Shopian, Indian-administered Kashmir – The killing of three more local policemen in Indian-administered Kashmir has underlined growing tensions between rebels and police.

At least 37 policemen have been killed by rebels so far this year, according to official figures, compared with 32 in all of 2017.

Relatives of 38-year-old Nisar Ahmad Dhobi, 28-year-old Firdous Ahmad Kuchay, and Kulwant Singh, 35, said they were taken from their homes and shot dead in the early hours of Friday by suspected members of two armed groups, in the villages of Kapran and Batgund in southern Kashmir’s Shopian region.

A police statement promised further investigation into Friday’s killings but blamed “the complicity” of Hizbul Mujahideen, the largest rebel group, and Lashkar-e-Taiba, often said to be responsible for attacking Indian security forces in the disputed Kashmir region.

The bodies of the policemen, who had worked in various districts of Kashmir but were visiting family in Shopian, were found in an orchard.

The brother of a police constable, who was also abducted, was released, Kapran villagers told Al Jazeera.

Dhobi’s wife Ruksana Akhtar said: “I resisted and told the gunmen to spare my husband, but they did not listen. They told me he will be back in 10 minutes. In 10 minutes, I heard gunfire from a short distance and he was killed.”

Singh’s mother, 70-year-old Pushpa Devi, said her son should have been given the chance to resign, referring to a “resign or die” ultimatum by Hizbul Mujahideen, which had days earlier warned Kashmiri police officers to stay away from counter-insurgency operations.

Jammu and Kashmir state police chief SP Pani described the killings as “barbaric”, adding that they show “desperation on the part of the militants, not a chink in our system”.

As Kashmir witnesses one of its most violent phases, rebels increasingly target police officers, who they accuse of “collaborating” with India’s “occupying” forces.

Recently, policemen were advised to take extra security when visiting their homes, where they were told to spend no more than two hours each time.

The focus on policemen comes as police detain relatives of prominent rebels.

The role of police is to primarily deal with law and order. Unfortunately, they are being pushed to fight militancy. The government is making a Kashmiri fight another Kashmir.

Shiekh Abdul Rasheed, independent legislator in Jammu and Kashmir assembly

On Wednesday, an audio statement surfaced on social media in which Hizbul Mujahideen commander Riyaz Naikoo, whose 70-year-old father has been picked up by police, demanded local officers quit.

“You forced us to kidnap your kin to make you feel what we feel when police harass our families,” Naikoo said.

Shortly after Friday’s events, reports said several policemen announced their resignations in video messages posted on social media, but the Indian Ministry of Home Affairs in a statement denied they had quit, describing the news as “propaganda by mischievous elements”.

In August, Kashmiri rebels abducted 11 relatives of policemen, after police detained family members of prominent fighters and allegedly set ablaze two rebel leaders’ homes.

The policemen’s relatives were released after one day unharmed, but Hizbul Mujahideen warned of “an eye for an eye” if government forces did not stop harassing rebels’ families.

“The families of militants should not be touched, whether it is by the army or local police officers. It puts our families at risk too,” a senior police officer told Al Jazeera on condition of anonymity.

How has policing changed?

Policing in Jammu and Kashmir has transformed over the last 30 years.

In the 1990s, when the rebellion against Indian rule was at its peak, local police did not participate in counter-insurgency operations, which were handled by a separate force – the Special Operations Group (SOG). That outfit included policemen who volunteered to fight rebels, as well as former rebels turned counter-insurgents.

In the early 2000s, the SOG was disbanded and its personnel restructured in the police to give the counter-insurgency a more local face.

“The role of police is to primarily deal with law and order. Unfortunately, they are being pushed to fight militancy which has brought them in confrontation with the militants.

“The government is making a Kashmiri fight another Kashmiri,” Shiekh Abdul Rasheed, an independent legislator in Jammu and Kashmir assembly, told Al Jazeera.

Records say more than 1,500 policemen have been killed in Kashmir since the armed rebellion began in 1989.

