Villagers implicate Pakistani Islamic Muj .
Mo
http://www.the-hindu.com/fline/fl1707/17070340.htm
The March 20 massacre of 35 Sikhs in a Jammu and Kashmir
village has the potential to widen the communal divide in
the State, a fallout that could further the designs of the
Far Right among all denominations.
PRAVEEN SWAMI
in Anantnag
SMALL patches of earth stained by blood mark the spot where
the victims of Jammu and Kashmir's worst communal massacre
lost their lives. Impromptu shrines have come up to tell
visiting VIPs and ordinary people the story of the March 20
killings. Photogra phs of the 35 men shot that night have
been pinned to a board inside the Singh Sabha gurdwara. A
blackboard in the adjoining Shankerpora hamlet has the names
of the 18 victims executed there scrawled in chalk. The
shrines will stay in place until March 3 1, when thousands
of Sikhs from around the country are expected to join in the
last rites of the victims.
After the last of the visitors leave, Chattisinghpora's real
problems will begin. The people of the village, like the
rest of the Kashmir Valley's tiny Sikh community, will have
to decide whether to leave for Jammu or to stay on and fight
to defend their land and homes. That decision, and the
political forces set in play by the killings, could be
critical to the future of the State.
NISSAR AHMED
<Picture>A mother follows the stretcher carrying her son's
body in Chattisinghpora.
There is a shroud of fear over Chattisinghpora. Few people
are willing to talk to strangers. Ranjit Singh, the Singh
Sabha gurdwara's young priest, acts as the village's
official spokesperson, reading out a stilted statement on
the killings to visiting m ediapersons. "How could we know
who committed the crime?" he asks. "They wore Army uniforms,
and spoke Urdu, but we recognised none of them." Karamjit
Singh, a local schoolteacher who was among the 17 men who
were lined up for execution outside the gurdw ara, is even
more scared. He had escaped into the darkness before the
firing began, but a single question on what provoked his
suspicion is enough to end all further conversation.
But others in the village are more willing to talk, at least
after being promised that their identities would not be
revealed. Their stories are consistent. About 20 men, clad
in olive green combat fatigues, arrived in the village at
7-15 p.m. They told the people that they were soldiers, and
ordered the men out to be questioned. When the men were
lined up in two groups, a few hundred metres from each
other, the firing began. As they started firing, the gunmen
shouted 'Jai Mata Di' and 'Jai Hind'. In th eatrical
fashion, one of them took swigs from a bottle of rum even as
the killing went on. While leaving, one of the men called
out to his associates: "Gopal, chalo hamare saath" (Come
with us, Gopal).
Twentytwo-year-old Arvind Singh, who was watching television
in his home, had not come out when the gunmen arrived. When
the firing began, he thought an encounter had broken out.
"Terrorists used to come to the village regularly," he says.
"The Army used to patrol the village, but had never carried
out searches or interrogations. So the terrorists often used
to stay here." Just three weeks before the killing, one
group of terrorists, also in combat fatigues, had spent an
afternoon watching children play cricket. Most villagers in
fact feel betrayed. "Our sisters and wives used to serve
them food and tea at all hours of the day and night," says
Babu Singh, a resident of Shankarpora. "How could they repay
us like this?"
Others have not lived to ask the question. Jagir Singh, a
retired Subedar-Major, had made his peace with the
terrorists in order to survive, and his home was one of
those most frequently used for shelter. His appeals for
mercy on those grounds did not he lp. He was shot along with
his sons Gurdeep Singh (who had married last year) and
six-year-old Ajit Pal Singh. There are no men now in the
house, and Babu Singh's wife has been sitting in their porch
ever since the massacre, too stunned to talk. Families like
that of Jagir Singh had bought their peace with the
terrorists in the early 1990s, in order to avoid meeting the
fate of the Kashmiri Pandit communities around them who were
being mercilessly driven out. Now, with almost no Pandits
left, it was the ir turn to face the terrorist campaign.
NISSAR AHMED
<Picture>An old couple grieves over the body of their only
son.
FEW people in the village believe stories claiming that the
assailants were Indian Army soldiers. The reasons are
simple. For one, the 7 Rashtriya Rifles, which is in charge
of the area, is made up overwhelmingly of Sikh soldiers from
the Punjab Regiment . Its troops and officers speak Punjabi,
not Urdu. And the villagers, unlike Lashkar-e-Taiba cadre
indoctrinated on stories of Hindu and Sikh barbarism, know
that soldiers do not wander about on operations with bottles
of liquor, shouting religious sloga ns as they fire. The
terrorists evidently acted as they thought Indian soldiers
would, a caricature that finds repeated mention in
Lashkar-e-Taiba literature. The organisation's website even
proclaims that Gurkha soldiers eat their dead parents'
bodies.
