Arrests Increase Pressure On India Over Kashmir

Sydney Morning Herald

Tuesday August 26, 2008

Matt Wade

INDIAN police have detained three prominent Muslim separatist leaders in Kashmir as a wave of protests in favour of self-determination challenges India's grip on the troubled Himalayan region.

All 10 districts of Jammu and Kashmir state have been placed under an indefinite curfew after clashes between police and protesters over several weeks which have left at least 37 dead and about 500 injured.

Three protesters were killed in clashes with police across the Kashmir Valley yesterday, the Press Trust of India reported last night. Another 80 protesters defying the Government-imposed curfew were injured.

One of the dead was an 18-year-old girl identified as Fehmeeda who was killed when security personnel opened fire at Chootipora village in the Kupwara district, PTI said.

Yesterday authorities arrested a separatist leader, Yasin Malik, hours after detaining Sayed Ali Shah Geelani and Mirwaiz Umer Farooq. Before his arrest, Mr Farooq said the Indian authorities were afraid of "peaceful but massive demonstrations for freedom".

The arrests pre-empted a planned march to Lal Chowk in central Srinagar, the capital of Kashmir. The well-known market is now ringed by heavily armed police, corrugated iron barriers and barbed wire.

There are between 400,000 and 800,000 Indian security personnel in Jammu and Kashmir, according to unofficial estimates.

The Kashmir Valley had been on edge since June when Muslims demonstrated over a Government decision to transfer land to a trust managing a Hindu shrine. When the plan was dropped, Hindus in the city of Jammu took to the streets demanding it be restored.

The incident sparked protests by Muslims who want a referendum which they hope will lead to self-determination for Jammu and Kashmir.

The Booker Prize-winning author and social commentator, Arundhati Roy, says the protests show India needs a new approach to the disputed territory.

In an article in Outlook magazine, she says India needs to be free of Kashmir "just as much, if not more" than Kashmir needs independence from India. "The Indian military occupation of Kashmir makes monsters of us all," she writes.

"It allows Hindu chauvinists to target and victimise Muslims in India by holding them hostage to the freedom struggle being waged by Muslims in Kashmir."

An opinion poll by the Delhi Sunday Times newspaper found 30 per cent of Indians considered the human and economic cost of retaining Kashmir to be too high.