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SRINAGAR: Authorities in India-held Kashmir detained dozens of activists and placed leaders under house arrest on Thursday to prevent them from holding anti-India protests to mark the anniversary of a top leader’s hanging more than three decades ago.
Shops and businesses remained shut and a curfew was in effect in some areas of Srinagar after a strike was called by Kashmiri leaders.
Most people stayed indoors while hundreds of armed police and paramilitary personnel patrolled largely deserted streets blocked by razor wire and barricades.
Government forces “came in the morning and ordered us to stay indoors,” resident Reyaz Ahmed said.
Pro-independence leader Mohammed Maqbool Butt was hanged in a New Delhi jail in 1984 after being convicted of killing an Indian intelligence officer.
A similar strike and government shutdown had closed Srinagar and other Kashmir towns on Tuesday as activists protested secret execution of another Kashmiri man, Mohammed Afzal Guru, three years ago in the same New Delhi jail for a 2001 attack on India’s parliament that killed 14 people, including five gunmen. Most Kashmiris believe he was not given a fair trial.
Kashmiris also demand that the two men’s remains, buried within the jail compound, be returned to Kashmir for proper burial.
Published in Dawn, February 12th, 2016
