MUSLIM HATE IN KASHMIR
Kashmir violence not to hurt ties with Pakistan, says PM
NEW DELHI: India will not allow attacks by militants known to have their bases in Pakistan to hurt a peace process with Islamabad, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said here.
But efforts to make peace with the old enemy would succeed only if Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf keeps his promise to curb anti-Indian guerrillas operating from areas under Islamabad’s control, he said on Tuesday.
Singh’s comments came a week after suspected militants set off three bombs in one of India’s holiest Hindu cities, Varanasi, killing 23 people and wounding dozens.
A previously unknown group, Lashkar-e-Kahar, claimed the attack but police and security experts said the outfit was likely a front for Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taiba.
“The continued provocation by terrorists will not weaken our resolve to build a normal relationship with this important neighbour or our resolve to deal with those who wage war against innocents and attack the secular fabric of our state,” Singh told parliament.
“We are committed to the resolution of all outstanding issues with Pakistan including the issue of Jammu and Kashmir through dialogue and consultation,” he said.
The prime minister did not mention the Varanasi bombings or name Lashkar but analysts have said in the past that frequent attacks blamed on Pakistan-based militant groups — fighting Indian rule in Kashmir — weigh heavily on a wobbly peace process between the neighbours.
India blames Pakistan of aiding a 16-year revolt against its rule in Kashmir, where more than 45,000 people have been killed in separatist violence so far.
Pakistan denies the charge and says it has done all it could to stop militants. Ties between the two countries have improved significantly since they launched moves to make peace in mid-2003 after coming close to another war.
But they are yet to achieve a breakthrough on the territorial dispute over Kashmir, at the heart of their rivalry, and militant attacks are seen as attempts to scuttle peace moves.
l At least eight people were hurt yesterday when riot police baton-charged survivors of last October’s earthquake in Kashmir who were demanding more financial help, police said.
Several hundred protesters blocked the main highway in northern Baramulla district to demonstrate against what they said was “inadequate monetary compensation” to erect new houses and to renovate damaged ones.
Police fired several warning shots in the air but did not succeed in dispersing the protesters.
“We had to resort to baton-charging and firing teargas shells to disperse them and make way for traffic,” a police officer said, adding eight people received minor injuries in the police action.
Residents said over a dozen were injured. The October 8 earthquake killed 74,000 people in Pakistan and its zone of Kashmir and more than 1,300 in Indian Kashmir. – AFP
DODA, India - A wave of violence by Islamic militants aimed at Indian-controlled Kashmir's Hindu minority has left 35 dead, police said Monday, days ahead of a planned meeting between the divided region's political separatists and India's prime minister.
In one village, militants disguised as soldiers coaxed residents from their homes and then gunned down 22 of them the single bloodiest attack by Islamic guerrillas in Kashmir since a 2003 cease-fire between India and Pakistan.
Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh suggested the killings would not hamper efforts to find peace in the Himalayan region divided between India and Pakistan.
"People of Kashmir have rejected and rebuffed terrorists repeatedly," Singh said.
India has repeatedly accused Pakistan of backing the militants, even as the two countries have talked peace. Singh, however, stopped short of blaming Islamabad for the attack.
A spokeswoman for Pakistan's Foreign Ministry, Tasnim Aslam, said the killings were "an act of terrorism and we condemn it."
Witnesses said more than a half-dozen assailants, some of them in army uniforms, slipped into the village of Thava after dark Sunday and, using local guides, told villagers they had come to meet residents.
"When we assembled outside the home of the village head ... they showered bullets on us," said Gyan Chand, one of five people wounded in the attack. He spoke from a hospital in the town of Doda, near Thava, some 600 miles north of India's capital, New Delhi.
Following the attack, survivors rushed to alert the army, but the assailants fled before security forces arrived, said Sheesh Pal Vaid, a police inspector-general.
For centuries, Kashmir's Hindus known as Pandits lived peacefully alongside the region's Muslim majority.
But the Pandits have been targeted relentlessly by Islamic insurgents who have been fighting since 1989 to wrest Kashmir from largely Hindu India. Most have fled, many to squalid refugee camps in safer parts of India. An estimated 2,000 Pandits have been killed in the insurgency, which has claimed nearly 67,000 lives.
The remaining 25,000 Pandits in Kashmir a tenth of the pre-insurgency population are subject to frequent attacks, and many live in fear.
"Anything can strike us anytime. It is frightening, but life goes on," said B. L. Warikoo, a Pandit in Srinagar, summer capital of India's part of Kashmir.
Hours before the village attack, police found the first four bodies of at least 13 Hindu shepherds abducted over the weekend in Kashmir's Udhampur district.
Islamic militants have been blamed for the abductions, and authorities found the bodies of nine more shepherds Monday, said a senior police officer, Rajesh Singh.
A leader of Kashmir's political separatist movement, Mirwaiz Umar Farooq, called the attack on the village "a deplorable and heinous act."
His group, the All Parties Hurriyat Conference, is to take part in a previously planned meeting Wednesday between Kashmiri political separatists and Singh.
"I hope we are able to find a way out of this mindless death and destruction," Farooq said.
While there was no immediate claim of responsibility, Vaid called the killings "a terrorist attack" a clear indication that authorities were blaming Islamic militants.
The state's deputy chief minister, Muzaffar Hussain Beig, said the "terrorists" were "bent upon marring the fragile peace and security in the region. But the peace process is irreversible and cannot be sabotaged."
However, the largest Islamic militant group, Hezb-ul-Mujahedeen, claimed in a statement to Kashmir's Current News Service that Indian intelligence agents carried out the killings as an "attempt to defame the" insurgents.
Kashmir chief's surprise resignation
July 7, 2008
SRINAGAR, Indian-controlled Kashmir (CNN) -- The top Indian elected leader in Kashmir resigned Monday after weeks of protests that have left seven people dead.
Some assembly members had expected Chief Minister Ghulam Nabi Azad to ask for a vote of confidence and he seemed to surprise everyone when he announced: "I am resigning."
Azad made the announcement during a 90-minute speech to a special session of the state assembly.
During the speech Azad focused mostly on his efforts to bring peace and normalcy to the troubled region during his 31 months in the post.
Kashmir -- a predominantly Muslim region that has seen frequent battles -- faced a new wave of violence when the government announced last month it would transfer forest land to a Hindu shrine board that manages an annual pilgrimage.
Muslim groups protested the move and clashes erupted. When the government announced it was canceling the planned transfer, there were more clashes -- this time involving Hindus angry at the cancellation.
The news agency Press Trust of India, partly owned by the Indian government, reported Monday that a seventh person died from injuries sustained amid the violence -- a protester who had been wounded in a grenade attack during a rally.
Government officials have also said 400 people were injured in the violence.
The People's Democratic Party (PDP), a key alliance partner for the region's ruling coalition, announced that it was withdrawing its support.
Some members of the assembly expected Azad to seek a vote of confidence in the wake of the PDP's decision.
Kashmir is now likely to be placed under gubernatorial rule before elections for the next state assembly in October.
Both India and Pakistan control parts of the 86,000-square-mile region of Kashmir.
The two nations have fought two wars over the region. China also controls a part of Kashmir.
For the past 18 years, Kashmir also has been wracked by a bloody separatist campaign.
Authorities say 43,000 people have been killed in violence. Some human rights groups and non-governmental organizations estimate the death toll at twice that figure.