But the people of Chattisinghpora had one crucial piece of
evidence which pointed to the killers. Just before the
firing began, one of the men lined up had recognised someone
among the gunmen. "Chattiya, tu idhar kya kar raha hai?"
(What are you d oing here, Chatt?), he asked. The person he
spoke to immediately opened fire. Although police
investigators are not discussing the point, it is possible
that either of the survivors - Karamjit Singh, who escaped
unhurt, or Nanak Singh, admitted with mult iple bullet
injuries in Srinagar's Bone and Joint Hospital - heard the
exchange. Agitated residents pointed the Anantnag Police to
every Muslim whom they suspected of a role in the killings.
Mohammad Yakub Magray, nicknamed Chatt Guri, was just one of
th em.
IT took some of the best interrogators from the ruthlessly
efficient Jammu and Kashmir Police Special Operations Group
almost 48 hours to break Magray. He was, it turned out, a
Hizbul Mujahideen operative active on the organisation's
wireless network wit h the code-name Zamrood. On the night
of the killings, Magray said, he had travelled with the
Lashkar-e-Taiba's Anantnag area commander, a Pakistani
national code-named Abu Maaz, to Chattisinghpora. Maaz, six
feet tall with a large birthmark on his right cheek, was
accompanied by some Lashkar members Magray knew by their
code-names: Shahid, Babar, Tipu Khan and Maqsood. Five
Kashmiri Hizbul Mujahideen members, led by Saifullah,
possibly the code name for local operative Ghulam Rasool
Wani, also came alo ng.
Abu Maaz, Magray said, had initiated the action after
general instructions were received asking Lashkar-e-Taiba
units to launch major attacks during President Clinton's
visit to India. The first targets to be considered were
military installations, but n o volunteers could be found
for a suicide attack. Kashmiri Pandit hamlets were then
discussed, but the idea was quickly rejected. The group
attempted an assault on Kashmiri Pandits at Telwani, near
Anantnag, in February. Three Pandits were killed there, but
Army and police pickets in the area responded rapidly, and
the Lashkar unit only just managed to escape. Sikh villages
were, by contrast, unguarded. A random night patrol had been
through Chattisinghpora three days earlier, so it was likely
to be at least a week before troops would be there again.
Magray's continuing interrogation seems to be delivering at
least some retribution. Dawn raids on March 25 by personnel
of the Anantnag Police and 7 Rashtriya Rifles, led by Senior
Superintendent of Police Farooq Khan and Colonel Ajay
Saxena, led to the elimination of five members of Abu Maaz's
unit at Panchal Thal, perched on the Pir Panjal range 9 km
from Chattisinghpora. Assault rifles, grenades and two
wireless sets were recovered from the killed terrorists. "We
expect further success soon," said Kh an. "Magray has given
us valuable information on hideouts, and we are developing
separate intelligence which should lead us to those involved
in the killings."
RETRIBUTION, however, will do little to secure the future of
the Kashmir Valley's estimated 60,000 Sikhs, many of whom
live in rural areas. Interestingly, the people of
Chattisinghpora do not endorse claims made by some Shiromani
Akali Dal (SAD) leaders that the community was not properly
defended. "We never wanted protection here," says Babu
Singh, "because we never thought there would be a problem...
Our policy was to live, and to do that, we went out of our
way to avoid confrontation with anybody." N ow the villagers
must decide how they will respond to the state's proposals
that they set up village defence committees to guard their
future. Few appear enthusiastic about the prospect, however.
"What will we do when we have to leave the village?" asks
local priest Ranjit Singh.
Yet the fact remains that the people of Chattisinghpora, and
Sikhs elsewhere in Jammu and Kashmir, will have to do some
hard thinking. Although similar massacres may not be
imminent, the fact remains that the campaign of ethnic
cleansing launched by the Islamic Right a decade ago has now
turned on the community. While some accounts claim that
terrorist groups have no anti-Sikh agenda, the truth is less
simple. Several Jammu and Kashmir Police officers at the
cutting edge of the anti-terrorist operations are Sikh -
such as Director-General of Police Gurbachan Jagat,
Inspector-General of Police (Operations) P.S Gill and
Srinagar Superintendent of Police (Operations) Manohar
Singh. This fact has not passed unnoticed, and at least one
Srinagar-based Sikh j ournalist has found himself being
subjected to hostility on this account in recent months.
