SRINAGAR, 11 November 2004 — Violence spread across the Kashmiri capital yesterday as police lobbed tear gas shells to scatter angry protesters who burned tires and disrupted traffic on the fourth day of protests against the alleged rape of a young girl and her mother by an Indian Army officer.
The reported sexual assault by an army major, as well as a row between the Interior Ministry and political separatists, has created a storm ahead of a planned trip by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh next week.
“India is using rape as a war weapon,” Asiya Andrabi, chief of the Dukhtaran-e-Millat, a Kashmiri women’s separatist group, said in a statement. “The Handwara incident is not an isolated incident.”
The alleged rape took place in Handwara town, 80 kilometers north of Srinagar, summer capital of Jammu and Kashmir, while troops were searching the woman’s home.
Hundreds of protesters who gathered in the heart of Srinagar threw stones at police who retaliated by picking them up and throwing them back. “The Indians are not sincere. On one hand, they are talking of peace and, at the same time, they are raping our mothers and sisters,” protester Mohammad Yunis said, tears in his eyes from the acrid smoke of tear gas.
The chief minister of Jammu and Kashmir state said he was concerned by reports of abuses by troops because it undermined peace efforts. “All our good work is being washed away by these excesses ... the people’s anger is legitimate against this incident,” Mufti Mohammad Sayeed told reporters in the state’s winter capital, Jammu. He said the army major named by locals in the rape case had been relieved of his command.
Police detained Mohammad Yasin Malik, head of the separatist Jammu Kashmir Liberation Front, moments after he handed a letter protesting against the rape to the UN military observer group based in Srinagar.
Malik said he was beaten by police at the UN office, but a police officer denied the charge. He said Malik was taken into custody for disturbing public order. In many parts of Srinagar, shops and offices were shut in protest and a number of streets were largely empty. “Down with security forces,” residents of Handwara shouted during a protest there.
Police in Kashmir said they were investigating the accusation, with the rape said to have taken place over the weekend, while the Indian Army has ordered its own probe, promising tough action if the accusations are found to be true. But tempers have also been raised in the run-up to Manmohan’s trip — his first to Kashmir since he became prime minister in May — by a statement the Home Ministry made during Minister Shivraj Patil’s visit to the region on Sunday.
The ministry said Kashmiri political separatists were under pressure from Pakistan not to engage in talks with New Delhi unless Islamabad was included in the dialogue.
Separatists issued an angry denial, as did Islamabad, and the row threatens to further delay the stalled talks process.
The Indian Express newspaper suggested Manmohan would postpone his visit in the light of the twin controversies, but the prime minister’s office told Reuters he would go to Kashmir on Nov. 17 and 18 as scheduled.
Violence has waned but not stopped since a peace process between nuclear-armed India and Pakistan began last year.
The South Asian neighbors have fought two of their three wars over Kashmir and came close to another war in 1999 and 2002.
