[Reader-list] A cruel joke called elections in Kashmir

[taraprakash]

I wonder if the army could ensure such high voter turn out throughout the 
election cycle, what went wrong in Anant Naag? the poling has not been that 
strong there.
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Shivam V" <lists at shivamvij.com>
To: "SARAI" <reader-list at sarai.net>; <foil-I at insaf.net>
Sent: Wednesday, December 17, 2008 6:53 AM
Subject: [Reader-list] A cruel joke called elections in Kashmir


> The Indian media has been expressing surprise about the high voter
> turnouts in the Kashmir elections. The expression of surprise sounds
> genuine. I am not sure how genuine it is. Nationalism must be coming
> in the way of truth. How can we not see what a Wall Street Journal
> reporter can?
>
> EXCERPT: In the village of Samboora, residents said that Indian Army
> troops went from house to house on Saturday morning, rounding up
> families and taking them to a polling station. As a reporter drove
> into the village Saturday afternoon, an army vehicle with several
> soldiers stopped by the walled compound of Ghulam Mohammad, pulling
> the 59-year-old retiree onto the road. Seeing a foreign reporter, the
> soldiers jumped into their vehicle and quickly drove off. "They asked
> me why I'm not voting, and I said that's because I don't like any of
> the candidates," Mr. Mohammad said moments later. "They said, if I
> don't vote, I'll be sorry later." [Must Read]
> And wasn't this predicted anyway? Didn't we tell you about Gentle
> Persuasion? Oh, and they already know who the CM is going to be.
>
> Wasn't this predicted anyway?
> [1] http://kafila.org/2008/10/05/gentle-persuasion-in-kashmir/
> [2] http://www.dawn.com/2008/11/15/op.htm#1
>
> shivam
>
> o o o
>
>
>
> A New Tack in Kashmir
> Peaceful Protest Gains in Separatist Fight
>
> By YAROSLAV TROFIMOV
>
>
> DECEMBER 15, 2008
> SRINAGAR, India --
> http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122930169820005503.html
>
> Lashkar-e-Taiba, the presumed perpetrator of last month's Mumbai
> attacks, sprang up from the bloody insurgency against Indian rule in
> predominantly Muslim Kashmir. While the plight of Kashmir has
> galvanized Islamic radicalism across South Asia, the decades-long
> armed struggle is waning in the disputed region itself.
>
> India now largely faces a different, and potentially more challenging
> foe here: peaceful campaigners for self-determination, who borrow from
> Mahatma Gandhi's rule book of non-violent resistance.
>
> "India is not scared of the guns here in Kashmir -- it has a thousand
> times more guns. What it is scared of is people coming out in the
> streets, people seeing the power of nonviolent struggle," says the
> Muslim Kashmiris' spiritual leader, Mirwaiz Umar Farooq, a key
> organizer of the civil disobedience campaign that began earlier this
> year. The number of armed attacks in the valley, meanwhile, has
> dropped to its lowest since the insurgency began in 1989, Indian
> officials say.
>
> The former princely state known as Jammu and Kashmir was divided
> between India and Pakistan since 1947, and has been claimed in its
> entirety by both ever since. It has long been the main axis of discord
> between the two neighbors, now both nuclear-armed.
>
> Since the early 1990s, Pakistan's intelligence services trained and
> financed Kashmiri militant groups such as Lashkar, helping fuel a
> conflict that has cost 60,000 lives. Mr. Farooq's father was gunned
> down by suspected jihadi militants in 1990 for seeming too
> accommodating to India.
>
> Mr. Farooq, who heads the All-Parties Hurriyat Conference, an umbrella
> group of Kashmiri parties that want independence or merger with
> Pakistan, has been kept under house arrest. Kashmir's Grand Mosque in
> Srinagar, where Mr. Farooq usually delivers the weekly sermon, has
> stood empty for several Fridays, its gates ringed by barbed wire and
> its perimeter patrolled by troops.
>
> The rest of Srinagar, Kashmir's tense capital city, has been under
> curfew for days. Fearful of mass demonstrations against Indian rule
> and controversial elections, troops blocked the roads. Every few
> hours, small clashes broke out with stone-hurling teenagers.
>
> Fading Attacks
>
> Earlier this year, unarmed protests organized by Mr. Farooq and other
> separatist campaigners rocked Kashmir, causing the downfall of the
> state government as demonstrators thronged the roads waving green
> banners of Islam and chanting "Azadi" -- "Freedom."
>
> Militant attacks, once a daily occurrence that drove out 300,000
> Kashmiri Hindus, have become much less frequent. Indian officials say
> as few as 600 armed insurgents remain in Jammu and Kashmir.