"The fact of the matter," says Rashtriya Rifles sector
commander Brigadier Deepak Bajaj, "is that we can't protect
everyone, everywhere, all the time. People have to learn to
protect themselves too." Should the people of
Chattisinghpora agree in the comi ng weeks to set up a
village defence committee, it would be the first instance in
the Kashmir Valley of people's resistance to terrorism.
That, in turn, could have enormous knock-on effects, not
just among religious minorities but ordinary Muslims, the p
rincipal victims of terrorism in Jammu and Kashmir. Sadly,
there has been little political effort to bring about a
genuine mass coalition against the Islamic Far Right. Few
politicians sought to tap the spontaneous outrage the
Chattisinghpora killings p rovoked across Jammu and Kashmir,
cutting across religious lines.
INDEED, the political fallout from Chattisinghpora could be
just what the Lashkar-e-Taiba wants to see happening. The
disgraceful attacks on Muslim properties in New Delhi, and
the ugly anti-Muslim posturing of Sikh and Hindu chauvinist
groups in Jammu, have deepened communal fissures. Hindu
right-wingers who spoke of an Islamic conspiracy against
Hindus and Sikhs alone ignored the fact that terrorists
killed 77 Muslims through Jammu and Kashmir in the first two
months of this year, while just 10 of the ir victims were
non-Muslim. Last year, 723 Muslims and 98 non-Muslims were
killed by terrorists, making it clear that the majority
community in the State is paying the price for the violence
that is enormously disproportionate to its numbers. Even the
me mbers of Magray's immediate family do not appear to share
his convictions. One of his brothers is a soldier in the
Jammu and Kashmir Light Infantry and a first cousin is in
the Border Security Force's 4 Battalion, both deployed on
counter-terrorist opera tions.
NISSAR AHMED
<Picture>Two women, who lost their relatives, console each
other.
Another problem has been the incorporation of the
Chattisinghpora massacre in a larger narrative of Sikh
communal politics. Shortly after mainstream politicians like
Punjab Chief Minister Prakash Singh Badal and Congress(I)
leader Manmohan Singh visited the village, right-wing Sikh
politicians entered the fray. Former Akal Takht Jathedar
Ranjit Singh and former Shiromani Gurdwara Prabandhak
Committee president G.S. Tohra, both sacked by Badal,
claimed that the killings were part of an Indian conspiracy
to defame a neighbouring country. Ranjit Singh claimed to
have developed a friendship in Tihar Jail with Jammu and
Kashmir Liberation Front leader Maqbool Butt, who was
executed for murder. Ranjit Singh, who himself served a life
term, said that Butt and other Kashmiri terrorists would
never target Sikhs.
Such unsavoury political abuse of massacres has, in the
past, contributed not a little to growing communal divisions
in Jammu and Kashmir. Hindu and Sikh politicians almost
never visit Muslim victims of violence, while Muslim
politicians rarely make a su stained effort to campaign for
the rights of the minorities. Where there is little
political gain to be had from killings, politicians stay
away altogether. The line of dignitaries queueing up at
Chattisinghpora, for example, stands in stark contrast to
the disgraceful treatment of the families of the migrant
workers from Bilaspur, Madhya Pradesh, who were massacred at
Sandu in the midst of the Kargil war. Individual police
officers had on that occasion used funds meant for
anti-terrorist intelligence g athering to hire buses for the
families to transport their dead home.
After the ceremonies of March 31, Chattisinghpora will most
likely disappear from the public consciousness, displaced by
the next round of killings elsewhere. Official India has
been busy attacking Pakistan for the killings. The
terrorists trained in tha t country with official
sponsorship are indeed responsible for the carnage. But for
the communal hatred and bitterness that the killings have
left behind, politicians of the religious Right have no one
to blame but themselves.
Mo
Jammu , Ladakh and the valley and ask each voter which
state they would like to live in , if these states were
carved out of the present Kashmir .
Its almost certain that most of the Muslims of Doda and even
the valley would vote to join Jammu , to stay in India
proper and this would be a kind of indirect refrendum ..
A divisive agenda
Chief Minister Farooq Abdullah's recent conclave with United
States-based secessionist leader Farooq Kathwari is seen as
part of a larger U.S.-sponsored covert dialogue on Jammu and
Kashmir, in which the Vajpayee Government is complicit.