“My son worked with the police, because we are a poor family of 12 members. Only he had a permanent job. Had he been warned, we would have begged him to resign,” said 70-year-old Malla Begum, whose son police constable Muhammad Yaqoob Shah was killed outside his home on August 22.

On the same day, Fayaz Ahmad, a trainee constable in Kulgam, and Ashraf Dar, a police officer in Pulwama, were also killed.

For police, the situation is different. They are from the same society. I feel this is going to be terrible in the next few months. I don’t see any solution until a political resolution is made.

Rahul Bedi, defence and security expert in New Delhi

Ajai Sahni, executive director at the Institute for Conflict Management in New Delhi, says local policemen are vulnerable.

“It has happened in Assam, Punjab and other states. A counter-insurgency operation is successful because of its police, which become the face of it,” he told Al Jazeera.

The senior police officer who spoke to Al Jazeera anonymously said while his colleagues in Kashmir were “terrified” to visit their villages, the Indian army had no such fear and were much less at stake.

“An army officer comes from outside Kashmir. We live in constant fear, worried about our families and ourselves. Most police officers don’t even visit [their] homes,” the officer said.

The Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA) provides immunity to the Indian army in Kashmir, and other conflict zones in India, against prosecution over allegations of torture, rape or extra-judicial killings.

Both India and Pakistan, who administer separate parts of Kashmir, have fought three wars over the region.

India has stationed nearly 700,000 troops in the areas it administers, making it the world’s most militarised conflict zone.

Kashmiri rebels demand freedom from Indian control or a merger with Pakistan.

From 2017 until today, in the largest ever initiatives against the insurgency in Kashmir, a record 350 rebels have been killed.

According to official figures, the number of armed rebels active in Kashmir crossed 300 this year, the highest in a decade.

“Young men are being forced to take up guns because of the injustice and oppression that continues,” said Nazir Ahmad, a Shopian resident.

Shortly after the three policemen were killed on Friday, Mehbooba Mufti, former chief minister of Jammu and Kashmir, wrote on Twitter: “Clearly, with the rise in kidnapping of police personnel and their families, Centre’s muscular policy is not working at all. Dialogue, the only way forward seems to be a distant dream for now.”

Experts warn the situation in Kashmir will only worsen in the absence of political outreach, which India’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party has replaced with a “muscular” approach to the uprising.

Rahul Bedi, a defence and security expert in New Delhi, told Al Jazeera the tit for tat between militants and police will continue.

“The army in the region is insulated. They have AFSPA and equipment, but for police, the situation is different. They are from the same society. I feel this is going to be terrible in the next few months. I don’t see any solution until a political resolution is made,” he said.

Maintaining one’s dignity while living a dismal existence in a refugee camp is not an easy feat. My parents fought hard to spare us the daily humiliations that come with living in Nuseirat – Gaza’s largest refugee camp. But when I turned six, and joined the UNRWA-run Nuseirat Elementary School for Boys, there was no escape.

Not only was I a refugee on official United Nations papers, but in practice as well, just like all my peers.

To be a Palestinian refugee means living perpetually in limbo – unable to reclaim what has been lost, the beloved homeland, and unable to fashion an alternative future and a life of freedom, justice and dignity.

How are we to reconstruct our identity that has been shattered by decades of exile when our powerful tormentors have linked our own existence and repatriation to their very demise? Per Israel’s logic, our mere demand for the implementation of the internationally sanctioned right of return is equivalent to a call for “genocide”.

According to that same faulty logic, the fact that my people live and multiply is a “demographic threat“ to Israel. When Israel and its friends around the world, argue that my people are “invented“, not only are they aiming to annihilate our collective identity, but they are also justifying in their own minds the continued killing and maiming of Palestinians, unhindered by any moral or ethical consideration.

I grew up in Gaza resisting this Israeli effort to erase us, Palestinians. “Ramzy Mohammed Baroud: A Palestinian Refugee,” was stamped on every piece of paper that I acquired since the day I opened my eyes.

