NEW DELHI, 22 March 2003 — Noisy protests against the US war on Iraq were staged in many cities yesterday, including in Kashmir where police teargassed and baton-charged two separate demonstrations by angry Muslims, witnesses said.
In the capital here, hundreds of communist party workers took to the streets to yell anti-US slogans and burn an effigy of US President George W. Bush. Police jostled with the demonstrators as they demanded that the Parliament convene an urgent session to pass a resolution against the attack on Iraq. “The war on Iraq was a direct onslaught on the whole of Asia and the Third World and was singularly detrimental to India’s own economic and strategic interests,” said Dipankar Bhattacharya, general secretary of the Communist Party of India - Marxist Leninist party.
In Srinagar, the summer capital of Indian-administered Kashmir, a march after Friday prayers by more than 3,000 Muslims led by leading Umar Farooq was disrupted by police, who used teargas and batons to disperse protesters.
The march, from the main mosque, began peacefully and continued for about a kilometer (half a mile) before Farooq addressed the crowd, many of whom were carrying banners reading, “no war for oil” and “down with US”.
Farooq urged Muslim countries to unite. “If you don’t unite now, each one of you will be attacked,” he said, as Muslims, including women cried “Allah-o-Akbar” (God is great) and “Long live Islam.”
After Farooq left, the protesters wanted to continue the march toward the city center, prompting police to use batons and teargas against the protesters to retaliate by throwing projectiles.
In the morning some 300 protesters who took to the streets in the Maisuma locality of Srinagar were also teargassed and baton-charged. The protesters, mostly youths, chanted anti-US slogans and set fire to an American flag before police swung into action to disperse them.
Public transport buses in the eastern city of Calcutta, meanwhile, stopped plying for half-an-hour at midday in protest against the Iraq war.
“Wheels of public transport vehicles stopped for half-an-hour this afternoon to register our protest against the imperialist action against Iraq,” a spokesman for the Road Transport Workers Federation said.
In Ahmedabad, thousands of Muslims staged a protest at the main mosque after Friday prayers, during which they condemned the attack. Addressing the gathering, local Muslim leader Mufti Shabbii Ahmed Siddique lashed out at Bush, saying his “stubbornness” had created “an environment of instability in the world.”
“We condemn the attack on Iraq,” he said, before leading the faithful in prayers for peace.