PRAVEEN SWAMI
JOIN the dots on the graph charting the future of Jammu and
Kashmir, and it is hard to miss the shape staring back from
the page. On March 8, Chief Minister Farooq Abdullah and a
group of his top Cabinet colleagues held a closed-door
secret meeting with Farooq Kathwari, a U.S.-based
secessionist leader. The meeting, held at the Secretariat in
Jammu, appears to be just part of a larger U.S.-sponsored
covert dialogue on Jammu and Kashmir. Indeed, there is
growing evidence that the Bharatiya Janata Party-l ed
coalition government in New Delhi is complicit in this
dialogue, which could lead to a violent communal sundering
of the State.
Kathwari heads the Kashmir Study Group (KSG), an influential
New York-based think tank which has been advocating the
creation of an independent state carved out of the
Muslim-majority areas of Jammu and Kashmir. The owner of
Ethan Allen, an upmarket furn iture concern which includes
the White House among its clients, Kathwari's associates in
the KSG have included influential Indian establishment
figures, notably former Foreign Secretary S.K. Singh and
retired Vice-Admiral N.K. Nair. Kathwari was blacklis ted by
successive Indian governments and on one occasion was even
denied permission to visit the country to meet a seriously
ill relative. Shortly after the BJP-led coalition took power
in 1998, however, he was granted a visa.
It is still unclear at whose initiative the visa was
granted. But Kathwari arrived in New Delhi in March 1999,
carrying a series of proposals for the creation of an
independent Kashmiri state. Called Kashmir: A Way Forward,
the proposals were the outcome of the KSG's deliberations.
On this first visit, he met what one senior intelligence
official describes as a "who's who of the BJP
establishment". Kathwari also appears to have visited Jammu
and Srinagar, staying at the home of a top National Con
ference politician. Frontline has so far been unable to
establish whether he met Abdullah on that occasion.
Public disclosure of Kathwari's proposals provoked a minor
storm. Both S.K. Singh and N.K. Nair disassociated
themselves from its recommendations. Nonetheless, Kathwari
seemed encouraged enough to push ahead with a new version of
Kashmir: A Way Forwar d. Last September, a fresh version of
the document was finalised after, its preface records,
receiving reactions from "government officials in India and
Pakistan". The new document was even more disturbing than
the first. At least one KSG member, the University of South
Carolina's Robert Wirsing, refused even to participate in
the discussions. But the BJP, it now appears, was not wholly
unhappy with the direction Kathwari was proceeding in.
Kashmir: A Way Forward outlines five proposals for the
creation of either one or two new states, which would
together constitute what is described in somewhat opaque
fashion as a "sovereign entity but one without an
international personality". "Th e new entity," the KSG
report says, "would have its own secular, democratic
constitution, as well as its own citizenship, flag and a
legislature which would legislate on all matters other than
defence and foreign affairs... India and Pakistan would be
re sponsible for the defence of the Kashmiri entity, which
would itself maintain police and gendarme forces for
internal law and order purposes. India and Pakistan would be
expected to work out financial arrangements for the Kashmiri
entity, which could inc lude a currency of its own."
Four of five possible Kashmiri entities the KSG discusses
involve two separate states on either side of the Line of
Control (LoC), and territorial exchanges between India and
Pakistan. But the fifth Kashmiri entity outlined in Kashmir:
A Way Forward - of a single state on the Indian side of the
LoC - is the most interesting of the KSG proposals. Premised
on the assumption that Pakistan would be unwilling to allow
the creation of a new entity on its side of the LoC -
although there is no discussio n of what will happen if
India were to be similarly disinclined - the new state would
come into being after a series of tehsil-level referendums.
All the districts of the Kashmir Valley, the districts of
Kargil and Doda, three northern tehsils of Rajouri and one
tehsil of Udhampur, the KSG believes, would opt to join the
new Kashmiri state.
Kashmir: A Way Forward attempts, somewhat desperately, to
prove that its assumptions are not based on communal
grounds. "All these areas," it argues, "are imbued with
Kashmiriyat, the cultural traditions of the Vale of Kashmir,
and/or interact ext ensively with Kashmiri-speaking people."
But this assumption is patently spurious, for several of
these areas also interact similarly with peoples who do not
speak Kashmiri. There is no explanation, for example, as to
why the linguistic, cultural and tra de links between the
three northern Muslim-majority tehsils of Rajouri district
and the three southern Hindu-majority tehsils are of any
less significance than those they have with the Kashmir
region.
