The killing of civilians by Indian security forces threatens to derail plans for a stable Kashmir.
NEW DELHI, India — In a two-story brick home in Srinagar's old city, hundreds of relatives and neighbors waited throughout the night for the police to return the body of 17-year-old Tufail Ahmed Mattoo, who was allegedly killed by a teargas shell fired at him by police during a protest last week. When his body finally arrived on the morning of June 12, the gloom erupted into anger. Mattoo’s mother, Rubina, fainted. Scores of other women wailed and beat their chests, and the men raised slogans like “We want freedom,” and “Prosecute the killers.”
Mattoo's father, Muhammad Ashraf, was sitting dazed on his lawn. "There is no greater burden than to shoulder a son’s coffin. Who will now shoulder my coffin when I’m dead?” he said. “India is the largest democracy in the world but what they’re doing in Kashmir is not good,” he said, referring to alleged human rights violations by the army and police.
Mattoo's death has further inflamed anti-India sentiment in the Kashmir valley, which was already reeling under violent protests due to revelations of the alleged murder of three innocent young men by Indian army officers at the end of April. Now, by prompting a renewed embrace of hard-line separatist politicians, the fresh evidence of the state's human rights violations might not just derail Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's efforts to win hearts and minds in Kashmir but also stymie his efforts to resuscitate the peace process with Pakistan.
“It makes people more angry and more extremist,” said Noor Ahmad Baba, a professor of sociology at Kashmir University. “Moderate voices will become weaker and weaker and die if this situation continues, and there's no evidence that it's going to change.”
Beginning with Mattoo's funeral June 12, when thousands joined the procession in defiance of police orders, raising chants of “God is great” and “Blood for blood,” demonstrators and stone-throwers thronged the streets this week. And, in what could be a scene from the height of separatist Kashmiri militancy in the 1990s, the police responded with the same tactics that caused Mattoo's death in the first place, firing into the air and shooting teargas shells into the crowd.
Mattoo's death was ostensibly an accident, though Srinagar's boy “stone pelters” say that police often fire teargas canisters at them, rather than into the air. But Indian-administered Kashmir's occupation by as many as 500,000 troops — a greater number of soldiers than were present in Iraq during the height of the conflict — has had its premeditated victims, too. In a bitter twist of fate, Mattoo was killed June 11 while protesting the alleged murder of three boys much like himself by officers of the Indian army.
Earlier this month, the army removed a colonel from his command and suspended a major serving under him for their involvement in the alleged killing of Mohamad Shafi, Shehzad Ahmed Khan and Riyaz Ahmed, who police say were murdered under the guise of a staged gun battle with separatist militants. But local residents and outside observers alike remain convinced that the subsequent investigation — which will be handled internally by the Indian military — will be geared to protect, rather than prosecute, the alleged offenders.
This summer's rage marks the end of what might have been. Last year India removed as many as 35,000 soldiers from Kashmir in recognition of the most peaceful year in the valley since a militant separatist movement began in 1989. This was despite its relations with Islamabad being as tense as ever after evidence linked the terrorists responsible for the November 26, 2008 attacks on Mumbai to Pakistan's Inter-service Intelligence (ISI).
The prime minister had promised a zero-tolerance policy for human rights violations, and talks had begun in apparent earnestness about revising or repealing the hated Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA), which grants the military sweeping license to make arbitrary arrests, search private homes, and shoot to kill — and blocks civilian inquiries into its activities. But before the ink was dry on the press releases announcing the troop reductions, in April the home ministry issued new statements warning of an uptick in infiltration from across the border. In the first three months of 2010, according to official data, India's security forces foiled more than 60 incursion attempts from Pakistan-based militants and engaged in 35 gunfights with separatist fighters.
These days, angry Kashmiris are wondering how many of those battles might have been staged, and some people are questioning the sincerity of the supposedly zero-tolerance prime minister after he seemed to justify the occasional killing of innocent civilians in a recent speech.
“There are a handful of people who don't want any political process for empowering people to succeed,” Singh said in a speech at Sher-e-Kashmir University June 7. “This is the reason that attempts to disturb the lives of people in the valley continue from across the Line of Control. Our security agencies are forced to act in the wake of such incidents. Sometimes, innocent civilians have to suffer.”
Human rights watchdogs argue that under AFSPA, that kind of innocent suffering has become routine.
http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/india/100616/india-and-kashmir-bad-worse
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