Kashmir protesters defy curfew
2010-08-31 13:30
Srinagar - Residents in Indian Kashmir defied a curfew on Tuesday to hold angry demonstrations after an 11-year-old boy was killed and a relative of a top separatist seriously injured in police fire.
About 65 protesters and bystanders have been killed over the past 11 weeks, mostly by security forces who have opened fire on rallies when being pelted with stones.
On Monday, the 11-year-old boy was shot dead by police in the southern town of Anantnag during a violent demonstration against New Delhi's rule of the Muslim-majority region. He was earlier reported as being nine.
Each death in recent months has triggered further protests in defiance of strict all-day curfews.
In Indian Kashmir's main town of Srinagar, Yasir Sheikh, a cousin of senior separatist leader Yasin Malik, was seriously injured on Monday by police gunfire.
Eyewitnesses said police opened fire without provocation when young men were playing a board game outside the residence of Malik, who heads the pro-independence Jammu Kashmir Liberation Front.
Police initially said they had opened fire to quell stone-throwing demonstrators but later described the incident as "unfortunate".
"A police constable who fired the shots has been suspended and taken into custody," an officer said, asking not to be named.
Sheikh has been put on a ventilator and his condition was serious, doctor Basharat Ahmed said.
Display of bereavement
Police imposed a curfew in Srinagar on Tuesday morning but residents defied restrictions and held noisy demonstrations.
Young men, many of them wearing masks to prevent identification, chanted pro-independence slogans and burned tyres to block main roads.
"Indians, leave Kashmir," chanted the residents at Miasuma, the scene of Monday's shooting in Srinagar as women squatted on the main road, some of them beating their chests in a traditional display of bereavement.
Thousands of police and paramilitary forces on Tuesday sealed off neighbourhoods in Srinagar with barbed wires and iron barriers.
Government forces have struggled to contain the outpouring of anger triggered by the killing of a schoolboy by police in early June. Protests began in Srinagar and have spread through the Kashmir valley.
The latest unrest marks a new phase in resistance to Indian rule in the disputed territory, pointing to the frustration of unemployed youths among the Muslim local population.
The protests came after Indian troops killed nine suspected militants as they tried to cross the de-facto border with Pakistan that divides Kashmir.
Muslim militants have fought a 20-year insurgency against New Delhi's rule that has left more than 47 000 people dead.