Agitators reach accord over Amarnath land

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JAMMU, Aug 31 – At least 28 people were today injured when police used batons and fired teargas shells to disperse crowds which defied curfew and broke barricades to take part in a ‘victory’ rally in Jammu city after signing of an accord on the Amarnath land issue, reports PTI. Authorities had imposed curfew in Jammu, Udhampur, Kathua, Poonch, Samba and Kishtwar and deployed the army in the entire city to prevent the march called by Shri Amarnath Yatra Sangrash Samiti which suspended its two-month long agitation after the government allowed the Amarnath Shrine Board to use the land in Kashmir during the yatra period. People defied the curfew at dozens of places and broke through police barricades and barbed wire fencing put up by the army to march towards MAM Stadium – the venue of the ‘Vijay Rally’, police said. Fierce clashes erupted in Parade, Purani Mandi, Canal Road, Jewel Chowk, KC Morh, Janipur, Gangyal, Tallab Tilloo and Shakti Nagar, Residency road areas of city, with police, army, Rapid Action Force (RAF) and CRPF personnel resorting to teargas shelling and cane-charge on protesters, including women and children. Irate over the police action, people resorted to heavy stone pelting and clashed with police in which over 25 people and three police personnel were injured. “Fifteen persons were hospitalised and other were discharge after first aid,” police said. “We have imposed curfew to stop people from assembling and taking part in the major rally in view of intelligence reports of presence of some militants in Jammu,” district’s Deputy Commissioner Mandeep K Bhandari said. Militants can use this occasion to trigger violence, he said.“Fierce clashes have taken place in Jewel Chowk, Canal Road, Purani Mandi and Saint Peters areas in the city,” police sources said adding people chanting ‘Bum Bum Bolay’ were staging sit-ins at several places . “We did not allow people to reach to MAM Stadium – the venue of the rally. Strict orders had been passed by Senior Superintendent of Police (SSP) Jammu to take all measures to quell the mobs,” they said. Bhandari said about three to four lakh people were expected to converge for the rally. Authorities had urged the Samiti to call off the march as there were fears that militants were present in the outskirts of the city who could be a threat to the rally, he added. “There is a security concern and that is why curfew was the only alternative,” Bhandari added. Senior Superintendent of Police, Jammu, Manohar Singh said that a man had reported entry of two militants in his house at Sangh Talab area of Raipur-Domana in the outskirts of the city. Army and police have launched an operation to track down militants and the entire area has been cordoned off, he said. The 64-day long agitation ended here today following signing of an agreement between SAYSS and the Governor’s panel headed by S S Bloeria under which the shrine board has been given 40 hectares of land for exclusive use by Shri Amarnath Shrine Board (SASB) for the period of yatra. source: assam tribune

Whose Interest, This?

