Protests Flare in Kashmir, With Hundreds of People Said to Be Arrested

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NEW DELHI — Protests erupted across Kashmir on Thursday as India’s prime minister, Narendra Modi, prepared to address the nation about his decision to unilaterally revoke the autonomy of the disputed region.

Human rights activists said that as many as 500 people had been arrested in nighttime raids across Kashmir and taken to makeshift detention centers. According to police officials reached by telephone, protesters in Kargil, a mountain town, hurled rocks at members of the security forces, wounding several, including the district’s top official. Residents of Srinagar, Kashmir’s biggest city, said that at least three men had been killed during demonstrations there, but that information could not be immediately confirmed.

On Monday, Mr. Modi’s government announced that it was revoking the special status granted to Jammu and Kashmir, India’s only Muslim-majority state and a disputed territory that several times has driven India and Pakistan to war. The move ratcheted up tensions with Pakistan instantly.

On Thursday, Pakistan shut down a cross-border train, the Samjhauta Express, which has been running for more than 40 years but is often suspended when relations between the nuclear-armed neighbors turn icy. Sheikh Rashid Ahmed, the Pakistani railway minister, said he expected tensions to remain high for at least a year.

“There can even be war,” he said. “I am not saying that we want war, but we should be prepared for it.”

Much of Kashmir remains incommunicado. Internet service, the mobile phone network and even landlines have been disabled since Sunday in many areas, making it difficult for information to emerge. Soldiers have flooded the streets, imposing a strict curfew, and some families are beginning to run out of food, according to Indian news outlets.

The Modi government has insisted that taking away Kashmir’s autonomy will bring peace and prosperity, and the move has proved to be quite popular in the rest of India. People just about everywhere except in Kashmir have celebrated, as most Indians consider Kashmir an integral part of the country. Even progressive politicians who usually clash with Mr. Modi, such as Arvind Kejriwal, Delhi’s chief minister, have backed him on the issue.

But human rights activists — and practically all Kashmiris who have been able to get their voices heard — have called the move one of the most undemocratic, unconstitutional and authoritarian steps any Indian government has ever taken.

Many say they suspect the move was at least partly driven by the right-wing, Hindu nationalist agenda of Mr. Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party, which has a long history of sowing division between India’s majority Hindus and minority Muslims.

Critics have pinned their hopes on the Indian Supreme Court, which has emerged in recent years as the main counterweight to Mr. Modi and Hindu nationalism and a defender of Indian secularism. Article 370 of the Indian Constitution, which was incorporated more than 50 years ago and revoked by the Modi administration on Monday, had guaranteed Kashmir a fair degree of autonomy from the central government and allowed it to pass its own laws on land and criminal activity.

The article says that any changes to Kashmir’s status must be made in consultation with the region’s Constituent Assembly. Though that assembly disbanded in the 1950s, not long after the article was passed, several legal scholars said the clear spirit of the law was to allow Kashmiris a say in how they were governed. The Modi administration’s unilateral action violates that spirit, they say.

A legal challenge to the move has already been filed by one lawyer, M.L. Sharma, who called the government’s shutdown of Kashmir, “not only undemocratic, but cruel.”

In an interview, Mr. Sharma said Article 370 was the region’s original agreement of entry into India, signed by Hari Singh, the last maharajah of the princely state of Jammu and Kashmir.

The 1947 treaty, which is called the Instrument of Accession, made it clear that Kashmir would only join India with a guarantee of autonomy. Mr. Sharma argued that dismantling Article 370, which stood for the agreement in India’s Constitution, violated Kashmir’s terms of entry and meant the region was now independent.

“One you cancel Article 370, you cancel the original agreement and you lose Kashmir,” Mr. Sharma said, adding that he believed his petition would be heard next week. “India has the right to enter Kashmir only because of that agreement, and Article 370 is a guarantee to perform the agreement.”

On Thursday, Tehseen Poonawalla, a political commentator, filed a separate petition in the Supreme Court. He said the government had violated the constitutional rights of people in Kashmir by imposing a curfew, making arbitrary arrests and restricting almost all communication.

But such arguments have yet to gain widespread support, in India or internationally. Statements from the State Department in the United States have not addressed the legality of the move. Alice Wells, the acting assistant secretary for South and Central Asian Affairs, said Washington had not been briefed by India before Monday’s measures were announced.

Senator Robert Menendez, Democrat of New Jersey, and Representative Eliot L. Engel, Democrat of New York, who both serve on foreign affairs committees, urged India on Wednesday to protect and promote “equal rights, including freedom of assembly, access to information and equal protections under the law.” But the statement stopped short of condemning India’s actions.

In the British Parliament, reaction was somewhat mixed. Debbie Abrahams, an opposition lawmaker from the Labour Party who is the chairwoman of a parliamentary group on Kashmir, said that India’s move “contravenes international law.” Bob Blackman, a Conservative lawmaker who is the chairman of a group that represents British Hindus, said Article 370 was an “anomaly” and needed to go.

On Wednesday, the British foreign secretary, Dominic Raab, said he had spoken to India’s foreign minister. “We’ve expressed some of our concerns around the situation and called for calm, but also had a clear readout of the situation from the perspective of the Indian government,” he said.

After India’s announcement, the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, a collective of over 50 Muslim-majority countries, convened an “urgent meeting” in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, with high-level officials.

A focus group on Jammu and Kashmir in the organization called India’s actions illegal, but the organization has not condemned the dilution of Article 370 outright. In a statement released on Sunday and reiterated through the week, the organization said it was “deeply concerned about the deteriorating situation in the Indian-occupied Jammu and Kashmir.”

China also criticized the Modi government. In remarks on Tuesday, Hua Chunying, spokeswoman for the Foreign Ministry, said the international consensus on Kashmir was that it was “an issue left from the past between India and Pakistan.”

Raveesh Kumar, spokesman for the Indian Ministry of External Affairs, criticized that statement, saying decisions made on Jammu and Kashmir were “an internal matter concerning the territory of India.”

“India does not comment on the internal affairs of other countries and similarly expects other countries to do likewise,” he said.



Source : Nytimes