>
> Mirwaiz Umar Farooq, a key organizer of a Kashmiri civil-disobedience
> campaign that began earlier this year, is now kept under house arrest
> by Indian troops. Here he leads a 2007 protest in front of his
> ancestral home.
>
> The changing nature of the separatist struggle makes it increasingly
> difficult for India to portray the conflict over Kashmir as a
> clear-cut fight between the world's largest democracy and murderous
> terrorists. Unlike Lashkar's jihadis, unarmed protesters in Kashmir
> can muster sympathy from sections of Western, and Indian, public
> opinion.
>
> "It's justified when you kill a militant, but it's not justified when
> you kill a demonstrator," says Kashmir's leading pro-Indian politician
> Mufti Muhammad Sayeed, India's home minister at the peak of the
> Kashmiri insurgency and Kashmir's chief minister in 2002-2005.
>
> Many among the new generation of Kashmiri protesters say they are
> happy that the insurgents no longer prowl the streets, demanding
> shelter and food from civilians, enforcing rigid Islamic observance --
> and attracting army reprisals. "It's good that the militants are gone.
> What we need is to fight for our freedom in a peaceful environment,"
> says 22-year-old farmer Tanha Gul from the town of Pulwama south of
> Srinagar, who says he has participated in every demonstration in his
> area.
>
> Indian officials acknowledge the change in popular attitudes. "People
> want peace. Nobody wants to be disturbed in the evening - not by the
> militants, and not by the forces," says Kashmir's chief of police, B.
> Srinivas.
>
> Still, responding to recent demonstrations, Indian troops often
> resorted to lethal force, killing more than 50 Kashmiri civilians.
> Scores of protesters and separatist politicians have been thrown
> behind bars or placed under house arrest. Indian officials say these
> detentions are necessary to preserve public peace, and that the troops
> have to use force to maintain law and order.
>
> Some half a million Indian soldiers and policemen remain deployed in
> the Indian-administered part of Jammu and Kashmir, home to 10 million
> people. (About 5 million people live in Pakistani-held Kashmir.)
> Indian laws grant troops in Kashmir almost total immunity from
> prosecution, including in cases of civilian deaths. Srinagar, once
> India's prime tourist destination, is dotted by checkpoints, its
> indoor stadium, cinemas and hotels surrounded by sandbags and
> converted into military camps. Broadcast media are censored.
>
> New restrictions have been added in recent months, such as an order to
> disable mobile-phone text messaging -- a key method of mobilizing
> protesters -- on cellphone networks that operate in Kashmir.
>
> The event that sparked these protests, bringing Kashmiri civilians
> into the streets, was a decision last May by the state government to
> transfer land near the Amarnath to a Hindu religious organization.
> This land near the shrine -- a cave in which an ice stalagmite forms
> every winter -- has been used for years to shelter pilgrims. But large
> tracts of the region already are requisitioned for army and police
> use, and the formal transfer stoked fears of a widespread land grab.
>
> Snowballing Protests
>
> In June, snowballing Kashmiri protests over the issue prompted Mr.
> Mufti Muhammad's People's Democratic Party to withdraw from the state
> government. The following month the collapsing state government
> revoked the land transfer decision. As federal rule was imposed, fresh
> riots broke out in Jammu, the predominantly Hindu part of the state.
>
> While the plight of Kashmir has galvanized Islamic radicalism across
> South Asia, the armed struggle is waning in the disputed region.
> At the peak of Kashmir's peach and pear season, Hindu protesters in
> Jammu blocked the only highway linking the valley with the rest of
> India. With the fruit harvest -- the valley's key export -- rotting
> away, Kashmir's fruit growers' union called for opening an alternative
> trade route -- through Pakistani-held Kashmir. Defying curfew orders,
> on Aug. 10 thousands of fruit growers and separatist activists marched
> towards the cease-fire line. The protest column was met with gunfire
> from Indian forces. Fifteen marchers were shot dead, including a
> prominent separatist.
>
> As Kashmir descended into chaos after these killings, India responded
> with increasingly severe curfews and lockdowns that continue. Often
> they come without prior warning or formal announcement, as in Srinagar
> over the past weekend.
>
> "Common people like me are made to suffer continually," says Ghulam
> Rasool Sailani, a milk merchant who has been sitting at home in
> Srinagar, unable to trade, over the past three days. "It's hard. Our
> losses are huge because our incomes are so low."