Tavleen Singh
Last week, the city of Jammu was put under curfew to control Hindu protestors. Jammu is largely a Hindu city whose Hindu population includes Hindu refugees who fled from Kashmir when the violence began in the early nineties. They oppose the decision of the Government of Jammu & Kashmir to take back the land it offered for the use of pilgrims during the Amarnath Yatra. The Government was coerced into changing its mind by several days of Muslim protests in the streets of Srinagar. The protests drew more people into the streets than we have seen for a long while. Muslims were so angered by the decision to allow ‘forest land’ to be used by Hindu pilgrims that the People’s Democratic Party, which is one half of the ruling coalition in Kashmir, threatened to withdraw from the Government rather than be party to the decision. The Congress party is the other half of the coalition and it did not take Chief Minister Ghulam Nabi Azad long to back down.The media is mostly leftist in our ancient land and too politically correct to point out when Muslim hysteria is guided by Islamist ideology. So, almost nobody has mentioned that the protests against the facilities for Hindu pilgrims were out of proportion, hysterical and anti-Hindu. Governments across India go out of their way to facilitate Muslims going annually off on their Haj. There are Haj houses in nearly all our major towns where Muslim pilgrims can stay for almost no cost. The Haj is itself subsidized by the state. Keeping this in mind, it is an outrage that Hindu pilgrims should not be provided minimum facilities when they go on the Amarnath Yatra. If it were a case of forest land being given permanently to Hindu pilgrims, there would be cause for protest but this was not what happened, according to former Jammu & Kashmir Governor Lt General SK Sinha. In an interview to the 'Indian Express', he said, ‘No permanent constructions were to come up in the camps. The ownership of the land was not transferred to the Board. And it was only a diversion of land for two months in a year.’Nobody should have any objections but objections there are and in the view of your proudly politically incorrect columnist, these objections have taken the form of mass hysteria now because the Government of Dr Manmohan Singh and Sonia Gandhi has gone out of its way to woo Muslims by creating a general sense of grievance. Two examples will suffice. The first is the setting up of the Sachar Committee in the first few months of the UPA (United Progressive Alliance) Government coming to power in Delhi. The Sachar Committee toured the country finding aggrieved Muslims and when it published its findings, it deepened the Muslim sense of grievance by showing them as an underclass everywhere. The report did not analyse why this was the case. Had it done so, it would have noticed that any community that prevents the education of the girl child will end up badly. Muslim backwardness is more to do with not educating girls than poverty. This is true also of those Hindu castes and communities that discourage the education of girls. In the way the UPA Government has dealt with the major terrorist attacks that have occurred on its watch, we see an example of pandering to Islamism. The terrorist attacks have been perpetrated by Islamist groups from Pakistan and Bangladesh with local Muslims lending shelter and support. Hundreds of innocent people have lost their lives in these attacks but to this day neither the Prime Minister, Sonia Gandhi or any other senior member of the UPA have come out with a full condemnation of Islamism. The signal the police get is that there are political reasons for them not being allowed to go all out to catch the killers. So the police works to rule and nobody gets caught.Islamism is so politically acceptable in India that the Islamists have gone from strength to strength in the promotion and spread of their evil ideology. It is an ideology based on terrible tenets as the famous British author, Ian McEwan, pointed out recently in an interview to the Italian newspaper, Corriere Della Sera. “And I myself despise Islamism’ he said ‘because it wants to create a society that I detest, based on religious beliefs, on a text, on lack of freedom for women, intolerance towards homosexuality and so on……Islamism, in most of its manifestations, not only wants to kill me, it wants to kill you.’Our South Asian Islamists have publicly stated on more than one occasion that their objective is to turn India from being a land of happy heathens to one in which Islamism prevails. The weak-kneed, dithering response of the UPA Government to this threat has encouraged Islamist groups to believe that their nightmare scenario will come to happen. Kashmir’s ‘azadi’ movement, which started at the end of the eighties, had nothing to do with religion but if you looked at the mobs in Srinagar streets, you would have seen that the women were all in ‘burkhas’ and the men nearly all bearded. The ‘azadi’ movement has been transformed into something else altogether. To fight Islamism, we need a Prime Minister in Delhi who can take firm decisions.Do I think this is going to happen before the next general election? No. source: sentinel assam editorial 07.07.08

Denying Hindus space

Denying Hindus space

5 Jul 2008, 1201 hrs IST, Tarun Vijay

The Amarnath land row in Kashmir has proved that if Muslim politicians of the valley feel strongly about something they can make the government bend and accept their demands. So it is hypocrisy when they complain in some summits in London that Delhi doesn't heed them or they have less power to rule the valley 'appropriately' and hence need more autonomy. They fought on the streets and denied a piece of land to Hindu pilgrims to be used for facilitating a night’s stay and food in that snowy area just for two months. The land was barren; not a single tree grows there and not one person was to be stationed there permanently. Yet the votaries of Kashmiriyat , who would announce day and night how keen they are to see Kashmiri Hindus return to their localities and how their religion stands for love, compassion and peace, stood firm, spreading lies to ensure that Hindus do not get an inch of space for a temporary shelter. They said it is a place which will be used to reduce Muslims in the valley to a minority. The land is forest area, Hindus will destroy the environment, they said. It's a plot by Indians to assault Muslims of the valley. Hence, land will not be given at any cost, the politicians said. They won. And they knew what they are saying to defend their indefensible position are all lies. The first thing the new governor N N Vohra was made to do was to take back the proposal on behalf of the Shri Amarnath Shrine Board for the acquisition of approximately 100 acres of land. He didn't begin his tenure trying to see Kashmiri refugee Hindus are returned with honour and safety to their homes. Nor could Vohra hold any meeting to ensure the valley is free from jihad and that developmental plans are executed to benefit all patriotic citizens. The first move that a Hindu majority country's constitutional appointee took was against the interests of Hindus. I am sending this column from Kolkata where, being involved in a seminar on security, I saw a message from the then Governor General Sinha wishing that the seminar goes off well. It is the kind of message that holders of gubernatorial posts often send but there is a difference: while all constitutional authorities use just one symbol of the state insignia – that is, the replica of the Sarnath pillar with four faces of the lion – in Jammu and Kashmir, another state insignia is used parallel to the Indian one, representing Jammu-Kashmir. The only state in India which has a separate flag and a special power bestowed on it by the constitution is Jammu and Kashmir. On an average it gets 10 times more grants compared to any other Indian state yet it complains a hundred times more about Delhi's discrimination and prejudice. The jawan who protects the people and the territory with his sweat and blood is not allowed to buy an inch of land in the state due to the constitutional provision of Article 370 which bars any Indian from settling down in Kashmir. source: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com

