Awaiting for resolution, besieged Kashmir suffers 21st day of curfew

Over 10,000 Kashmiris including hundreds of political leaders and workers have been detained.

SRINAGAR (Dunya News) – In occupied Kashmir, the authorities continue to impose stringent curfew and other restrictions across the entire region on the 21th consecutive day on Sunday for silencing the people from holding demonstrations against Modi-led Hindu nationalist Indian government for abrogating special status of Jammu and Kashmir.

According to Kashmir Media Service, due to severe blockade, people have been facing acute shortage of essential commodities including baby food and life-saving medicines and the valley represents a humanitarian crisis. Hundreds of thousands of people are besieged and Jammu and Kashmir has become a big jail for its inhabitants.

Over 10,000 Kashmiris including hundreds of political leaders and workers have been detained. The jails and police stations have run out of space and many detainees have been lodged in makeshift detention centres. A hotel in Srinagar being used as a makeshift detention centre has been declared a sub-jail. Around 50 pro-India political leaders are detained in the hotel.

On the other hand, the people of occupied Kashmir have been warned to beware of Indian collaborators who are trying to approach their Indian masters to bring the members of extremist Hindu organisations like Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) and other Hindutva forces to the territory to enslave Kashmiris and change their demography.

The warning has been issued through posters and handbills by Hurriyat activists. The Indian collaborators have been asked to adopt Hurriyat line and in case they provide any facilitation to Hindutva forces, they would face serious consequences.

Rahul Gandhi denied entry to Kashmir

Yesterday, Indian opposition leaders including former Congress president Rahul Gandhi were barred from leaving the airport on Saturday in Kashmir, where local authorities had warned that their visit could stoke heightened tension in the region.

The delegation of opposition leaders from parties including Congress, the Communist Party and the All India Trinamool Congress said they wanted to assess the situation in the valley, and flew from New Delhi on Saturday.

“If the situation is normal then why is the government restricting us from entering the valley. On the one hand the government says that things are normal and on the other they impose entry restrictions, why so many contradictions?” senior Congress leader Ghulam Nabi Azad told reporters before departing.

When their plane arrived in Srinagar, the politicians were not allowed to leave the airport and were sent back within a few hours.

Each of the dozen or so entrances have been blocked with makeshift barricades of bricks, corrugated metal sheets, wooden slabs and felled tree trunks. Groups of youths armed with stones congregate behind the biggest obstacles. The aim: to keep Indian security forces, and particularly the paramilitary police, out of the area.

Soura, home to about 15,000 people, has become the epicenter of resistance to Indian government plans to remove the partial autonomy that was enjoyed by Jammu and Kashmir, the country’s only Muslim-majority state. The enclave, which has effectively become a no-go zone for the Indian security forces, is now a barometer of the ability of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu-nationalist government to impose its will in Kashmir after its dramatic move on Aug. 5 to tighten its control over the region.

In several places, Kashmiris have defied stringent curfew and other restrictions and took to the streets in Srinagar to protest against the Indian occupation and atrocities.

Since August 4, the Modi-led Hindu nationalist government has been seeking to tighten its grip on the region.

Indian paramilitary personnel have been raiding on the houses, harassing women and detaining people to spread fear for silencing protests for independence.

Small groups of armed soldiers, many kitted out in full riot gear, were positioned every few metres in the old quarter, and all stores other than a handful of pharmacies were closed.

In Soura, a densely populated enclave in Srinagar that has been a hotbed of protests since Aug 5, when Prime Minister Narendra Modi withdrew the special rights granted to Jammu and Kashmir, locals have built a series of makeshift barricades to keep security forces out.

Many of these have been cobbled together with felled light poles or trees, reinforced with barbed wire and wooden planks, where locals said they were keeping watch every night.

Crowds have demonstrated frequently in the city despite a severe clamp-down on phone and internet services, and a ban on public gatherings and the detentions of hundreds of political leaders and separatists who have campaigned for secession from India.

Youths have pelted stones at paramilitary police deployed in Srinagar, and the latest detentions took place in parts of the city where such incidents have occurred, a police officer said.

Tensions intensify

The authorities have turned the valley, particularly Srinagar, into a military garrison by deploying thousands of Indian troops and police personnel in every nook and corner.

In Srinagar, troops and policemen are patrolling the deserted streets, lanes and by lanes to thwart any attempt of people to stage anti-India demonstrations.

The authorities also continue to impose information blockade as TV channels and internet links remain snapped and restrictions on media continue. Local newspapers even failed to update their online editions during all this period while majority of them could also not be printed due to curfew and other restrictions.

Markets and shops are closed while transport is off the roads since then. Local journalists complain that Indian forces do not allow them to perform their duties.

The withdrawal of the special privileges of Muslim majority Kashmir means residents of all parts of India can buy property and compete for government jobs and college places, raising fears that it will be flooded with outsiders.

Modi’s surprise move has increased tensions with nuclear arch-rival Pakistan after India committed gross human rights’ violations in the territory at the heart of more than 70 years of hostility between them.

Earlier, Pakistan had said it plans to take its dispute with India over Kashmir to the International Court of Justice.

Almost all Hurriyat leaders, including Syed Ali Gilani and Mirwaiz Umar Farooq, have been put under house arrest or in jails.

Political leaders and workers including even pro-India politicians like Farooq Abdullah, Omar Abdullah, Mehbooba Mufti, Ghulam Ahmed Mir, Engineer Abdur Rasheed and Shah Faesal have been detained. Due to severe blockade, a famine-like situation is emerging as people are facing severe shortage of essential commodities including baby food and life-saving medicines and occupied Kashmir represents a humanitarian crisis in all its manifestations.

Moreover, an Assistant Commandant of Indian Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) committed suicide by shooting himself with his service rifle at his residence in Sadar area of Islamabad district. This incident raised the number of such deaths among Indian troops and police personnel to 440 since January 2007.