The Londoner

NEW DELHI, Aug 28 (APP): While Indian government is bent upon to use curfew restrictions to suppress voice of Kashmiris, the pro-Delhi Kashmiri parties have demanded immediate lifting of curfew to rescue people from starvation. All the Kashmiri leaders including Mirwaiz Umer Farooq, Syed Ali Shah Geelani and Yasin Malik have been kept behind the bars and two-week old curfew restrictions are continuing in the Kashmir valley without any break. According to media reports from Srinagar, roads and streets are deserted and Kashmiris have been restricted to their homes where they have started facing starvation as their stock of essential goods have exhausted, especially their children are crying for food. The leaders of three Kashmiri parties on Thursday while condemning the use of brute force by authorities against unarmed protestors demanded immediate lifting of curfew in the Kashmir Valley. Secretary of CPI (M) in occupied Kashmir Y M Tarigami, Chairman of People’s Democratic Front Hakeem

The Muslim-dominated Kashmir valley has been beset with violence as Indian security forces confront huge rallies by Kashmiris calling for independence from India. The BBC's Soutik Biswas speaks to families and friends of some of the victims. In a picture taken on a mobile phone 10 days before his death, 25-year-old Imran Ahmed Wani fixes a shy gaze at the camera with a disarming smile. As his friends tell it, Imran was an average young Kashmiri man, working hard, playing cricket, and watching Bollywood films. He also exemplified those in the region's new generation, trying to make the best of opportunities thrown up by a modest economic boom during the years of relative calm since Indian and Pakistan signed a ceasefire in Kashmir. Imran recently quit his job as a field officer with a mobile telephone service company to work as a building contractor in his hometown, Srinagar, which has seen a frenzied real estate boom. His sisters were on their way to what looked like promising

The United Nations has called for an independent investigation into the killing of civilians in Indian-administered Kashmir. The UN's Human Rights office says the Indian security forces should observe international principles when dealing with demonstrators. Security forces have killed nearly 40 protesters since June, most of them in the Muslim-majority Kashmir Valley. The protests were triggered by the allocation of land to a Hindu trust. They have developed into the most serious protests in Indian-administered Kashmir in years. 'Proportionate' The Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights "calls on the Indian authorities and in particular security forces to respect the right to freedom of assembly and expression, and comply with international human rights principles in controlling the demonstrators", it said in a statement issued in Switzerland late on Wednesday. "The use of force should be proportionate to the threat posed and firearms must only be

By PANKAJ MISHRA Published: August 26, 2008 New Delhi FOR more than a week now, hundreds of thousands of Muslims have filled the streets of Srinagar, the capital of Indian-ruled Kashmir, shouting “azadi” (freedom) and raising the green flag of Islam. These demonstrations, the largest in nearly two decades, remind many of us why in 2000 President Bill Clinton described Kashmir, the Himalayan region claimed by both India and Pakistan, as “the most dangerous place on earth.” Mr. Clinton sounded a bit hyperbolic back then. Dangerous, you wanted to ask, to whom? Though more than a decade old, the anti-Indian insurgency in Kashmir was not much known outside South Asia. But then the Clinton administration had found itself compelled to intervene in 1999 when India and Pakistan fought a limited but brutal war near the so-called line of control that divides Indian Kashmir from the Pakistani-held portion of the formerly independent state. Pakistan’s withdrawal of its soldiers from high peaks in I

Srinagar: Chairmen of both the factions of the Hurriyat Conference (HC) Syed Ali Shah Geelani and Moulvi Omar Farooq, Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF) Mohammad Yaseen Malik and over 100 other separatist leaders remained in detention for the second day today. However, other senior leaders, including Shabir Ahmad Shah, went underground, while Aga Syed Hassan has been put under house arrest. Mr Geelani and Mr Omar were arrested at the dead of intervening night of August 24 and 25 from their respective houses along with their supporters. During the night-long raids in different parts of the valley, security forces and police arrested more than 100 second rank and junior leaders from their houses. Those arrested included spokesman of Geelani Aiyaz Akbar and Islamic Students League chief Shakeel Ahmad Bakshi. Mr Malik was taken into custody, when he tried to lead a procession to Lal Chowk, which remained sealed from all sides for the past 48 hours. However, Mr Shah and several othe

Momin Iftikhar A tectonic shift is manifesting itself in the Indian-held Kashmir (IHK) where the allotment of 100 acres of land by the outgoing Governor, General (retd) S K Sinha to Shri Amarnath Shrine Board (SASB) on June 4, 2008, has triggered a chain reaction of events that has shaken the very basis of Kashmir. Bandhs, tear stained processions by Kashmiri women bereaving the loss of their near and dear ones, the protests marking the discovery of victims of fake encounters, curfew to preclude chances of violent attacks on the occasion of state ceremonial functions are nothing new in the IHK. Indians have learnt to take such desperate forms of Kashmiri protests in stride and their well-tuned media has developed a choir-like response of explaining various forms of Kashmiri protests to the outside world as ISI-sponsored upheavals or brushed these aside using the worn-out cliché of “cross border terrorism”. However, the mass protests, that Kashmir is witnessing nowadays, is chilling fro

In India, anyone considered a threat to public order or security of the state can be preventatively locked up under the National Security Act for up to one year without trial or the requirement for the police to produce formal charges in court. The Armed Forces Special Powers Act, operational in areas declared "disturbed" (for instance, Manipur and Jammu and Kashmir) gives soldiers licence to shoot to kill anyone breaching a law or official order prohibiting the assembly of five or more persons. Under the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act, an accused can be denied the right to proceedings in an open court, which is an essential element of a fair trial. Moreover, the criminal procedure code – the police officers' and judges' rule book – prevents courts, without prior permission of the government, from prosecuting public servants for offences committed while "acting or purporting to act" in the discharge of official duty. Government permission to prosecute me