Mother was. Students show their solidarity. The 18 year olds in a stable condition, the situation here is tense, now on bbc news, its hardtalk after a rapid escalation to the unrest. With stephen sackur. Pompeo pushes back. The us secretary of state refuses welcome to hardtalk. Im stephen to help the impeachment inquiry into President Trump despite democrats warning its illegal. Indias plastic crackdown. Thacker. Sackur. It has been two months since india revoked the special autonomous status ofJammu And Kashmir, and delhi still has the territory in a form of lockdown. Political leaders are detained, troops are on the streets and communication links are disrupted. The Modi Government seems confident its dramatic cancellation of a 70 year old dispensation has worked, but what of kashmiri feeling . My guest is iltija mufti, the daughter of former chief minister of kashmir, Mehbooba Mufti who is currently in detention. Do the kashmiris have any choice but to accept their new reality . Iltija mufti in delhi, welcome to hardtalk. Thank you for having me. Let me begin with your personal situation. You are speaking to me from the indian capital, delhi, not from your home in kashmir. Does that suggest that you personally are free right now to travel, to communicate, to do whatever you want . Not in a real sense, no. I received veiled threats from the Indian Government that if i continue speaking they will slap what is known as a psa, a Public Safety act, a draconian law on my mother and we will not be allowed to challenge her detention for at least two years. She could possibly spend over two months up to two years in jail and i have received indirect threats that if i keep speaking i could be booked as well. So i dont think i am completely free at the moment. We should pursue that because i am mindful that a few weeks ago we spoke to another kashmiri politician and hours after he spoke to us, he was arrested at Delhi Airport and was then taken to kashmir and is still in detention. Do you believe the same may happen to you . I think it is too late for that to happen. I feel that i have expressed it so many times on a public platform. I also spoke to the guardian a month ago expressing apprehension that they could arrest me or they could just round me up like thousands of people, thousands of kashmiris have been jailed. But they have been quite unpredictable and i think there has been a method to the madness. I dont know what to expect from them. Their behaviour has been unpredictable. It is hard to see if something will happen to me but i dont think if i am doing anything wrong, i am just asking for our rights for the last two months, our constitutional rights, our Civil Liberties have been relegated to the dustbin. If i am saying something wrong, i am asking for the government to restore the rights of kashmiris. Over the last two months they have been caged like animals and treated like subhumans and i think this is a subversion of democratic norms and it is not befitting for the Worlds Largest democracy. Lets deal with some of your charges, one by one. You say that kashmiris are caged like animals and that is not and that is an inflammatory phrase to use. Lets start with your own mother. She was chief minister of the state of Jammu And Kashmir, 2016 2018. She has been outspoken since the august five revocation of article 370, the ending of special autonomous status, and very soon after that she was detained, as i understand she is currently still being held in a government statehouse in kashmir. So you tell me, you have been able to visit her, what is her Current Situation . Firstly, i want to bring to your notice that i was not allowed to visit her for about a month. She was taken on the fifth and i only got to see her on the 29th, four weeks later. And i could only see her after the Supreme Court passed a clear order saying that the government of india could not restrict me from seeing my mother. She is a strong person. She has a lot of inner strength. At this time i would say she is quite distressed about the situation and she has heard about how thousands of minor children have been detained and taken from their beds in the middle of the night and that this has been done by paramilitary forces, by the army. And reports have emerged where children as young as nine and ten have been taken and tortured. She is worried about the situation, and the problem is they are trying to smother all kashmiri voices. They want to make sure that no voice can tell the rest of the world about the kind of repression the kashmiris are being subjected to. Of course, there is a danger of exaggeration and false information also being spread and when you and your mother, i understand you currently are running her twitter feed, correct me if i am wrong. Iam. So when you perpetuate these charges that the indian state has arrested, as you say, thousands of children and is, in your view, torturing some of them. What evidence do you have . Those are serious allegations and the Indian Government has rejected them categorically. Bbc, new york times, washington post, their correspondents and yours have gone into the heart of the city and have documented these charges. Reuters news agency, three weeks ago totted up the numbers of people that they could find from official accounts having been arrested. This is from official accounts. They found evidence for over 3800 people having been arrested and they believe more than 2000 of those have since been released. So i am just wondering, when you accuse the indians of rounding up thousands and thousands of children, whether that really matches reality. The truth is that we have a government that has a brute majority and an agenda. They are not even concealing that at the moment. They are clear about it and they have lied about everything about this operation right from the start. People were initially told that nothing of this sort would happen and that the reason why they deployed so much army in kashmir was because they were anticipating an