Daily Times

SRINAGAR: Armed police and soldiers fanned out across much of Indian-held Kashmir (IHK) to enforce a security lockdown on Sunday as separatists challenging Indian rule called for a shutdown and protests on the second anniversary of the killing of a charismatic freedom fighter, Burhan Wani.

Government forces patrolled deserted streets and sealed off the hometown of Burhan Wani in anticipation of widespread anti-India protests and clashes in the region. Wani, 22, was killed along with two associates in a brief gunbattle with Indian troops two years ago.

Separatist leaders had called for a general strike and protest march to Wani’s hometown to honour him. The killing triggered open defiance against Indian occupation and led to months of massive protests and clashes in the valley. At least 90 people, mostly young men and students, were killed and thousands wounded, hundreds of them in the eyes and blinded by shotgun pellets fired by Indian troops.

Despite security restrictions, nearly 200 students in the University of Kashmir campus staged a protest seeking an end to Indian occupation. The students carried Wani’s photographs and displayed placards while chanting slogans like “Farewell our martyr” and “Go India, go back.”

Police and paramilitary soldiers in riot gear and carrying automatic rifles laid steel barricades and coiled razor wire on roads and intersections to cut off neighbourhoods in a bid to stop protests. Authorities also suspended Internet on mobile phones in the region, in a common practice to make organizing protests more difficult.

The anniversary comes a day after the Indian military’s firing killed a teenage girl and two young men in a southern village.

Wani’s martyrdom had given a new life to the freedom movement that had somewhat withered in recent years.

It had also cemented a shift in public behaviour by displaying anger at Indian occupation openly and violently when troops raid villages and towns to hunt freedom fighters. Villagers who had learned to hide any sympathy they felt for fighters now speak of them openly with reverence and warmth and also engage in deadly clashes with the Indian occupation forces to counter them. Anti-India sentiment runs deep in the IHK. Kashmiris have been fighting against Indian occupation since decades, demanding that the territory be united either under Pakistani rule or as an independent country.

Nearly 70,000 people have been killed in the uprising and the ensuing Indian military crackdown since 1989.

Published in Daily Times, July 9^th 2018.