SRINAGAR, Oct 6: Kashmiri students seeking independence for their disputed Himalayan region burst into an uproar at the region's main university on Wednesday during a visit there by a group of Pakistani journalists.
They chanted 'We want azadi (freedom)' on the lawns of the Kashmir University in Srinagar, the summer capital of occupied Kashmir, while the group of 16 journalists from Pakistan and Azad Kashmir held separate meetings with senior university teachers and student representatives to know how the 15-year-old freedom movement against New Delhi's rule had affected the region.
On queries from journalists, almost all student representatives said they would prefer total independence for a reunited Jammu and Kashmir rather than being a part of India or Pakistan.
But those who demonstrated outside did chant 'Jeevay, jeevay Pakistan (long live Pakistan), besides other slogans including "we want freedom, we will fight to get freedom". The situation became uncontrollable at one point when the demonstrating crowd swelled from about 60 at the beginning to hundreds.
The situation was calmed down after university's Vice Chancellor Prof Abdul Wahid and leader of the journalist delegation Imtiaz Alam briefly addressed the demonstrators at another hall and listened to their representatives.
In a move to clear suspicions about the motives of the Pakistani journalists' first-ever trip to occupied Kashmir, South Asian Free Media Association (Safma) secretary-general Imtiaz Alam told students that his delegation had come only to know the feelings of the people and was not carrying anybody's agenda. But a student activist told the Pakistani journalists that if they wanted to listen to Kashmiris, they must go to every village and asked why they came to the disputed state with an Indian visa.
Mr Alam explained that there was no other way for Pakistani journalists if they were to come to occupied Kashmir. The university teachers, in their meeting with journalists, explained how their institution carried on its academic activities despite the prolonged conflict that drove many non-Muslim and even some Muslim staff from the region.
SHABBIR SHAH'S GROUSE: In a breakfast meeting with Pakistani journalists, Jammu and Kashmir Democratic Freedom Party chief Shabbir Ahmad Shah, a comparatively moderate leader, complained that confidence-building measures adopted by New Delhi and Islamabad recently had brought about no change in the situation in occupied Kashmir. Repression was rather growing here, he added.
He was unhappy that Islamabad had done nothing to stop India from using a cease fire declared by Pakistan to construct a barbed-wired fence along the Line of Control in Kashmir to stop alleged militant infiltration from Azad Kashmir.
Mr Shah said that India should stop custodial killings in Kashmir, release detained Kashmiri political activists, withdraw the public safety law and appoint former prime minister Atal Behari Vajpayee as the head of New Delhi's Kashmir Committee to allow him to a play a role in a peace process initiated by him along with President Pervez Musharraf in January.
Mr Shah, whose party is neither a member of the All-Party Hurriyat Conference nor aligned with militant groups, acknowledged differences among various Kashmiri parties and groups but said all of them wanted resolution of the Kashmir problem. He said the militants were basically local and those who came from the other side of the LoC would go back if Indians agreed to improve the situation.