Nor is it made clear what linguistic affiliation the tehsils
of Karnah and Uri in Kashmir, where just 3.2 per cent and
3.1 per cent of the population were recorded as
Kashmiri-speakers in the 1981 Census, the last carried out
in Jammu and Kashmir, might have with the Valley. Indeed,
these tehsils have recorded some of the highest voter
turnouts in successive elections from 1996, suggesting that
their residents have little sympathy for Kashmir
Valley-centred secessionist politics. Similarly, while
Ramban and Bhaderwah tehsils in Doda are not
Kashmiri-speaking and principally trade with Jammu, the KSG
proposals make the a priori assumption that they would vote
to join the new state.
OFFICIALS in Jammu and Kashmir seemed uncertain of just what
Kathwari and Abdullah discussed during their meeting. State
Chief Secretary Ashok Jaitley told Frontline that the
meeting had indeed been held, but said that he was unaware
of just what was discussed. "What I can tell you is that the
initiative for the meeting was not ours," he said, "and that
the highest quarters were consulted before it was held."
Others said Kathwari had requested the meeting to discuss a
potential timber business in the State. Neither the Jammu
and Kashmir Directorate of Public Relations, which handles
media interaction with the Chief Minister, nor Abdullah's
personal staff, responded to queries from Frontline.
Even leaving aside the minor point that following Supreme
Court orders, felling forests is illegal in Jammu and
Kashmir it seems implausible that the content of Kathwari's
dialogue with Abdullah centred on raw material for Ethan
Allen. The National Confe rence's proposals for Jammu and
Kashmir's future have striking similarities with those that
the KSG is touting. The controversial report of the Regional
Autonomy Committee (RAC), which was tabled in the Jammu and
Kashmir Assembly last year (Frontline , July 30, 1999) and
is in the process of being implemented, bears similarities
with the KSG proposals. Muslim-majority Rajouri and Poonch
are scheduled to be cut away from the Jammu region and
recast as a new Pir Panjal province. The single districts of
Buddhist-majority Leh and Muslim-majority Kargil too will be
sundered from each other and become new provinces.
In some cases, the RAC Report and the KSG proposals mirror
each other down to the smallest detail. For example,
Kashmir: A Way Forward refers to the inclusion of a
Gool-Gulabgarh tehsil in the new state. There is, in fact,
no such tehsil. Gool and Gulabgarh were parts of the tehsil
of Mahore, the sole Muslim-majority tehsil of Udhampur
district, until 1999. Gool subsequently became a separate
tehsil. But the proposal for Mahore's sundering from
Udhampur and inclusion in the Chenab province was fi rst
made in the RAC Report. According to the RAC plan, as in the
KSG proposals, Mahore would form part of the Chenab
province, while Udhampur would be incorporated in the
Hindu-majority Jammu province.
Significantly, Abdullah's plans for the future of Jammu and
Kashmir's relationship with India match the KSG's
formulation of a quasi-sovereign state. The report of the
State Autonomy Committee (SAC), which was released in March
1999 and is now under cons ideration by the Centre, would
leave New Delhi with no powers other than the management of
defence, external affairs and communications. Fundamental
rights mentioned in the Constitution, for example, would no
longer apply to Jammu and Kashmir if the SAC has its way.
They will have to be substituted by a separate chapter on
fundamental rights in the Jammu and Kashmir Constitution,
which now contains only Directive Principles. The Supreme
Court's jurisdiction over Jammu and Kashmir will end and the
State Election Commission will conduct polls in the State,
not the Election Commission of India.
While the National Conference's demands for greater autonomy
are in themselves not disturbing, the context in which they
have been made and their character are. For one, the SAC
proposals were pushed through without debate in the Assembly
and a nation-wi de political debate on the issue, promised
by Abdullah, never took place. Meaningful autonomy seems to
be the last of the SAC's concerns. The report does not
contain even one sentence about financial autonomy,
essential to prevent the interference from New Delhi that
the SAC set out to end. Even more intriguing is the fact
that no BJP leader outside Jammu, despite the party's long
opposition to State autonomy, has criticised the SAC report.
Abdullah made clear at a press conference in Jammu that the
in itiative for the report to be submitted to the Union
Ministry of Home Affairs came from New Delhi, not the State.
