Abstract | This chapter is a reflective essay on civil liberties and democratic freedom when oppressed nations like Kashmir and Kurdistan organise for self-determination. Civil liberties are fundamentally state-centric, being about relations between state and citizens. This chapter draws on my work as campaigner within both movements, with Peace in Kurdistan and Freedom for Ocalan campaign in Europe, and with the Committee for Protection of Democratic Rights and my practice as civil liberties lawyer in India, to reflect on the meaning of civil liberties and democratic freedoms. My reflections below pose questions about prevailing conceptions of law and statehood and the assumptions that social justice movements make about them. These reflections do not suggest answers. The Kashmiri struggle for self-determination, following classical ideas of self-determination, sees independent statehood as the pathway to freedom from oppression by India and Pakistan for the Kashmiri nation. The Kurdish struggle followed the same political programme for independent statehood vis-à-vis the Turkish state, but changed tack after Abdullah Ocalan, the leader of the Kurdish movement, retheorised self-determination as democratic-confederalism. While the older conception of self-determination saw the state as the locus of power, Ocalan’s reformulation shifted the locus of power to the Kurdish communities. In this essay I reflect on whether these divergences in conceptions of state and community in both movements have altered or, improved the political context for freedom from state oppression. |
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