Posts Tagged ‘separatist leaders’

Kashmir shuts in poll protest, troops patrol

April 30, 2009
Yahoo.com
Reuters

Reuters – Indian policemen stop traffic at a security barricade in Srinagar April 29, 2009. Government forces locked …

By Sheikh Mushtaq – Wed Apr 29, 6:06 am ET

SRINAGAR (Reuters) – Government forces locked down Kashmir’s main city on Wednesday to thwart planned protests against India’s general election, renewing tensions in the disputed region after a short period of relative calm.

Troops patrolled deserted streets and erected barricades in Srinagar, cutting off residential areas after separatists called a two-day strike from Wednesday. Shops and businesses also remained closed. Voting is scheduled on Thursday.

“New Delhi is frustrated by our resistance movement, and not allowing us to carry out peaceful protests against the polls is a shameful act,” said Mirwaiz Umar Farooq, chairman of the separatists alliance, the All Parties Hurriyat (Freedom) Conference.

The boycott call, which came suddenly after two rounds of voting in rest of India, is seen as a bid by the separatists to deny New Delhi any credit for holding an election in Kashmir.

Analysts say the rebels also want to avoid a repeat of a successful local election last year when Kashmiris voted in large numbers, though many saw it as a vote for better governance rather than acceptance of Indian rule.

Hurriyat’s decision came after United Jihad Council (UJC), a Pakistan-based amalgam of 13-militant groups fighting Indian troops in Kashmir, asked it to support their boycott call.

India’s general election began this month, but voting in the Kashmir valley has been split into three phases starting from April 30. The staggered voting is to allow thousands of security forces to move around the troubled region.

Most of the senior separatist leaders including Farooq, hardliner Syed Ali Shah Geelani and Yasin Malik were placed under house arrest, police said.

The Muslim-majority region last year witnessed some of the biggest pro-independence protests since a separatist revolt against Indian rule erupted 20 years ago. But those protests tapered off and a state election was held peacefully in December.

Aside from Congress, other parties contesting the polls include the main opposition Hindu-nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party, the regional National Conference and the Peoples Democratic Party.

More than 47,000 people have been killed in the region since discontent against New Delhi’s rule turned into a full-blown rebellion in 1989. Separatists put the toll at 100,000.

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Troops, protesters clash in Indian-controlled Kashmir; 1 dead

September 7, 2008

AIJAZ HUSSAIN

AP News, Sep 06, 2008 07:06 EST

Thousands of angry people took to the streets in Indian Kashmir to denounce the killing Saturday of a protester by government troops who fired rubber bullets and tear gas shells at Muslim demonstrators chanting anti-India slogans, an official said.

Shops and businesses were closed and public buses stayed off the roads across much of the Indian-administered region Saturday in response to a strike called by Muslim separatist groups protesting Indian rule in the disputed region.

The strike was called by the Jammu-Kashmir Coordination Committee, whose members include Muslim separatist leaders and representatives of businesses, lawyers and government employees.

A few hundred protesters chanting “We want freedom” and other anti-India slogans clashed with government troops who tried to prevent them from marching, said Prabhakar Tripathi, a spokesman for the paramilitary Central Reserve Police Force.

The angry crowd threw rocks at the soldiers, who responded by firing rubber bullets and tear gas shells, Tripathi said. Several people, both protesters and troops, were injured, he said.

One man died from injuries to his chest, said Wasim Qureshi, the doctor who attended to him. He gave no other details.

News of the man’s death fueled more clashes as thousands took to the streets to protest the killing. In at least two other areas of Srinagar, protesters burned tires and hurled rocks at troops who fired tear gas to control the crowds, Tripathi said.

More than two months of angry protests have left at least 43 people dead in Indian-controlled Kashmir, most of them killed when soldiers opened fire on Muslim protesters.

The unrest, the worst to hit Kashmir in more than a decade, was triggered by a government move to hand over land to a Hindu shrine. Muslim separatist leaders launched protests in June saying the government plan was aimed at changing the demography of the Muslim-majority region.

The plan was quickly scrapped, angering the region’s Hindu minority who also launched massive protests, forcing authorities to allow Hindu pilgrims temporary use of land near the shrine.

The Muslim separatists’ demonstrations have snowballed into a broader anti-India movement.

Kashmir has been divided between Hindu-majority India and predominantly Muslim Pakistan since 1947 when the two fought their first war over the region in the aftermath of Britain’s bloody partition of the subcontinent. Both countries continue to claim Kashmir in its entirety.

A separatist insurgency in Indian Kashmir has killed an estimated 68,000 people since 1989.

Source: AP News

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