SRINAGAR: Tens of thousands of Muslims took to the streets again yesterday in India’s part of Kashmir, ignoring a plea by the country’s prime minister for an end to weeks of violence that has left 34 people dead.
A curfew that had been in place throughout much of Kashmir was lifted earlier yesterday because the day appeared calm with streets deserted and shops closed as Kashmiris fell in line with a call by separatist leaders to observe the Indian Independence Day holiday as a “black day.” But soon after Friday prayers ended, tens of thousands of people poured into the streets of towns and cities.
In Srinagar, the region’s main city, protesters burned Indian flags and raised an Islamic green flag at the clock tower in the city’s main bazaar. They also burned effigies of Indian soldiers. Security forces kept their distance from the protesters to avoid provoking another deadly clash.
More than six weeks of unrest in Indian-administered Kashmir have pitted the region’s Muslim majority against its Hindu minority and left at least 34 people dead, many of them protesters shot during violent clashes with police and soldiers. Villages have been attacked, police stations torched and, in at least one town, security forces were ordered to shoot on sight any protesters violating the curfew.
The crisis began in June with a dispute over land near a Hindu shrine. The Hindu minority was angered when the state government reversed a decision to give 99 acres of land to a Hindu trust to build facilities for pilgrims near the shrine. Muslims had complained that the gift of land would alter the religious balance in the region.
The spiraling unrest has unleashed pent-up tensions between Kashmir’s Muslims and Hindus and threatened to snap the bonds between India and its only Muslim-majority state.
There are also growing fears that the violence could drive a wedge between Hindus and Muslims in other parts of India, where Hindu nationalist political parties have been organizing rival protests and calling for the government to give the land back to the shrine.
In New Delhi, Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh called for an end to the protests and violence. “It is my conviction that all issues can be resolved only through dialogue and peaceful means,” Singh said in an Independence Day speech.
Singh’s call was promptly dismissed by a key Kashmiri separatist leader, Mirwaiz Omer Farooq, who said the protests symbolize the “total rejection of India’s rule in Kashmir.” “It’s a people’s movement and Indian forces are trying to break it by use of force,” he told The Associated Press.
— With input from agencies
