SRINAGAR, INDIA // Security forces fired tear gas and used batons today to break up hundreds of angry protesters who say Hindus are assaulting Muslims in the Indian portion of Kashmir, police said. Chanting "we want freedom" and "Indian forces leave Kashmir," the protesters hurled rocks at police and paramilitary soldiers at several places in Srinagar, said Prabhakar Tripathi, a spokesman for the Central Reserve Police Force.
The Muslims claim they are being targeted in Jammu, the only Hindu-majority city in the state, with Hindu mobs attacking their shops and homes and chanting slogans demanding Muslim Kashmiris leave the area. They say security forces are not doing enough to protect them. Shops, businesses and schools remained closed in protest for a third day in Srinagar, a Muslim-majority city. Yasin Malik, the head of the pro-independence Jammu-Kashmir Liberation Front who had been on a hunger strike for the last three days to protest the alleged attacks on Muslims, was rushed to a hospital on Thursday when his blood pressure dropped, said Mohammed Altaf, the group's spokesman.
"His condition could be life-threatening if he does not start eating soon", said Khurshid Iqbal, a doctor who is treating him. "He may go into a renal shutdown," he said. Mr Malik, however, is continuing to refuse food, saying he will fast until Muslims are secure. Anger between Hindus and Muslims in the Himalayan region has flared since June when the government in Jammu-Kashmir decided to award 40 hectares of land to the Shri Amarnath Shrine Board, a trust that maintains the Amarnath shrine, a revered Hindu site.
The shrine contains a large icicle revered by Hindus as an incarnation of Lord Shiva, the Hindu god of destruction and regeneration. Hundreds of thousands of Hindus are currently visiting the shrine on an annual pilgrimage. The state government was forced to revoke the land transfer last month after a week of often violent protests by Muslims who called the move an attempt to build Hindu settlements in the area and alter the demographics in the state.
Six people were killed and hundreds wounded in those protests. However, the reversal of the government decision triggered massive streets protests by Hindus in Jammu and Samba, a town on its outskirts. The violence has escalated sharply over the last two weeks and so far six people have been killed in the new clashes. The casualties include a Muslim man, killed when a tear gas shell hit him while he was protesting the alleged attacks on Muslims in Srinagar. Today, hundreds of Hindu protesters defied a curfew in the Jammu region and took to the streets, said Ramesh Kumar, a police officer. No violence has been reported.
The prime minister of India, Manmohan Singh, met with leaders of key political parties yesterday in a bid to defuse the situation. However, Leela Karan Sharma, convener of the Shri Amarnath Sangharsh Samiti, a group spearheading the protest in Jammu, stuck to his demand that the state government hand over the allotted land to the Hindu shrine authorities for building facilities for pilgrims. Meanwhile, government forces found an improvised explosive device weighing nearly 80 kilograms on the road leading to the airport in Srinagar early today and defused it, Mr Tripathi said. Police have detained one suspect for questioning, he said. Mr Tripathi accused suspected rebels of planting the explosive to target army and paramilitary convoys that use the airport road. Nearly a dozen rebel groups have been fighting government forces to carve out a separate homeland or merge the Indian portion of Kashmir with Pakistan. More than 68,000 people, mostly civilians, have been killed in the conflict since 1989.
* AP