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              Indian police shoot dead Kashmir demonstrators
Tuesday, August 12th, 2008
By Rahul Bedi in New Delhi | The violence followed a simmering row over the transfer of land to a Hindu organisation in the country’s sole Muslim-majority province. Police and military personnel enforced a curfew to prevent large-scale rioting, but opened fire in the face of large crowds of stone-throwing youths, officials in the northern state’s summer capital Srinagar said. The casualties came the day after a leading separatist Kashmiri politician and four other protesters were killed by army personnel for trying to cross the disputed frontier into Pakistan-administered Kashmir. The unrest, which has shattered several years of relative calm across the fractured province, was triggered by the provincial authorities transferring 99 acres of government land to a local Hindu pilgrimage trust, the Shri Amarnath Shrine Board, in June. The plot was to be used to erect temporary accommodation for the 450,000 pilgrims who annually trek to a shrine in a secluded mountain cave high in the Himalayas. But protests by Kashmiri Muslims who feared the land grant was a calculated move by India’s majority Hindu community to alter the area’s demographic balance led to the provincial administration cancelling its decison. This triggered a violent reaction by Kashmir’s Hindus that has seethed for over six weeks and seen them blockade the only road connecting the Kashmir Valley to the rest of the country. In turn, Kashmiri Muslims have retaliated and held large protests that have turned increasingly volatile. The crisis has also led to the resignation of the state’s chief minister, Ghulam Nabi Azad, on July 7 after a coalition ally withdrew support over the land transfer issue. The blockade of the main transport artery has caused severe shortages of essentials like medicine and food, but also prevented fruit grown in the lush Kashmir Valley from being transported elsewhere in India. Monday’s march to Pakistani territory by thousands of locals was an attempt by the Kashmir Fruit Growers Association to cross the disputed frontier known as the Line of Control in order to market their produce in Pakistan-administered Kashmir’s capital, Muzaffarabad. “India is holding our region by force,” said Abdul Hameed, a local businessman, after the crowds were turned back by security forces. Until the Kashmir dispute was resolved, he said, anti-India sentiments of most Kashmiris would remain. The Line of Control divides Kashmir between the neighbouring nuclear rivals both of whom claim it in its entirety. China also controls a small part of Kasmiri territory to the east. India and Pakistan had also fought two of their three wars and an 11-week-long border skirmish over Kashmir since independence from Britain 61 years ago. Meanwhile, Kashmir’s turbulence has further exacerbated the prevailing crisis in the region where several Muslim separatist groups have been waging war for independence or union with Pakistan, a struggle in which over 65,000 people had died since 1989. India accuses Pakistan of fuelling the ongoing Muslim insurgency, a claim that Islamabad denies. In politically charged Kashmir, however, the anti-blockade protests have escalated to become pro-independence rallies, providing sustenance to insurgent and separatist groups whose influence was declining and further imperilling the troubled region’s future. Have Your Say: Indian police shoot dead Kashmir demonstrators Please read our posting guidelines before posting. Alternatively you can discuss this report here. Related News
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