Thousands detained in new Kashmir sweep
SRINAGAR, India — Thousands of people — mostly young male protesters — have been arrested and detained in Indian-administered Kashmir during an ongoing communications blackout and security lockdown imposed more than two weeks ago in an attempt to curtail unrest after a change to Kashmir’s decades-old special status, according to highranking Kashmir police officials and police arrest statistics reviewed by the Associated Press.
At least 2,300 people have been detained in the Himalayan valley, the statistics show. Those arrested include anti-India protesters as well as pro-India Kashmiri leaders who have been held in jails and other makeshift holding facilities, according to the police officials, who have access to all police records but spoke on the condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to talk to reporters and feared reprisals from their superiors.
The latest crackdown began just before Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalist-led government stripped Jammu and Kashmir of its semiautonomy and its statehood, creating two federal territories. Thousands of additional troops have flooded into the Kashmir Valley, already one of the world’s most militarized regions, to man steel- and barbed-wire checkpoints. Telephone communications, cellphone coverage, broadband internet and cable TV were cut, but they have been gradually restored in some places.
Despite the clampdown, Kashmiris have staged near-daily protests since the Aug. 5 order revoking Kashmir’s special status, which was instituted shortly after India achieved independence from Britain in 1947. The three police officials said about 300 protests and clashes against India’s tighter control over Kashmir have taken place in recent weeks.
One of the officers said most of the arrests have been in Srinagar, Kashmir’s main city and the urban heart of a 30-year-old movement to oust Hindu-majority India from Muslim-majority Kashmir so that it can exist independently or be merged with Pakistan.
The official spokesman, Rohit Kansal, has repeatedly refused to divulge any details about arrests and detentions, saying only they have been made to prevent antiIndia protests and clashes in the region.
Nearly 100 people have been arrested under the Public Safety Act, the arrest statistics showed. The law permits detaining people for up to two years without trial.
At least 70 civilians and 20 police and soldiers have been treated for injuries sustained in the clashes at three hospitals in Srinagar, the officers said.
In Washington, a senior State Department official, who was not authorized to discuss diplomatic discussions publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity, told reporters the U.S. wants to see India restore human rights and basic freedoms for all Kashmiris, including the release of detainees, and then looks forward to a return to political normalcy.
The problems in the region stem from its partition, which left India in control of most of Kashmir, and Pakistan and China in charge of other parts of the territory. The Indian government has often tried to suppress uprisings, including a bloody armed rebellion in 1989. About 70,000 people have been killed since that uprising and a subsequent Indian military crackdown.