Kashmir streets under army lockdown to end protest

[July 08, 2010]  SRINAGAR, India (AP) -- Tens of thousands of soldiers patrolled the streets in Indian-controlled Kashmir on Thursday to enforce a rigid curfew aimed at ending weeks of violent anti-government protests.

Shops and schools were closed, streets ringed with barbed wire were deserted, the region's nearly 60 newspapers were unable to publish and even residents with special curfew passes were barred from going outside.

Despite the curfew, the All Parties Hurriyat Conference, an umbrella organization of separatist groups, issued a statement calling for more protests, saying, "Military measures will in no way be able to break the will of the people."

The tension in the Himalayan region -- divided between India and Pakistan -- was reminiscent of the late 1980s, when protests against Indian rule sparked an armed conflict that eventually killed more than 68,000 people, mostly civilians.

Residents say security forces have killed 15 people in the recent protests. The government's decision to send the army to quell the protests was intended to prevent them from spiraling out of control and igniting another insurgency.

"The army will be deployed as long as it is necessary, but I sincerely hope it will not be necessary for too long," Indian Home Minister Palaniappan Chidambaram said.

He appealed to residents to observe the curfew and to parents to keep their teenage sons -- who have been at the forefront of some of the violent protests -- indoors.

"It is important that people do not come into the street and start stone pelting," he said.

Indian army soldiers in armored vehicles and carrying assault rifles and machine guns drove Thursday through neighborhoods in Srinagar, the main city, in a show of force.

Col. Vineet Sood, an Indian army spokesman, said the soldiers were giving support to the local forces. "We are ready to move anywhere, anytime," he said.

However, there were risks that using the army -- instead of the police and paramilitary troops that usually deal with civil unrest -- could further inflame residents, who accuse the military of being a brutal occupying force.

"The army has always been India's first and last resort in handling Kashmir," Mirwaiz Umar Farooq, a key separatist leader, said in a statement. "Its ever-increasing presence in the state, whether in the barracks or on the streets, has been intended to consolidate its control over the territory and to intimidate people."

The Indian army is ubiquitous in Kashmir, but its operations are usually aimed at combating insurgents and it has not been used in crowd control since major street protests in 1990.

India and Pakistan have fought two wars over the region. India regularly accuses Pakistan of sending insurgents over the heavily militarized frontier to stir trouble and has blamed the recent protests on Pakistani-based militants bent on destabilizing India, a charge Pakistan denies.

Kashmiri separatists are demanding independence from Hindu-majority India or a merger with Muslim-majority Pakistan.

Even with the curfew in force, hundreds of doctors and other employees at the S.K. Institute of Medical Sciences, a government hospital in Srinagar, held a protest inside their compound, denouncing the restrictions and chanting anti-India slogans. Police and paramilitary troops later dispersed them, a police officer said on condition of anonymity, citing department policy.

On Wednesday night, thousands of protesters defied the restrictions and held street protests for several hours. Pro-independence songs rang out overnight from the public address systems of several mosques, as they had in the months before the insurgency broke out two decades ago. Troops did not intervene and no clashes broke out.

With authorities canceling curfew passes given to journalists, none of nearly 60 newspapers published from Srinagar hit the stands Thursday. Many reporters spent the night in their offices.

"Not allowing media persons to move and cover the situation is tantamount to banning the media," the Press Guild of Kashmir said, denouncing "curbs and the use of force against media persons."

[Associated Press; By AIJAZ HUSSAIN]

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