India accused of abuses after clashes in Kashmir

Just about the only people around here who have got anything positive to say about the violence in Kashmir this summer are the folks at the Olympic Cricket Shop.

It’s not that anyone is playing cricket in Srinagar, the capital of India’s most northern state, Jammu and Kashmir. It is probably too dangerous for that. Clashes between rock-throwing Kashmiris and the police take place on a near daily basis.

Instead local journalists, who service a surprisingly vibrant newspaper scene, have been turning up at the “Olympic” to get themselves protected. Cricket helmets, chest protectors and leg-pads are a good way to absorb the force of flying rubble or the impact of a police truncheon.

The new kit has come in handy. For the past four-and-half months, many residents in this predominantly Muslim region have participated in a popular revolt against Indian rule. Young men have hurled rocks at the police while their mothers and fathers and grandparents have taken to the streets in a series of mass demonstrations.

Clashes between rock-throwing Kashmiris and the police take place on a near daily basis.

The uprising started in June, when a 17-year-old teenager was killed by a tear-gas shell fired by police. The incident fuelled further protests and more violence. At least 110 civilians have lost their lives in the disturbances.

We witnessed one group of “stone-pelters”, as they are commonly known, front up to the police in a neighbourhood outside Srinagar. They were young and contemptuous and said they were ready to fight the “Indian occupation”. They accused the local and national paramilitary police of routinely intimidating the local population.

Read more – Kashmir’s summer uprising: the untold stories

One handkerchief-clad teenager stopped to talk to us. “Indian dogs and robbers,” he said pointing to a line of armed policemen readying themselves up the road. These kids should probably have been at school but a series of police curfews and local strikes organised by local separatist leaders has shut them down. The children employed a well-developed political vocabulary though, telling us they would settle for nothing less than a “plebiscite on independence” and “self-determination for the people of Kashmir”.

With that they went to war with stones and bits of brick, but the battle did not last long. The youngsters scattered as the police rushed their position. We witnessed paramilitary policemen enter private homes and we were told to turn the camera off.

Further up the hill, we saw several houses with broken windows. One homeowner called Mohammed Yousef told us the police had done it.

“When the police throw rocks outside, we stay inside. That’s the way it is around here,” he said.

The Yousefs took us for a tour. Their luxurious carpets were scattered with several large bricks and thousands of rupees-worth of shattered glass. Mr Yousef told us the police routinely punish neighbourhoods (or colonies in local speak) after the stone-pelters flee. The idea, he said, is that local residents will pressure the youngsters not to throw rocks in the future in order to save their properties – and bodies – from additional police “attention”.

A little further down the street a middle-aged man called Guhlamohammed Butt sported a nasty headwound. He claimed the police had given it to him.

“They just jumped over my gate and entered my house,” he said. “This is their profession: to enter houses and beat people”.

Mr Butt was in a state of shock. His family were angry and resentful. We asked two senior commanders in the paramilitary police or the “Central Reserve Police Force” whether their men engaged in beatings and window-smashing.

The children employed a well-developed political vocabulary, telling us they would settle for nothing less than a ‘plebiscite on independence’ and ‘self-determination for the people of Kashmir’.

Commander Prabhakar Triparty handles media enquires for the CRPF in Jammu and Kashmir. He dismissed all allegations of police brutality, telling Channel 4 News: “CRPF personnel are highly trained. We are here in the interest of the public, we are supporting the public and we are really thankful because (the public) support us.”

We got a slightly different response from Commander Manish Kumar. We bumped into Commander Kumar while his company enforced a curfew in a part of Shringar’s old city. Again, I asked him whether his men engaged in beatings or window smashings.

“Our guys are dealing with a situation in harsh circumstances but they are totally being told not to indulge in any sort of act,” he said. I asked him whether his men had, on occasion, failed to follow his instructions. Commander Kumar smiled and said “ah, it is human nature to” before pausing. “I do not want to comment on that because officially I am not supposed to comment on that.” He continued however. “It might happen, I cannot say totally no.”

Things were different a few generations ago. The Kashmir valley was known as a place of rest and recuperation – an escape from the heat and chaos of the Indian plains. Visitors built houseboats and sailed around its shimmering lakes. Fields of saffron and apple orchards grew in the foothills of snow-capped mountain ranges. Sizeable Hindu and Budhist communites peacefully co-existed with the Muslim majority.

The partition of British India in 1947 changed all that. India and Pakistan have gone to war three times over the territory. Pakistan sponsored a bloody militant insurgency in the 1980s and 1990s in which tens of thousands lost their their lives. Claims of multiple-human rights violations on both sides have been lodged.

However, Indian military chiefs say the threat posed by Pakistan – whether it be its armed forces or Islamic militants who have received support from Pakistan – has significantly declined in recent years.

India retains a huge security presence in the territory. Human rights activists say emergency powers enacted in the state make local and paramilitary police unaccountable. When I suggested to Commander Triparty that the police benefit from what, in effect, is immunity from prosecution, he responded by saying that he has received no complaints about the force this year.

The people of the Kashmir valley will continue to protest the ‘Indian occupation’.

That statement has been challenged by a number of families we met, including the Ahmads, who live in old Srinagar. They say their eight-year-old boy Sameer was beaten to death by paramilitary policemen. They introduced us to eyewitnesses who say they saw what happened. They claim that one policeman thrust his bamboo truncheon into the child’s mouth, then picked him with it and threw the boy into a ditch.

The police say local residents are being dishonest. The official version of events states that Sameer was trampled to death by a crowd of stone-pelters.

Sameer’s father and a number of local residents told me they had complained to the officer at the local police station but they had heard nothing from him. Commander Triparty told me that his force is investigating the incident but added that it was unthinkable that his men would beat a child to death.

Of course the people of this valley would gladly return to more agreeable pleasures on the cricket pitch. Local journalists certainly have plenty of second-hand gear to sell on. Yet local political leaders say there will be no return to the status quo. The people of the Kashmir valley will continue to protest the “Indian occupation”, they claim.

This presents India with a serious challenge. It has long defended Kashmir from external foes but the threat to Indian-rule here is changing. The world’s longest democracy is in conflict with the very people they call their own.