Lockdown Hits Access To Healthcare In Besieged Kashmir thenewhumanitarian.org

India says hospitals are functioning normally. But after weeks of restrictions, doctors and patients in Kashmir speak of increasingly long waits for treatment and medicine shortages. Weeks of security restrictions and a communications blackout have resulted in long waits at hospitals, medicine shortages, and patients going without urgent operations and treatment in Indian-administered Kashmir, local doctors warn.

On 5 August, India’s government stripped the state of Jammu and Kashmir of autonomy and put the region on lockdown – boosting troop levels, restricting movement and public gatherings, arresting prominent politicians, and blocking all internet and phone services.

India says the measures are necessary to maintain order; critics see it as a sharp escalation after years of rights violations and part of a broader plan by India’s Hindu-nationalist government to dramatically reshape the Muslim-majority state.