Indian authorities arrested dozens of Kashmiri leaders in raids across the occupied valley and sent thousands of reinforcements to the troubled territory on Saturday as Prime Minister Narendra Modi stepped up warnings to Pakistan over a suicide bomb attack.
As international concern grows over India-Pakistan sabre-rattling, residents of Kashmir, at the centre of a decades-old struggle between the nuclear-armed neighbours, reported heightened military activity.
The region has been on edge since the February 14 attack on an Indian convoy which killed 40 soldiers and was claimed by Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM). India has accused Pakistan of supporting the attack, a claim rejected by Islamabad.
About 10,000 paramilitaries started arriving in Kashmir on Saturday, a day after India ordered the reinforcements.
Modi told a rally in Rajasthan state that the country was ‘angry’ about the attack in the Pulwama district of Indian-held Kashmir. “After the Pulwama attack, you must have seen how Pakistan is being brought to account one step at a time. They are in a state of panic because of our government’s decisions,” Modi said, speaking in Hindi. “We will not sit quietly after taking this pain. We know how to crush terrorism,” he added. “We have given full freedom to the military.”
Among those taken into custody in the crackdown in Kashmir were senior figures in Jamaat-e-Islami, the region’s biggest religious organisation, and the Hurriyat Conference, a coalition of local political parties.
Jamaat and Hurriyat Conference both strongly support Kashmir’s right to choose whether it wants to be part of India or Pakistan.
“Police and other agencies launched a mass arrest drive and raided many houses in the valley with dozens of central and district-level leaders arrested,” Jamaat said in a statement, adding that those detained included central leader Abdul Hamid Fayaz.
Indian authorities also arrested Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF) Chairman Yasin Malik and over 100 others in overnight raids in Srinagar. According to Kashmir Media Service, the Indian occupying forces took Malik into custody after raiding his Maisuma residence in Srinagar and lodged him at Kothibagh police station.
A senior police official in Srinagar said the arrests are part of a crackdown ahead of Indian elections set to be held by May. “The arrival of more troops and the arrests of leaders and activists of Kashmiri groups is part of an election exercise undertaken to ensure free and fair elections,” said the senior police official. “Anti-election campaigns will not be allowed and activists will be detained to ensure free, fair and transparent elections in the state,” the police official said.
Businesses across Kashmir were shut on Saturday, some in protest at the arrests and with others fearing conflict between India and Pakistan.
Many in Kashmir are wary of a military strike over the suicide bomb and residents in several areas reported unusual military air activity on Friday night.
Authorities did not comment on the reported fighter aircraft and helicopters flying over the territory.
The arrests drew widespread criticism from Kashmir political leaders. “Fail to understand such an arbitrary move which will only precipitate matters,” Mehbooba Mufti, a pro-India former chief minister said on Twitter. “You can imprison a person but not his ideas.”
“Such illegal and coercive measures against Kashmiris are futile and will not change realities on ground,” wrote Mirwaiz Umar Farooq, an influential Hurriyat leader, on Twitter. “New Delhi must understand that the talk about waging war against Pakistan will lead to destruction in entire sub-continent, as both the countries are nuclear powers,” he added.
PPP Senator Sherry Rehman, replying to Farooq’s tweet, condemned the arrest. “The midnight knock and arrest is alive and dangerously well in the Indian arsenal of brute repression, intimidation, abuse of Kashmiri leaders and activists,” she said.
Hurriyat leader Ali Shah Geelani said that Kashmir is the ‘basic issue of contention’ between India and Pakistan. “The unrealistic attitude of people sitting in New Delhi regarding this globally accepted political dispute and dealing with it only militarily has brought death and destruction in the whole state,” he said in a statement. “And if this problem is not solved, not only subcontinent but global peace and stability will be under severe threat which may culminate into the world’s biggest human catastrophe,” he warned.
Meanwhile, the targeted onslaughts against Kashmiris across India continued unabated on Saturday as three more youths were attacked in New Delhi and a journalist was beaten up in Pune.
According to the Kashmir Media Service (KMS), the Hindu hardliners assaulted three Kashmiri youths in Nangloi area of New Delhi.
In another incident, a 24-year-old Kashmiri journalist, Jibran Nazir, was beaten up in Pune. Nazir, who works for a local newspaper, said that the assailants told him that they would send him back to Kashmir.
India’s home ministry has ordered state governments to protect Kashmiri students, but several political leaders have also stoked aggressive anti-Kashmir sentiment since the Pulwama bombing.
Published in Daily Times, February 24th 2019.