JUST what, then, is going on in those corridors of power
where policy on Jammu and Kashmir is framed? It is evident
that many of the proposals floated by the KSG, and which
have permeated the RAC and SAC reports, have some form of
U.S. backing. Shortly a fter Prime Ministers Atal Behari
Vajpayee and Nawaz Sharif met in Lahore, Pakistan Foreign
Minister Sartaj Aziz called for a district-wise referendum
in Jammu and Kashmir. It was a sharp departure from his
country's historic position. Journalist Talat Hu ssain,
writing in the Pakistani newspaper The Nation, reported that
Niaz Naik and R.K. Mishra, the back-channel negotiators
during the Kargil war, had discussed what was described as
the 'Chenab Plan', a sundering of the State between the
Muslim-m ajority areas to the north of the river and the
Hindu-majority areas to its south.
Former Pakistan Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto has also been
talking about what appears to be a U.S.-approved formula for
"deliberate, incremental advances" towards a final
settlement in Jammu and Kashmir. Bhutto advocated that "the
two sections of Kashmi r should have open and porous
borders" - a proposition remarkably similar to that
advocated by the KSG. This should happen prior to a final
period when "the parties commence discussion on a formal and
final resolution to the Kashmir problem, based on the wishes
of its people and the security concerns of both India and
Pakistan". "Both sections," she wrote during the Kargil war,
"would be demilitarised and patrolled by either an
international peace-keeping force or a joint
Indian-Pakistani peace-keeping force. Both legislative
councils would continue to meet separately and on occasion
jointly."
Political analysts in Jammu and Kashmir not taken in by the
rhetoric of a new relationship between India and the U.S.,
and they are sadly few, have little doubt about the deal
that is being brokered. "You only have to read Shyama Prasad
Mukherjee to unde rstand that Hindu fundamentalists never
wanted the Muslim-majority areas of Jammu and Kashmir to be
part of Hindu India," says academic Balraj Puri. A deal
where the Muslim-majority areas of the State get broad
autonomy in return for the National Confere nce agreeing to
greater integration for its Buddhist and Hindu-majority, he
suggests, will allow both the National Conference and the
BJP to proclaim victory to their respective chauvinist
constituencies. Communist Party of India (Marxist) MLA
Mohammad Y usuf Tarigami told Frontline that top BJP
ideologue K.R. Malkani had, at a conference in February,
told him that a division of Jammu, Kashmir and Ladakh was,
in the long term, inevitable - an idea many on the Hindu
right have endorsed in the past.
Speaking to Frontline after news of the meeting of the two
Farooqs appeared in The Hindu-Business Line, one top
official described the event as "trivial", and Kathwari as
"an irrelevant busybody". Its hard to believe that Abdullah,
who has consistently opposed dialogue with the secessionist
All Parties Hurriyat Conference or the leadership of
terrorist groups, finds it acceptable to hold closed-door
meetings with "irrelevant" secessionists unless they have
the right connections. Some obser vers believe that U.S.
President Bill Clinton's India visit could lead, in months
to come, to the appointment of an official to oversee
dialogue on Jammu and Kashmir. The official could be
packaged as a facilitator of dialogue rather than a
mediator. Wha t is clear is that dialogue on Jammu and
Kashmir with the BJP as a participant is under way - and it
is time the rest of the country was told about the contours
of the communal deal that is being engineered.
muna12...@my-deja.com
mo2...@yahoo.com (Mo) wrote:Two Thousand Clash With Police in Kashmir
By Sheikh Mushtaq
SRINAGAR (Reuters) - More than 2,000 people clashed with police in the
Indian state of Kashmir Friday during a protest against the shooting of
eight people earlier this week.
Witnesses said police fired scores of tear gas shells to disperse the
slogan-shouting crowd that began protesting near Jamia Masjid (grand
mosque) in Srinagar, the state's summer capital, after Friday prayers.
``Down with state terrorism, we want freedom,'' the protesters shouted,
before they began throwing stones, police and witnesses said.
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``There are no reports of any casualties so far,'' a police spokesman
said.
Seven people were killed Monday when Indian police opened fire on
demonstrators in Bragpora village in Anantnag district, 35 miles south
of Srinagar. One person later died from his injuries.
The Anantnag demonstrators were demanding the bodies of five Muslim
youths who they said were the innocent victims of a ''fake encounter''
with security forces following the massacre of 35 Sikhs in a remote
Himalayan village on March 20.
Villagers say five Muslim youths were taken from their homes by
plainclothes security forces on the night of March 23-24 and ``killed
in a fake gunbattle to please the Sikhs.''
Security officials said the five were armed separatists who had been
involved in the massacre of the Sikhs.