With an ever-increasing number of refugees in an ever-shrinking space in Gaza, our communal language was dominated by a vocabulary that four generations of refugees are painfully familiar with: murderous soldiers, fences, warplanes, a constant feeling of hovering death, hunger, military curfews, resistance, martyrs and, UNRWA.

Always UNRWA. The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian refugees had accompanied our journey of exile from the very start. Only months following the Nakba – the catastrophic destruction of the Palestinian homeland and the exile of an estimated 750,000 Palestinians in 1948 – UNRWA became synonymous with our exodus and our ongoing odyssey.

Much can be said about the circumstances behind the creation of UNRWA by the United Nations General Assembly in December 1949; about its operations, efficiency and the effectiveness of its work, which attempts to cover the needs of five million refugees.

But for me, my family and most Palestinians, UNRWA was not a relief or charity organisation per se. Being registered as a refugee with UNRWA provided us with a temporary identity that allowed us to navigate 70 years of exile, roaming without a home or even a roadmap for our return to what was, for a thousand years and more, our historical Palestinian homeland.

It was as if the stamp of “refugee” on every certificate we possessed – birth, death and everything else in between – was a compass, pointing back to the places we came from; to my destroyed village of Beit Daras and not to the Nuseirat refugee camp; not to Jabaliya, Shati’, Yarmouk or Ein El-Hilweh, but to the 600 towns and villages that were destroyed during the Zionist assault on Palestine.

The existence of these villages may have been erased, as a whole new country was established upon their ruins, but the Palestinian refugees remained – subsisted, resisted and plotted their return home. The UNRWA refugee status was the international recognition of our rights.

Frankly, none of this mattered to me at the age of six. I stood in line like all the other kids at school; chanted whatever morning routine slogans we were told to chant; took my place behind the worn-out desk that bore the marks of generations of refugee children scratching their names and references to past wars and tragedies; and did everything that I needed to do to be a good UNRWA kid.

And in first grade, when the first winter rainstorm came, I also learned how to reposition my desk to dodge the water dripping from the ceiling. Every roof of every UNRWA classroom I have ever been in was dripping when it rained.

In fact, one of my fondest memories from school was, when in third grade, our classroom flooded and our history, Arabic and math teacher, Mohamed Diab, asked us to sit on top of our desks as he continued the lesson. We shivered in our shabby UNRWA-supplied jackets, worn by many others before us. We huddled together with excitement as the water covered the floor of the classroom and as Mr Diab went on with his stories of past Arab grandeur from Palestine to al-Andalus.

It was at that UNRWA school that I painted my first Palestinian flag and experienced my very first Israeli army raid. As students, blinded by tear gas and smoke, ran in different directions, not knowing how to reach the main gate to escape, I remember the sixth graders going back in to rescue younger children. It was there and then that I saw what Palestinian courage means.

Mass flag drawing was a ritual that happened in the first week of each year. It was not a practice officially sanctioned by UNRWA, as the Israeli military administration of Gaza detained children, heavily fined parents and shut down schools for what they deemed to be an illicit act. Waving or even possessing a Palestinian flag was a criminal offence in Gaza. We did it anyway.

Sometimes, in the first few days of school, a massive blue truck would pull into our school welcomed by the shrill excitement of hundreds of children. Within hours each pupil would be handed several used books, two new notebooks, a set of pencils, an empty art book and four crayons.

Those fortunate enough to possess the green, red and black crayons would share them with the rest as we all rushed to draw as many Palestinian flags as possible.

Israeli soldiers always anticipated our collective rebellious act and waited for us like vultures in the streets. Many UNRWA kids were handcuffed and hauled to the army “tents” – a massive Israeli army encampment separating Nuseirat from the Buraij refugee camp – many crying for their parents and beseeching God for mercy.

I once threw my bag in a thorny bush to escape the wrath of the Israeli soldiers. Retrieving it felt like being poked by a hundred needles all at once.  