attack from pakistan that obviously never happened. I have to make it clear that when i met my mother she requested me to write an e mail to the government of india, requesting clarity on the detention of these minor children and it has been over two weeks since i wrote that e mail and there has been absolute pin drop silence and i want to know why is there such a pin drop silence . What is the government trying to hide . The government of india has been very persistent and what they have done is established an iron curtain between kashmir and the rest of the country and the world so there is no way to depend on their word. Whatever they are saying is lies. They even said that i was not placed under detention when the fact of the matter is that i was illegally detained and my house was pretty much a prison for about three weeks and it was only after i wrote a public and open letter to the home minister of india that they decided to let me travel. But iltija mufti, isnt that the point . You were, it seems, under house arrest but ultimately that control on you was lifted. You are here speaking to me openly from delhi and the truth is that if one looks at what the home minister has been saying from delhi recently he says that the prohibitory orders have been lifted from the vast majority of Police Stations in kashmir. 0nly nine Police Station areas continue to have repressive orders where large gatherings are banned. He said that bloodshed has been kept to a minimum and that does seem true, that very few lives have been lost despite the number of limited clashes there have been. And he also says that landlines have been restored in the Kashmir Valley and the peoples movements are no longer restricted. So deal with that. To me it seems from him that the situation is evolving and that some of the controls are easing. Would you agree . You put in a lot of information in that question and i need to take it part by part. Firstly you said that i am out and free but i am able to understand, stephen, that i come from a political family and the fact that i am out is not by mere accident. I am out because i had to fight for my freedom and the media takes an interest in speaking to me because i am a former chief ministers daughter. But other people who have been detained, who have been illegally detained, there is no way for them to come out and articulate the torture and the indignation that they have been subjected to. You cited a few examples of, you know, the home ministers statements. Let me tell you he initially said that farouk abdullah, the former chief minister ofjammu in kashmir was not under detention and ten days ago the authorities slapped a psa on him because his detention was challenged. Like i said, you have a rogue government that is fudging the facts and trying to obfuscate the truth, they want to hide the truth, theyre trying to put out false information and the situation has not changed. I want to ask them that if they feel there is normalcy, firstly they have an abnormal template for normalcy. According to them, if there is traffic in the city means that things are normal. Well, nothing is normal. Kids have not been to school, colleges and schools have been shut for two months, businesses are on the verge. Our economy is on the verge of being crippled and kashmir has been effectively turned into, you know, an open air prison camp the information that they give, a lot of it is fudged. You spoke about the landlines, in an age when we rely on cellphones for calling a cab, they. You keep telling me how awful and terrible things are and alleging things that the Indian Government is doing. It is not the basic point here none of this can surely have come as a surprise in the sense that the bjp ran on a policy platform, as it has done for decades now, of revoking article 370 and fundamentally changing the status quo. As we discussed, your mother was chief minister until 2018. She was in a Ruling Coalition with the bjp. Your mother believed in what she called a shared future for kashmiris and delhi working together. She was the one who chose to go into government with the bjp. Are you saying your own mother was completely wrongheaded . I cannot speak for my mother. I cannot speak on behalf of my mother but i want to express my own views from where i see it. When we had elections in 201a and when the results came out, jammu was taken by the bjp. And pdp, my mothers party. We won the kashmir, we won the majority of seats but we had no other choice than to go with these people because if you do not go with the bjp it is like you disrespect in the mandate of the people. And even before we formed a government with them we created what is known as an agenda of alliance which is very clear about a couple of things. For example, article 370. They did not even try touching that in the three years we shared government with them. So obviously, they have had this agenda of, you know, they have had this on their agenda for a while but the fact of the matter is that we went with them not for power but we thought that, you know, this was the only choice because this was the mandate of the people. You say we and i know you are not directly involved in the party that your mother still leads in kashmir but the truth is we must be realistic about what your mother did. She imposed occasional blocks on communications and the internet when there was instability and unrest and violence in kashmir during the years of her administration. She also saw many people arrested. She took her own special measures alongside delhi to try and build some sort of security inside kashmir. Many kashmiris today, when they hear you and through the twitter feed, your mother, they wonder what on earth your mother was doing. You are not letting me talk, stephen. Your questions are longer than my answers so you must let me talk. I dont think that is true, but carry on. So i realise that kashmiris feel a lot of anger towards my mother and the pdp because they feel they went with the bjp. The fact of the