Thursday, police in Kashmir started exhuming the bodies of the five
youths in response to the bloody protests.
Residents in south Kashmir said two of the five bodies had been
identified as among those taken from their homes, but a police
spokesman in Srinagar said the bodies had not yet been identified.
Thousands of people prayed for the dead youths in Jamia Masjid during
Friday prayers led by Umar Fraooq, Kashmir's chief priest and acting
chairman of Kashmir's main separatist alliance, the All Parties
Hurriyat (Freedom) Conference.
Shops and businesses remained closed in parts of the Kashmir valley for
a fourth day Friday in response to a protest strike called by traders
and separatists.
Home (Interior) Minister Lal Krishna Advani reiterated his government's
offer to hold a dialogue with Kashmir's separatists if they abandoned
violence.
``We are open and ready for talks, but before any talks can be started
the Hurriyat must persuade the militants to silence their guns and
agree to talk within the framework of the Indian constitution,'' he
said in the northern city of Chandigarh.
Advani said the government's decision to release three Hurriyat leaders
earlier this week was a step toward creating an atmosphere conducive
for talks.
The Hurriyat leaders were jailed six months ago under the Public
Security Act for opposing parliamentary elections.
Nearly a dozen militant groups are fighting New Delhi's rule in Jammu
and Kashmir, India's only Muslim-majority state, where police and
hospitals say more than 25,000 people have been killed and thousands
wounded in a decade-old separatist violence.
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Before you buy.
Ras H. Siddiqui
From the Opinion Section of the Kashmir Times:
Concern
Mystery Deepens
By Prof. A.C. Bose
The first question that crossed my mind, on hearing of the
Chattisingpura massacre, was who did
it and why. It might have been perpetrated by those who wanted to
let Clinton know that Kashmir
was burning and was crying for his mediation. This possibility
cannot be ruled out. However, it is
widely believed and officially claimed that the militants operating
in our state dance to the tune set
by their mentors across the border. We always refer to the proxy
war, pak-sponsored terrorism,
and foreign mercenaries belonging to Laskar-e-Toiba or the
Hizb-ul-Mujahideen and so on, with
their bases in Pakistan. So, the most likely presumption is that the
Pak authorities — may be the
ISI or any other agency — ordered the killing. But, why should they
choose that particular
moment to convince Clinton of the seriousness of the cross-border
terrorism of which Pakistan, in
the words of Madeline Albright, is a conduit pipe. Reports suggest
that it was mainly after this
gory incident that Clingon, in consultation with Mrs. Albright and
Stanley Berger, decided to be
rather tough and candid with his Pakistani hosts. This likely
fall-out of their folly could not have
escaped the mental radar of the mentors of these militants. Besides,
through this one act of
cruelty, they have knowingly antagonised a very well-knit and
powerful community and have
brought them closer to all who are virulently opposed to their
aspirations. Knowing how the Pak
authorities had once used the disgruntled sikhs and are doing so
even now the less success —
against the Indian state and the Hindu community, it must have been
sheer stupidity on their part
to antagonise the entire Sikh community at one stroke. No one, so
far, has accused the ISI and
their ilk of naivete or inefficiency. So, people started asking
themselves, who might have done it
and why.
The answer, though not very satisfactory, has been provided by Azmat
Khan, the JKLF General
Secretary for the UK and Europe who told the Dawn of Karachi that a
five-member delegation of
theirs had met the State Deptt. officials at Washington, on the 10th
of March to appraise them of
the possibility of the Indian authorities indulging in something "to
malign the Kashmiri freedom
fighters and to implicate Pakistan in it", during Clinton’s visit to
India. He also adds, "We are
naturally worried as to why the U.S. State Deptt. apparently did not
act in time." so, it is their
charge, but no telling pro of, and we should immediately make
queries with the U.S. State Deptt.
to find out what actually the JKLF delegation had told them on 10
March. The suggestion that our
own official agencies might have been responsible for the killing is
revolting to say the least. But,
one with an open mind just cannot foreclose such a grim possibility.
Security agencies all over the
world are known to have committed mind-boggling crimes to get
certain things done and then to
hide the evidences. The Nazis set their Reichstag on fire to defame
the communists, a fake
attempt was made on the life of Sanjay Gandhi on the eve of the
General elections of 1977, and
now there are evidences to indicate the involvement of the Russian
police in the serial bombings in
1999 to defame the Chechens and to justify an all-out attack on
their freedom. So, the involvement
of certain official agencies, especially of the renegades, in this
gruesome massacre, though
shameful, cannot be ruled out. It needs a probe.
