A bloody day in Kashmir
It’s a story about blood, death and tears: German photographer Andy Spyra witnessed in Kaschmir how a policeman shot a teargas-canister straight into the eye of a young protester. Andy allowed us to publish his touching blog entry.
„Srinagar, 23rd May
Yesterday was tough. What started as a quite normal friday in Kashmir ended up in a mess, with one guy propably dead. After the friday prayers the stonepelting stared as usual but I wasn’t in the mood to shoot that shit again, so I wen’t for a walk around the city. The sound of exploding grenades drove me back to the protestsite where the kanjang was in full swing, with lots of angry boys shouting ‘azadi’ (freedom) slogans and throwing stones at the security forces.
They fired back with shockgrenades and teargas and so it went on and on until one of the police-guys shot a teargas-canister straight at one of the guys – directly in his eye.
At that time I stood only ten meters away from that guy, I could even see the canister – and what it did to the boy … I just can’t forget the scene: all the blood, how his body collapsed, the canister still in his eye.
I felt paralyzed for a eternity, although it might have not been longer that a second, then everything happened very quickly: The other boys got the body, all shouting ‘allah akbar’, running to the mainstreet, getting into the back of a truck, blood and tears everywhere, hospital, next hospital, the family arrives, breakdowns, trying to photograph what’s happening. Since leaving the protestsite it’s no longer about thinking: at this point it’s just a mere reflex to press the shutter and when I finally rode back home I couldn’t have said if I got anything.
I always feel numb when I come back from this kind of situations, unable to realize all the things that happened so quickly. And also unable to answer the question why I’m doing this … if it makes any difference, if photography or my photographs are able to stop all this … or at least to raise awareness? Kashmir is not even a war, it’s ‘only’ a conflict. But when only conflicts can cause so much pain, how must it be in a war, where this happens to thousands of people? Thousand times this suffering and pain, all the grieve and screams and tears: I’m just unable to comprehend that.
I atually wanted to write about some other things, about the time in a centre for mentally and physically challenged children in the north of the valley, about how much I enjoy Kashmir when sitting alone on a riverbank somewhere in the mountains bordering Pakistan, about the relativity of winning a photoprize and my life today when I would have been born in Kashmir some 30 years ago. But today it seems so pointless to write about all that.“
„Srinagar, 30.05.2009
The boy died on tuesday due to his injuries from last friday. I was on the way to Kupwara, the last ‘town’ before the border to Pakistan when I got the news. I rushed back to shoot the funeral, but at the time I arrived at the martyr’s graveyard the body was already buried and only a crowd of azadi-shouting Kashmiris was left.
No reason to shoot that again, I think I already have thousands of pictures of shouting and screaming boys and men. It’s what you see here almost everyday and though it’s still fun to shoot is from time to time it’s getting more and more boring.
Yesterday I spent some time with the mourning family and followed the procession to the graveyard, part of a muslim religious ritual which always takes place on the 4th day after the funeral. Again and again, so much suffering, so much screaming, so many tears …“
Andy Spyra is still in Kashmir. This is his blog with text and photos. An interview with Andy you can read here (german).