THE BOY FROM CHADOORA
MOIN BILAL, 17, STUDENT & NETIZEN
Moin Bilal’s eyes were wet. He appeared older for his age, 17 years. He looked away as he recounted the events of March 28. “Even if God himself had come down, I would have done what I did,” said the class 10 student of the Chadoora area in Srinagar’s Budgam district.
That evening, Bilal was one of four people in the ambulance carrying the dead body of his cousin Zahid Rashid. The 22-year-old who loved exploring the Valley on his KTM Duke bike and taking pictures on his Nikon DSLR, died of gunfire while witnessing the encounter between the armed forces and the Hizbul Mujahideen commander Tawsif Magray in Chadoora.
On the way back from SMHS hospital in Srinagar to Chadoora, the cops stopped the ambulance at Jahangir Chowk, a busy intersection in the heart of the city, saying that Rashid’s corpse reaching Chadoora might lead to disturbances. Bilal stepped out and started live streaming what was happening through Facebook. “Asalaamualaikum mera bhai shaheed ho gaya hai. Aap dekh rahe hain Kashmir mein kitna zulm chal raha hai. Hum azadi chahte hain. Ambulance kee chaabi lee inhone,” Bilal can be seen screaming in the video that went viral.
Bilal doesn’t log into his Facebook account frequently. He doesn’t have a page on the social networking site. Nor is he part of online communities and groups. One day, he came across Facebook live footage of his friends enjoying a snowfall in the Valley. He tested the feature himself.
The second time he pressed the live button was when he got out of the ambulance. “I wanted to expose the cops. I wanted the world to know what we face on a day-to-day basis. Had I not broadcast it live, would you have believed that the police actually stopped an ambulance?” asked Bilal, whose smartphone was with the police at the time of this interview.
He is upset with the discriminatory way the authorities deal with video footage uploaded by locals. “When cops shoot a video, it is considered alright. But when local boys post something, the police arrests them,” he said, adding that he would not be surprised to find that the police had registered a case against him. “They can do anything to curb our voice. I want to know what my crime is. I was not pelting stones. I was not protesting. I only filmed what I experienced,” he said.
Zahid’s sister who chose to remain anonymous said that the impact of social media was evident. “Having seen videos of torture and humiliation by the Indian Army and the J&K police, people here feel a sense of unity like never before.”