Let us see what happened shortly after the massacre of the Sikhs. It
was again the usual story.
Whenever the police is under severe social and departmental pressure
to live down its reputation
and to apprehend the guilty one hears of its success in eliminating
some of the alleged
accomplices in encounters. None of them anywhere has been arrested
and brought to trial; they
are always surrounded, challenged and then killed in self-defence.
So, how do we establish that
those killed were actually involved in a particular killing that
might have taken place earlier. No one
in darkness has recognised the killers and so there is hardly any
room for identification. so,
claims are made and are reported unchecked. This time, however,
additional precautions had
been taken, it appears. Five alleged criminals of the Chattisingpura
massacre were killed in a
nearby village and their bodies were found charred beyond
recognition and were soon buried. Their
co-villagers claim that on that very day five among them had been
picked up and have not been
seen since then. They, obviously, fear that their five innocent
neighbours must have been killed to
enable the police to hide their failure or the truth, whatever it
may be. What they fear and now
assert may be revolting, but nothing very unusual. After all,
whether in our state, or in Punjab or in
he bloody north-east, thousands have been killed in encounters; so
why could it not happen in
Awantipura now? The victims of encounters may not always be
suspected criminals. Even those
absolutely unconcerned may be its victims. Over a couple of decades
ago, when a special
anti-dacoity drive was initiated in the estern districts of U.P.,
many able-bodies farmers there soon
went missing. So, the campaign was called off. The record of the
West Bengal police during their
fight against Naxalism was no better. So, it may be that one
criminal act led to another to set the
record straight.
However, the worst was yet to follow.Shocked over the sudden
disappearance of their relatives and
neighbours the people of the concerned villages came out in the
streets and wanted to meet the
district authorities to hand over to them their demand for an
impartial enquiry and to seek their
sympathies in the hour of their distress. This is a very legitimate
demand and practice normal in
any democratic society. No one has so far asserted that they were
carrying arms and had fired
upon the security personnel. But, it is a fact, that they were
stopped half way and, following some
abusive altercations, the processionists were showered with bullets,
which left seven killed on the
spot and nearly a couple of dozen seriously injured. From all
accounts, it was an act of
over-reaction that cost so many lives, destroyed so many families,
and weakened still further the
moral foundation of the Indian state. In those tumultous days before
this official massacre even
opposition leaders like the Muftis, both father and daughter, were
not allowed to visit the
concerned village. Why treat the area as a war-zone? After, all, we
are not waging a war against
the local population. If the Indian state is fighting a war then it
is for these very people and must be
fought along with these people. The rusty and rejected methods of
fake encounters and custodial
deaths have not brought peace in any corner of the country. Only a
few days ago, the C.M. of
U.P. admitted that, at least, four cases of fake encounters did take
place in his state, in the last
two years. One can then imagine how many might have taken place,
which have not been proved.
Still, the crime situation in U.P. has not improved. As Justice J.S.
Verma, Chairman, National
Human Rights Commission, has warned us only a few days ago that
"state terrorism is no cure of
terrorism". Hope the enquiry that is going to be initiated into the
latest act of butchery will go into
all that has happened on the eve of and since the Chattisingpura
massacre and the skeletons in
our cupboards are brought out in the open. then those found guilty
of acts of omission and
commission should be treated like criminals; mere transfers with pay
and perks protected have no
corrective influence on the officials concerned. There is no room
for righteous indignation or hurt
patriotism. Both our society and state are afflicted with very many
maladies, and like any
diseased person we too must subject ourselves to a thorough
investigation and accept impartial
and well-meaning diagnoses and prescriptions. We have suffered for
long in the hands of quacks
dispensing absolute medicines and recommending contra-indicatory
diets.
Momin
tomatoheads who open their stinking mouths and fart in this ng...
Momin
"Ras H. Siddiqui" wrote:
> Let us at least try some TRUTH too ...
>
> From the Opinion Section of the Kashmir Times:
>
> Concern
> Mystery Deepens
> By Prof. A.C. Bose
And you think that anyone would take this commie's concerns seriously??
Mo
uniforms and pretend to be Indian if they wanted to
discredit militants ?..
Also the RR army unit all round is predominantly Sikh and it
would be hard for an Indian army unit to escape from the
area or with 20 people implicated somebody would break rank
and come forward..
Mo
identify the culprits and punish them , and India should do
the same if the Police killed innocents in revenge..