The Israelis also terrorised us with their constant raids on UNRWA schools. Thousands of children and youth were killed and wounded that way, most notably during the First Palestinian Intifada of 1987. Our protests often started at UNRWA schools and it was in these same schools we also met to console one another over the wounding and martyrdom of fellow classmates.

No, the Israeli war didn’t target UNRWA as a UN body, but as an organisation that allowed us to maintain our identity as refugees with inalienable rights, demanding justice and repatriation to our homes. UNRWA fed in us the hope that one day we will shed what was meant to be a temporary identity in favour of our true identity, going back to being us again, a Palestinian people, an ancient nation that predates Israel by centuries.

It is largely because of these experiences that UNRWA is an essential part of my identity as a Palestinian refugee. This intrinsic relationship is not predicated on the services that UNRWA provides or fails to provide, but rather on the political and legal principles its existence is based on.

When I entered the UNRWA school, I also got my first food card. I rarely used it at the “tu’meh” (literary meaning “feeding”) – UNRWA’s feeding centre in our refugee camp. Even at a very young age, I loathed that experience. I hardly cared for that single slice of dried bread, half an egg and half an apple. Standing in that long line of impoverished children at the tu’meh – a place that reeked with the stench of a thousand boiled eggs – was hardly ever a pleasant experience.

A few weeks later, I secretly gave my UNRWA food card to another poor classmate, a Bedouin boy by the name of Hamdan, whose family didn’t qualify for refugee status. That was not a virtuous act on my part; UNRWA’s food was simply awful.

Yet, despite its leaky school roofs and stale bread, UNRWA was and remains essential and irreplaceable. As far as Israel is concerned, the refugees were meant to be “undefined” – in fact, that was exact term written in my Israel-issued laissez-passer in the space for nationality. The founders of Israel envisioned a future where Palestinian refugees would eventually fade away, disappearing into the larger population of the Middle East. Seventy years on, the Israelis are still entertaining that same illusion.

Now, with the help of the anti-Palestinian US administration of Donald Trump, they are orchestrating even more sinister campaigns to make Palestinian refugees vanish through the destruction of UNRWA and the redefining of the refugee status of millions of Palestinians. By denying UNRWA urgently needed funds, Washington wants to enforce a new reality, one in which neither human rights, nor international law or morality are of any consequence.

What would become of Palestinian refugees seems to be of no importance to Trump, his son-in-law and adviser, Jared Kushner and other US officials. The Americans are now insolently watching, hoping that their callous strategy will finally bring Palestinians to their knees so that they will ultimately submit to the Israeli government’s dictates.

The Israelis want the Palestinians to give up their right of return in order to get “peace”. The joint Israeli-American “vision” for the Palestinians basically means the imposition of apartheid. My people will never accept this.

The latest US-Israeli folly will prove futile. In the past, successive US administrations have done everything in their power to support Israel and to punish the supposedly intransigent Palestinians. The right of return, however, remained the driving force behind Palestinian resistance, as the Great March of Return demonstrated in Gaza earlier this year.

All the money in Washington’s coffers will not reverse what is now a deeply embedded belief in the hearts and minds of millions of refugees throughout Palestine, the Middle East and the world.

Many years after joining the UNRWA education system, I still identify with that UNRWA kid that I was. Sometimes, I wonder what has befallen my old desk in my first UNRWA classroom. Has it collapsed under the weight of the years of use and successive wars?

If it is still standing, I truly hope that my doodles are still there. I carved a map of historical Palestine, encircled it with a ring of flowers and wrote under it: Ramzy Baroud. Palestine. Freedom. Justice. Resistance. Raed Muanis. Raed was a friend of mine, a neighbour and another UNRWA kid, who was shot dead by Israeli soldiers who spotted him running with a small Palestinian flag.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance. 

Several people have been killed after unknown gunmen opened fire during a military parade in the southwestern Iranian city of Ahvaz, state television reported.

