clarity in the camp as wartime paradigm, from the Nazi lager to Guantanamo Bay. Hundreds of unidentified graves, believed to contain victims of unlawful killings, enforced disappearances, torture and other abuses, have been unearthed in Kashmir. Agamben opposes the over-conflation of the state of exception with totalitarianism or charismatic dictatorship. It is reported that people from different spheres of life and different age groups - 10 to 70 years - have disappeared after their arrests. During its operations against combatant Kashmiris, the security forces have resorted to different forms of human rights violations like extrajudicial executions, custodial deaths, custodial torture, rapes and enforced disappearances.
The phenomenon of enforced disappearances emerged in Kashmir after the outbreak of armed conflict post 1989. In our reading, Kashmir is an ideal case of state of exception. He argued that “one of the elements that make the state of exception so difficult to define is certainly its close relationship to civil war, insurrection, and resistance.” According to Agamben, “modern totalitarianism can be defined as the establishment, by means of the state of exception, of a legal civil war that allows for the physical elimination not only of political adversaries but of entire categories of citizens who for some reason cannot be integrated into the political system.” State of Exception is a timely and compelling inquiry into the capacity of state power to withdraw the guarantees of legal protection and entitlement, at once. The eminent political philosopher, Giorgio Agamben, characterised the State of Exception as a paradigm of government.
0 kommentar(er)
