San Antonio Express-News (Sunday)
Life in lockdown: Confusion, rage and protest grip Kashmir
SRINAGAR, Kashmir — On the streets of Srinagar, Kashmir’s biggest city, security officers tied black bandannas over their faces, grabbed their guns and took positions behind checkpoints. People glanced out the windows of their homes, afraid to step outside. Many were cutting back on meals and getting hungry.
A sense of coiled menace hung over the locked-down city and the wider region Saturday, a day after a huge protest erupted into clashes between Kashmiris and Indian security forces.
Shops were shut. ATMs had run dry. Just about all lines to the outside world — internet, mobile phones, even landlines — remained severed, rendering millions of people incommunicado.
A correspondent for the New York Times got one of the first inside views of life under lockdown in Kashmir and found a population that felt besieged, confused, frightened and furious by the seismic events of this week.
People who ventured out said they had to beg officers to cross a landscape of sandbags, battered trucks and soldiers staring at them through metal face masks. Several residents said they had been beaten up by security forces for simply trying to buy necessities like milk.
India’s swift and unilateral decision Monday to wipe out Kashmir’s autonomy significantly raised tensions with its archrival, Pakistan, which also claims parts of Kashmir. The territory lying between the two nuclear armed nations was already one of Asia’s most dangerous and militarized flashpoints, smoldering for decades.
On Friday afternoon, witnesses said tens of thousands of peaceful demonstrators were moving through the streets of Srinagar, chanting freedom slogans and waving Kashmiri flags, when Indian forces opened fire.
The huge crowd panicked and scattered. Sustained bursts of automatic weapon fire could be heard in videos filmed during the protest, and at least seven people were wounded, hospital officials said, some sprayed by buckshot in the eyes.
Afshana Farooq, a 14-year-old girl, was nearly trampled in the stampede.
“We were just marching peacefully after prayers,” said her father, Farooq Ahmed, standing over her as she lay shaking in a Srinagar hospital bed. “Then they started shooting at us.”
India has put Kashmir, home to about 8 million people, in a tightening vise, after India’s Hindu nationalist prime minister, Narendra Modi, swept away the autonomy that this mountainous, Muslimmajority region had enjoyed for decades.
His decision was years in the making, the collision of India’s rising nationalist politics, frustration with Kashmir’s dogged separatists and a long-running rivalry with Pakistan.
Many Kashmiris see India as an oppressive and foreign ruler. They resent all the changes over the years that have diluted what was supposed to be an autonomous arrangement for Kashmir, settled in 1947, when the region’s maharajah agreed to join India with guarantees of some self-rule.
No one disputes that Kashmir needed change. Tens of thousands of people have been killed here and the economy lies in ruins.
Modi has said the new status will make Kashmir more peaceful and prosperous. In a televised speech Thursday, which most Kashmiris could not watch because their television service had also been cut, he insisted that turning Kashmir into a federal territory would eliminate corruption, attract investment and move it “forward with new hopes.’’
In the valley, nearly all of about 50 Kashmiris interviewed said they expected India’s actions to increase the sense of alienation and in turn feed the rebellion.
Tens of thousands of troops from the Indian army, the Central Reserve Police Force (a paramilitary unit) and the Kashmiri state police have been deployed in just about every corner of the valley. In some villages, even remote ones, a soldier was posted outside the gate of each family’s home.
The lockdown’s effects are visible everywhere. Schools have been closed. Parks are deserted. Baby food is running out. In many areas, residents needed to produce a curfew pass to leave their homes, even for medical emergencies.
At the Lala Ded hospital, sick people had traveled more than a day to get here, only to find a skeleton crew. Many doctors couldn’t get to work. Many patients were curled up on the floor.
“It’s a living hell here,” said Jamila, a doctor who goes by one name.
Many Kashmiris fear that Modi’s decision, which also wiped away a decades-old provision that gave Kashmiris special land ownership rights, will encourage millions of Hindu migrants from India to move into the valley, fabled for its stunning alpine scenery and fertile soil. Kashmiris fear they will be turned into a minority in their own land.
Indian officials deny this and say they don’t want to destroy Kashmir’s special character. But they have also said that the new status would make it easier for non-Kashmiris to buy land, which they argued would catalyze outside investment and lift the stagnant, war-torn economy.
India did not consult any Kashmiri leaders before revoking Kashmir’s autonomy, which several Indian legal experts said could be unconstitutional. The original autonomy provisions said any change to Kashmir’s status must be done in consultation with Kashmiri representatives.