“Several gunmen began shooting from behind the stand during the parade. There are several killed and injured,” a correspondent told state television.

More to follow

In a #terrorist attack in the city of #Ahvaz, southwest of #Iran, some armed men started shooting at a #military parade. Some people have likely been killed & wounded. No exact number of casualties have been reported.

— Abas Aslani (@AbasAslani) September 22, 2018

POLITICO first reported last week that an IG investigation had been opened into Long’s use of government Suburbans for routine weekend travel to his home in North Carolina.

FEMA Administrator Brock Long has been forced to reimburse the government for improper personal use of federal government vehicles and acknowledged “mistakes” that he and FEMA made in using those vehicles.

A DHS Inspector General investigation found there was “inappropriate use” of the vehicles, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen said in a statement released Friday night.

Story Continued Below

Nielsen said she reviewed the IG report that found Long, tasked with helping the government manage the response to hurricanes and other emergencies, used government vehicles for “non-official reasons.”

“[U]se of Government vehicles to provide home to work transportation for the FEMA Administrator was never authorized in accordance with applicable law,” she said.

Long said that he took “full responsibility for any mistakes that were made by me or the agency.”

“The Secretary and I are taking corrective action to prevent such mistakes from happening in the future,” he added.

Long did not immediately respond to a request for further comment from POLITICO.

POLITICO first reported last week that an IG investigation had been opened into Long’s use of government Chevrolet Suburbans for routine weekend travel to his home in North Carolina under a government continuity program, which is designed to ensure senior officials can be reached in case of a national emergency.

Nielsen, who had a “productive conversation” with Long about the issue after she reviewed the report, ordered him to reimburse taxpayers for the unauthorized use of government vehicles.

“I take seriously the unauthorized or inappropriate use of Government resources by any DHS employee and I appreciate the work of the OIG in thoroughly completing their investigation,” she said.

Nielsen ordered DHS to prevent this from happening in the future by conducting a review of DHS policies on “home-to-work transportation programs,” assess DHS continuity programs and the communications needs associated with it, analyze FEMA’s National Continuity Program and put in place a DHS review of and training about how to use government vehicles properly.

She said that this past April FEMA “eliminated unauthorized home-to-work transportation.”

Nielsen said she appreciated “Administrator Long and the entire FEMA staff’s continued professional focus on their mission during this investigation and have full confidence in their ability to continue to perform.”

The Wall Street Journal reported on Monday that the matter had been referred to federal prosecutors, who are investigating Long and two other FEMA employees.

The Department of Justice did not immediately respond to a request for comment about the status of federal prosecutors’ work on the matter.

Male, Maldives – Guests on a five-star honeymoon resort in the Maldives caught a rare glimpse of the decades-long political and religious tensions rocking this island nation when policemen – armed with axes, concrete saws and ropes – stormed the Fairmont Maldives to destroy model human figures that had been deemed un-Islamic.

The unprecedented raid on Friday came as President Abdulla Yameen railed against what he said was a plot by the “Western-backed opposition” to undermine Islam in the Maldives ahead of a highly charged election on Sunday.

Standing in a tropical storm on the tarmac in a half-completed airport in northern Maldives, Yameen lambasted his opponents for promoting “Western standards” that “are intolerable to our values”.

“I bring you development and prosperity,” he declared as the rain and wind whipped coconut palms in the distance.

“What does the opposition offer? They talk of democracy… What do they do in the name of Western-backed democracy? They protest to seek rights for homosexuals.”

Breaking News: Qanoonaa khilaafah Siirufenfushee ga bahattaafaivaa budhu thah negumuge amalee masahkaiy Dhivehi Raajje ge salaamathee baaruthakun fashaifi. pic.twitter.com/h0m0cwUgXE

— News (@PSMnewsmv) September 21, 2018

Yameen, 59, is seeking re-election after fives years of rule marred by allegations of human rights abuses and corruption.

