SRINAGAR: India, the worlds largest democracy, detains protest leaders without charge, shoots dozens of demonstrators dead, beats and intimidates ordinary citizens and raids homes without warrants.
Welcome to Indian-held Kashmir, where the biggest separatist protests in two decades have clashed with the might of the state.
They are ruthless, trigger happy, said Ghulam Rasool Bhat, a labourer who says he was beaten by the federal police after he tried to buy milk for his two nephews under a curfew in Srinagar. He lay in a bed, both legs bandaged where a soldier, shouting Get your milk from Pakistan had smashed a rifle into his shins. His legs felt, he said, as if in a continuous cramp.
Police have shot dead at least 35 Muslim protesters in the Muslim-majority Kashmir valley after a row over forestland for a Hindu shrine spiralled into marches and strikes against Indian rule.
More than 1,000 people have been wounded in clashes over three weeks, hospital officials and police say. Hundreds of people have suffered police baton beatings and bullet wounds, doctors say.
The government of India does not have a strategy, The Hindu diplomatic editor said Siddharth Varadarajan said. It is relying heavily on coercion, arresting top and middle-level leaders in the hope it will break the back of unprecedented protests.
In rare criticism last week, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights asked India to avoid using excessive force. The commissioner drew a rebuke from India for interfering in its affairs.
But as protests spiralled in August, the government sent in battalions of the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF), a federal police force of mainly Hindus who do not speak Kashmiri. Strangers to Kashmir, most residents appear to despise them.
One surgeon, who asked to remain anonymous because of fear of retribution from Indian authorities, said he has received around 400 wounded people in three weeks, 150 of them hit by bullets.
These are target killings. Its simple to see, said the doctor, explaining that many of the chest wounds were from weapons such as AK-47s. Most of these were intended to kill. They were not to disperse a crowd.
The police firings drew criticism from Human Rights Watch. To end this cycle of tragedy, the government should order security forces to act with restraint, it said in a statement. Dukhtaran-e-Milat chief Asiya Andrabi, who had led some of the protests, has been detained under the Public Safety Act that allows for a year in jail without trial. reuters
