[Kashmir is home to a long-running insurgency against Indian rule waged by militant groups seeking independence or merger with Pakistan. But the politicians who have been detained since Aug. 5 are not militants or separatists but mainstream leaders who advocate for Kashmir’s future inside India with a degree of autonomy.]
By
Niha Masih and Joanna Slater
 |
|
Kashmiris
attend a protest after Eid al-Adha prayers at a mosque on Monday after
the
scrapping of the special constitutional status for Kashmir by the Indian
government.
(Danish Siddiqui/Reuters)
|
SRINAGAR,
India — Ever since India
announced a move to strip Kashmir of its autonomy one week ago, residents of
this disputed region have been unable to make phone calls, access the Internet
or move freely.
They also have heard nothing from local
political leaders, because many of them have been detained and held
incommunicado, part of an unprecedented clampdown that has muffled the public
response to India’s decision.
On Monday, the major Muslim holiday Eid
al-Adha was a tense and muted affair instead of a joyous occasion as security
forces flooded the streets of Srinagar, the Kashmiri capital. The festival
passed without the violent protests that some had feared.
The region has remained on edge since Prime
Minister Narendra Modi revoked autonomy for Indian-controlled Kashmir,
fulfilling a major campaign pledge of his Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata
Party but raising the likelihood of unrest in India’s only Muslim-majority
region.
To maintain control, India has sent thousands
of additional troops to Kashmir and detained hundreds of local politicians and
party workers. They include two of the highest-profile leaders in the state:
Mehbooba Mufti, who until last year was the chief minister of Jammu and
Kashmir, and Omar Abdullah, one of her predecessors in that post.
“I’ve no idea what is in store for our state,
but it doesn’t look good,” Abdullah wrote to his 3 million Twitter followers in
the wee hours of Aug. 5. He has not been heard from since.
Kashmir is home to a long-running insurgency
against Indian rule waged by militant groups seeking independence or merger
with Pakistan. But the politicians who have been detained since Aug. 5 are not
militants or separatists but mainstream leaders who advocate for Kashmir’s
future inside India with a degree of autonomy.
A hotel and conference hall on the shores of
Srinagar’s Dal Lake has been converted into an improvised detention center.
On a recent afternoon, the metal entrance
gates were draped in black plastic to obscure the view. Nuzhat Ishfaq, 34, went
to find her husband and father, both members of the Jammu and Kashmir National
Conference party. Her husband was a member of the state legislature from the
district of Ganderbal.
She said her husband was put under house
arrest on Aug. 5. Two days later, the police arrived at their home and told him
to pack some clothes. Since then, the family had not gotten word from him. The
guards allowed her and her two sons, 12 and 14, inside the center for 45
minutes.
She said she was taken into a conference hall
and glimpsed her husband from a distance, but officials did not permit her to
speak to him.
“There is a volcano waiting to erupt,” she
said. “Earlier militants or separatists were picked up, but now India has taken
away those who were pro-India.” She continued: “This is injustice. We are not
militants. What is our crime?”
Adnan Ashraf Mir, a spokesman for the Jammu
and Kashmir People’s Conference, said that its leader, Sajjad Lone, was placed
under house arrest on Aug. 4. The following day, Lone was transferred to the
makeshift detention center on Dal Lake and has been held incommunicado since.
The party’s entire top leadership is detained
or under house arrest, Mir said, and he estimated that more than 200 party
workers across the state were also in custody.
“It’s just appalling how they have treated
these people,” said Mir, who left Srinagar several days ago. The government is
“trying to silence every voice they think would be able to mobilize opinion on
the ground.”
Mrinal Sharma, a policy adviser with Amnesty
International India, said that the authorities could be using two statutes to
carry out the detentions. The first is Kashmir’s Public Safety Act, which
activists say facilitates arbitrary detentions. The second is a provision in
the Indian criminal procedure code that allows police to take people into
custody to prevent breaches of the peace.
The latter is often used to prevent possible
riots, Sharma said. But “detaining political leaders while a decision is being
made on the fate of their constituencies is just unprecedented.”
Outside a hillside home belonging to Mufti,
the former chief minister, security personnel declined to answer questions
about her detention. They also refused to allow The Washington Post to meet
with her daughter, Iltija Iqbal. In previous interviews, Iqbal said that her
mother was detained Aug. 5 and that she had not been able to communicate with
her since.
A spokeswoman for India’s Home Ministry did
not reply to requests for comment on the detentions or the whereabouts of Mufti
and Abdullah. A senior government official, speaking on the condition of
anonymity to discuss matters with reporters, twice declined to answer queries
about the detained politicians.
The police are “effectively maintaining peace
and public order, taking local decisions on detentions,” the Jammu and Kashmir
government said in a news release Monday. A senior police official said that
there had been “minor localized incidents” during Eid and that two people were
injured in the clashes.
On Friday, police fired tear gas and pellets
at a crowd of thousands of protesters, according to a half-dozen eyewitnesses
and interviews with the injured at a hospital. The government has denied that
any such incidents took place.
Government officials declined to say when the
restrictions on communication and movement would be lifted, repeatedly stating
that the situation was fluid.
Fizalah Kawoosa, a 32-year-old immunologist
in Srinagar, said that recent events had left her “blood boiling.” She had not
been able to reach her mother, who lives in the same city, and three attempts
to visit had been thwarted at police checkpoints.
Kawoosa said she hopes and prays that her
infant daughter will grow up in peace.
“There is no family in Kashmir that has not
lost a relative to violence,” she said. “I wanted to see a calm future for our
children. But it is only going to be worse.”
Slater reported from New Delhi. Ishfaq Naseem
in Srinagar and Tania Dutta in New Delhi contributed to this report.
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