matter is that kashmiris had a fragile sense of peace in the past two or three decades. You have had periods of what is called a silent peace which is interrupted and something. You have protests that are triggered by, for example, you saw an uprising in 2016, the same thing happened in 2008 and 2010. It is not really about something that has just happened in my mothers administration. But what is happening now is unprecedented. What little autonomy the state had, the government of india has undemocratically and unconstitutionally stripped us of that autonomy and think that is serious. Instead of comparing curfews that she imposed during her time, you need to see the gravity of the situation. You need to understand that we are hurtling towards an authoritarian regime. The last two months kashmiris have been suppressed. They lost their voice and this is being done in the garb of development and equal rights when the truth is that they slashed our rights and in the moment they have sinister designs for the people ofJammu And Kashmir and they cannot deny it. So, you make it sound as though theres no going back. Your mother, as i said just a moment ago, was somebody who talked about a shared future between kashmiris and delhi. From what youre saying, and all the allegations youre making, it seems as though youve abandoned that vision of a shared future. So, are you now. I mean, stephen. Hang on, let me do let me finish my question are you an out and out separatist . You have to understand that what theyve done to us has been completely, like, i think theres not a single kashmiri whose face is not lined with a sense of betrayal and shock and anger, and theres simmering anger. I feel so angry as a kashmiri. My mother, other pro india politicians swore on the constitution of india, and what have they done . Theyve intentionally theres been a concerted agenda to lump pro india politicians with separatists. Why would you do Something Like that . Im just trying to tease out from you what you believe you can now offer as a vision for kashmirs future. Have you joined the separatist movement . In your current position, it seems theres no space for your mothers politics. So, are you now saying that youve been pushed into a position where you would support even a violent separatist movement . No, well, first of all, im not a politician and thats something that ive made very clear. And even before you and i spoke on the programme, i told you that i speak as a kashmiri, im not speaking as a politician. As far as the future of politicians is concerned, i dont know what they are going to do. But the fact of the matter is that the government of india is not even allowing forget separatists, forget politicians theyve rounded up thousands and thousands of minor kids, Civil Society activists, lawyers theyve all been jailed. The fact of the matter is that theyve snatched what was rightfully, legally ours and were not even being given an opportunity to express ourselves. Theyve literally caged us. So, its not about my mothers politics or its about another partys politics. Thats not what were concerned about. What were concerned about is that theyve taken a decision that has plunged kashmir, Jammu And Kashmir into an era, into darkness and into complete despair. What do you make of the International Reaction to what has happened over the last two months . I mean, just a few weeks ago we saw Prime Minister modi being feted in the united states. He and donald trump appear to be developing quite a friendship at the un general assembly, there were senior politicians, including the un secretary general, urging maximum restraint, but ultimately saying what happens to kashmir is a bilateral matter between india and pakistan and must be sorted out in that context. It seems to me, youve had from your point of view perhaps a disappointing level of engagement from the International Community. I mean, first of all, you mentioned, i think what youre mentioning about is the howdy modi event, right . Like, so, that was all for optics, because lets admit it, the Prime Minister came back and there was no trade deal and they might say that kashmir is an internal problem, but lets be really honest here frankly, kashmir has not has never been internationalised to the extent that its been spoken about now. You have seen the us congressman whove issued statements asking for the government to end the blockade, youve even had parliamentarians from the United Kingdom expressing apprehensions about the way, you know, theyve placed the entire city under siege. So, i think that the International Community is putting pressure on them, but they want to project otherwise, so this whole howdy modi event was just to kind of like distort the ground reality, and whats funny is that Prime Minister modi said all is well in different languages, but not kashmiri. So, he pretty much used all languages except kashmiri. So, you know, the fact of the matter is that he says something and he does something, he says that you have to embrace kashmiris, but here, youve snatched the right to even mourn from us, stephen and, you know, for the past two months, every time theres been a death in some family in kashmir, the families havent been able to inform their loved ones. So, you might tell the world that youve best told these equal rights on us, but the truth is that youve snatched the right to even mourn from us, and youre humiliating kashmiris. Let me ask you this, though, about the future, because youre obviously a young kashmiri, and if one looks at kashmir in recent times, it has been a territory where there is instability, there is violence, there isjoblessness, there is widespread poverty, real problems. Can i correct you theres no widespread poverty. If you look at Development Indices and parameters, Jammu And Kashmir has done pretty well for a strife torn state. In fact, its placed much better in terms of education, literacy rates, sex ratio as well. So, its placed much better than other states, and theres no poverty