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Kashmir residents ignore curfew to protest police shooting of 11-year-old
Agence France Presse - August 31, 2010
Izhar Wani, Srinagar – Residents in Indian Kashmir defied a curfew on Tuesday to hold angry demonstrations after an 11-year-old boy was killed and a relative of a top separatist seriously injured in police fire.
About 65 protesters and bystanders have been killed over the past 11 weeks, mostly by security forces who have opened fire on rallies after being pelted with stones.
On Monday, the 11-year-old boy was shot dead by police in the southern town of Anantnag during a violent demonstration against New Delhi's rule in the Muslim-majority region. He was earlier reported as being nine.
Each death in recent months has triggered further protests in defiance of strict all-day curfews imposed in the region.
In Indian Kashmir's main town of Srinagar, Yasir Sheikh, a cousin of senior separatist leader Yasin Malik, was seriously injured on Monday by gunfire from police forces.
Witnesses said police opened fire without provocation when young men were playing a board game outside the residence of Malik, who heads the pro-independence Jammu Kashmir Liberation Front.
Police initially said they had opened fire to quell stone-throwing demonstrators, but later described the shooting incident as "unfortunate."
"A police constable who fired the shots has been suspended and taken into custody," an officer said, asking not to be named.
"An inquiry has been initiated to [establish] the facts which led to this incident," a police statement said.
Sheikh was put on a ventilator after the shooting and his condition was serious, doctor Basharat Ahmed said.
Police imposed a curfew in Srinagar on Tuesday morning but residents defied restrictions and held noisy demonstrations.
Young men, many of them wearing masks to prevent identification, chanted pro-independence slogans and burned tires to block main roads.
"Indians, leave Kashmir," chanted the residents at the scene of Monday's shooting in Srinagar as women squatted on the main road, some of them beating their chests in a traditional display of bereavement.
Meanwhile, hard-line separatist Syed Ali Geelani on Tuesday said that Prime Minister Manmohan Singh "must commit publicly and ensure practically that henceforth no killings and no arrests shall take place."
It was one of the five demands Geelani put forth, warning that if the demands were not met "the program of ongoing mass protests would be intensified."
Geelani has been spearheading the recent wave of protests and strikes.
The other demands include declaring Kashmir as an international dispute, complete demilitarization, release of all political prisoners and conviction of security forces involved in the recent killings of protesters and bystanders.
Among the prisoners whose release has been sought by Geelani is Mohammed Afzal Guru, a Kashmiri Muslim man sentenced to death for his role in a deadly attack on India's Parliament in 2001.
Thousands of police and paramilitary forces on Tuesday sealed off neighborhoods in Srinagar with barbed wires and iron barriers.
Government forces have struggled to contain the outpouring of anger triggered by the killing of a schoolboy by police in early June. Protests began in Srinagar and have spread through the Kashmir valley.
The latest unrest marks a new phase in resistance to Indian rule in the disputed territory, pointing to the frustration of unemployed youths among the Muslim local population.
The protests came after Indian troops killed nine suspected militants as they tried to cross the de-facto border with Pakistan that divides Kashmir.
Muslim militants have fought a 20-year insurgency against New Delhi's rule that has left more than 47,000 people dead.
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