The president, who is facing sanctions from the European Union over alleged rights violations, has sought to portray himself as defending sovereignty and religion in the Sunni Muslim nation.

He has fostered close ties with China and Saudi Arabia, praising the two countries for funding his development agenda without interfering in the country’s affairs, and chosen as his running mate a cleric with close ties to Saudis, Dr Mohamed Shaheem Ali Saeed.

His opponents, however, counter he is autocratic and corrupt. 

Over the past five years, Yameen has jailed or forced into exile nearly all of his political rivals, suspended parliament, shuttered critical and independent media, and declared two states of emergencies over alleged threats to national security.

He has presided over a crackdown on liberal voices even as scores of young men and women left the country to join armed groups in various conflicts in the Middle East, including fighting with Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL).

Meanwhile, a journalist was disappeared, a blogger was killed, and several rights activists have received death threats for criticising street crime and religious violence.

Ibrahim Mohamed Solih, the opposition’s joint candidate, has promised to investigate the attacks, restore democracy, release dissidents and investigate corruption allegations against Yameen.

Ever since prison riots in 2003 led to a democratic uprising, those who seek to promote human rights and democracy in the Maldives have been “branded anti-Islamic”, according to Shahindha Ismail, executive director of Maldivian Democracy Network.

Since then, successive governments have used religion to legitimise authoritarian actions, she said, empowering far-right religious actors in the country.

That is why the art installation at the Fairmont has become a flashpoint, she said.

Sirru Fen Fushi resortgai hedhifaiva Coralrium gai insaanunge soora sifa vaagothah behettifaiva sculpture thah naga coralarium vany miadhuge 17:45 gai huskurevifai. pic.twitter.com/Yamgw4evCn

— Maldives Police (@PoliceMv) September 21, 2018

The furore over the statues began in July when clerics warned against “the sin of worshipping idols” after the art installation, called a coralarium, was opened to the public.

The Fairmont Maldives Sirru Fen Fushi, a Canadian chain, calledit the world’s first semi-submerged gallery, and Jason deCaires Taylor, the British-Guyanese artist behind the installations, said his aim was “to raise awareness for the protection” of Maldives’ coral reefs, which are under threat from warming oceans associated with climate change. 

Within days of the gallery opening, the president’s office ordered the removal of the nearly 30 submerged and semi-submerged sculptures because of “significant public sentiment against” them.

The civil court on Thursday issued a ruling ordering the resort to take down the sculptures, saying “the coralarium undermines Islamic faith and peace and order” in the country, according to local media.

The judgment ordered the police to remove the installation if the resort failed to do so within five hours.

Ismail described the police’s actions a “destructive and desperate” attempt by Yameen to court the religious vote.

Ibrahim Muaz Ali, the president’s spokesman, denied the claim, but refused to answer additional questions.

Ahmed Nihan, parliamentary group leader of the ruling Progressive Party of the Maldives, posted a tweet with police destroying the statues and the hashtag #YameenShaheem2018. He had previously thanked Yameen for the removal order.

Sirrufenfusheega E Thanuge Management in Behetti Budhu Thah Dhivehi Sarukaarun Nagaa Nimmaifi. #YameenSaheem2018 pic.twitter.com/dZB7mfdmxY

— Ahmed Nihan (@ahmed_nihan) September 21, 2018

The Fairmont Maldives did not respond to calls for comment.

A similar outcry occurred in 2011 during a meeting of South Asian leaders in the Maldives’ southern Addu City over the installation of statues gifted by the country’s neighbours.

Several monuments, including a bust of Pakistan‘s founder, Muhammad Ali Jinnah, was torched while the head of Sri Lanka‘s lion statue was decapitated.

The police eventually took down all the monuments.

Hamid Abdul Ghafoor, spokesman for the Maldivian Democratic Party, which leads the four-party alliance seeking to remove Yameen, declined to comment on the removal of the statues from the Fairmont Maldives.

Isha Afeef reported from Male. Zaheena Rasheed reported and wrote from Colombo.