INDIAN SECURITY forces fired on a protest in the disputed province of Kashmir yesterday, killing seven people and injuring about 60 as tens of thousands demonstrated against New Delhi’s rule over their predominantly Muslim region.
Similar protests over the last seven weeks by Kashmiri youths, who have defied a curfew and hurled stones and rocks at security forces, have left 35 people dead from police fire, 10 of them at the weekend.
In parliament yesterday federal home minister P Chidambaram acknowledged that the situation in Kashmir had “taken a serious turn” over the past few days.
Kashmir’s chief minister Omar Abdullah met Indian prime minister Manmohan Singh in Delhi yesterday to discuss ways to defuse the cycle of violence in his state.
“The need is to end the violence. Some semblance of normalcy has to be a precursor for any political initiative” Mr Abdullah said.
“I want your co-operation to defeat these elements who are using the blood of the youth for their political interests,” he said on state-run television.
The recent unrest in Kashmir, which is divided between nuclear rivals India and Pakistan but claimed by both, is reminiscent of the late 1980s when protests against Delhi’s rule sparked an armed conflict that claimed almost 70,000 lives, mostly civilians.
Officials concede that the latest rounds of shootings are cyclical. Thousands of Kashmiri Muslims chanting “Go India, go back” and “We want freedom” held massive street protests in the provincial summer capital Srinagar and other small towns. They attacked security forces’ camps with rocks and burned police stations and government buildings.
Government forces – mostly police and federal paramilitaries – responded with live ammunition and tear gas, leading to the deaths of civilians. Highly charged funeral processions in turn triggered additional violence and fatalities which Mr Abdullah’s government seems unable to contain.
The death in early June of a 17-year-old student sparked off the rolling series of protests against Indian rule. Separatist Kashmiri politicians and militants want to carve out an independent Islamic homeland or merge with predominantly Muslim Pakistan.
Since independence in 1947 India and Pakistan have fought two of their three wars and a border skirmish over Kashmir.