>
> One of Mr. Sailani's regular clients was Mohammad Yacoub Jaan, a
> 35-year-old father of three. On Aug. 24, as he carried home a metallic
> milk container, Mr. Jaan encountered three policemen a few yards from
> his doorstep. As they beat Mr. Jaan with bamboo sticks for violating
> the curfew, the milk spilled from the container and soiled the
> officers' uniforms, according to Mr. Jaan and neighbors who say they
> witnessed the incident. They say an enraged officer opened fire with
> his assault rifle, shooting Mr. Jaan through the throat and the side.
>
> Hearing the shooting, Mr. Jaan's relatives rushed outdoors. As Mr.
> Jaan's 65-year-old father Ghulam Qadir tried to plead with policemen
> to stop beating his son, they shot at him too, the witnesses said. He
> was instantly killed. "After that, everyone just scattered away, their
> caps falling into the drains," recalls Mr. Jaan's wife, Asmat. Mr.
> Jaan, who remains paralyzed, says no representative of the authorities
> has contacted him since the shootings.
>
> Mr. Srinivas, the Kashmir chief of police, says that curfews and other
> restrictions are needed to prevent greater violence. "I don't want the
> peace-loving people of Srinagar to be disturbed by rogue elements," he
> says in an interview. As for allegations of abuse, he adds,
> investigations are under way.
>
> Anger Over Disparity
>
> Some pro-Indian Kashmiri politicians have been angered by the
> disparity they say security forces have shown when dealing with Hindu
> protests in Jammu and the Muslim demonstrations in Kashmir. "Lives are
> cheap in Kashmir," says Omar Abdullah, president of the National
> Conference party and India's former federal minister of state for
> external affairs. "I'm still struggling to understand how the same
> chain of command had two completely different approaches to crowd
> control."
>
> Kashmir's information secretary, K.B. Jandial, says there was no
> disparity, and that every individual incident has to be considered
> separately.
>
> Mr. Abdullah's party, the biggest in the previous legislature, is
> currently battling for the right to form the next state government in
> elections that began last month and end on Dec. 24. Even though
> separatist parties have called for a boycott, the turnout so far is
> among the highest on record. Indian officials view such high
> participation as a rebuke to Pakistan and Pakistani-backed
> separatists.
>
> But many voters who lined up at the polls Saturday in south Kashmir,
> for example, also turned out at anti-Indian protest marches weeks
> earlier. In the town of Tral, 20-year-old student Manzur Ahmad said
> that he was voting for an incumbent candidate because, in recent
> years, the lawmaker had managed to curb the harassment of local youths
> by government forces. "We vote because this makes our lives easier -
> but this doesn't mean we don't want freedom," he said.
>
> In the village of Samboora, residents said that Indian Army troops
> went from house to house on Saturday morning, rounding up families and
> taking them to a polling station. As a reporter drove into the village
> Saturday afternoon, an army vehicle with several soldiers stopped by
> the walled compound of Ghulam Mohammad, pulling the 59-year-old
> retiree onto the road. Seeing a foreign reporter, the soldiers jumped
> into their vehicle and quickly drove off. "They asked me why I'm not
> voting, and I said that's because I don't like any of the candidates,"
> Mr. Mohammad said moments later. "They said, if I don't vote, I'll be
> sorry later."
>
> In another south Kashmiri village, Koeil, a similar police effort to
> round up voters degenerated into clashes with stone-throwing youths.
> As a reporter arrived on the scene, dozens of police officers charged
> along the main street, firing tear-gas volleys. Many policemen also
> picked up rocks and hurled them into villagers' homes, breaking
> windows.
>
> "My boys are irritated. They just want to let them know we're here, to
> scare them," the district senior superintendent of police who oversaw
> the operation, Ali Mohammad Bhatt, said when asked about the
> window-breaking. "Ultimately, if you restrain your force and don't
> kill anybody, your job is done," Mr. Bhatt added.
>
> Half an hour later, Indian forces in the village opened fire at the
> protesters, killing a 20-year-old student and seriously injuring three
> others, including a 14-year-old boy whose arm and intestines were
> pierced by high-velocity Kalashnikov bullets. "Once you take the law
> into your hands, the forces or police have to take action," the Jammu
> and Kashmir information secretary, Mr. Jandial, said when asked about
> the shootings.
>
> As for allegations of voter coercion, he said he wasn't aware of any:
> "If ever there is a coercion, it's on the part of people pressing for
> a boycott."
>
> Continuing bloodshed may end up reversing Kashmir's recent shift
> towards unarmed campaigning. Sitting on the porch of a shuttered store
> near Srinagar's Grand Mosque, two former insurgents bristled with
> anger this weekend. Then, one of them, Iqbal Sheikh, spat on the
> ground and said: "When the small kids who throw stones are met with
> bullets, many people want to take up guns again."
>
> Write to Yaroslav Trofimov at yaroslav.trofimov at wsj.com
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