PDP is playing in the hands of ISI: AIATF

Press Trust of India / Jalandhar July 05, 2008, 17:08 IST
Terming the People's Democratic Party (PDP) "anti-national", Chairman of All India Anti-Terrorists Front (AIATF) M S Bitta today alleged that PDP has raked up the issue of land transfer to Amarnath Shrine Board on instructions from ISI.

"Overflow of tourists and pilgrims in Jammu and Kashmir has caused worry to the ISI, which instigated PDP to rake up the issue and withdraw the support to the Azad government,"Bitta said.

He demanded that the PDP should be barred from politics and even the links of the PDP with ISI should be probed.

"Land should be immediately re-transferred to Amarnath Shrine Board and political consensus should be arrived for the same," he said.

"Security of Amarnath yatra should be handed over to Army and other para-military forces as the state failed to provide fool proof security arrangement", he said. source: http://www.business-standard.com

Curfew continues to be in force in Jammu

Curfew continues to be in force in Jammu
5 Jul, 2008, 1228 hrs IST, PTI

JAMMU: Curfew remained in force today in Jammu and towns of Bhaderwah, Samba and Kathua, officials said.
There was no fresh incident of violence or defying the curfew restrictions reported from these areas, they said.

Curfew was imposed in some parts of Jammu city on July 1 after protesters demanding cancellation of land transfer order to Shri Amarnath Shrine Board clashed with police and indulged in stone pelting on vehicles.

It was later extended to the whole city when protesters defied curfew and held demonstrations at different places.

Curfew was also imposed in Bhaderwah and Samba on July 2 and in Kathua on July 3 following incidents of violence and clashes between police and the demonstrators.

Senior civil and police officers were closely monitoring the situation, the officials said, adding that relaxation may be considered for varying periods to enable people to buy essential things.

Police, CRPF and Rapid Action Force (RAF) have been deployed to maintain law and order here, they said.

Different yardsticks for Hindus and Muslims, allege Jammu bodies

Different yardsticks for Hindus and Muslims, allege Jammu bodies
Agencies
Posted online: July 04, 2008 at 1556

Despite the fact that the shrine board had offered to pay Rs 2.43 crore for constructing temporary pre-fabricated huts for the pilgrims, the chief minister reversed the government order, the Sangharsh Samiti said.

Jammu, July 4: Various political and social organisations spearheading the present agitation in Jammu alleged that Chief Minister Ghulam Nabi Azad is adopting different yardsticks for Muslims and Hindus in the state.

"Azad succumbed to the pressure of secessionists on cancellation of land transfer order to Amarnath shrine board, ignoring the faith of crores of Hindus," said L K Sharma, convenor of the Sangarsh Samiti, a conglomeration of various political and social bodies.

Despite the fact that the shrine board had offered to pay Rs 2.43 crore for constructing temporary pre-fabricated huts for the pilgrims, the chief minister reversed the government order, he said.

Sharma said Azad had provided free government land for setting up Baba Ghulam Shah Badshah University and Islamic University in the state, but not for Mata Vaishno Devi University set up near Katra.

"This clearly shows that the government is adopting different yardsticks for Muslims and Hindus," he alleged.
editor@expressindia.com

More protests over Kashmir land

Hindus have held more protests in India against a decision not to transfer land to a Hindu shrine organisation in Indian-administered Kashmir.

Four people died in Indore, in Madhya Pradesh, when police opened fire during clashes between Hindus and Muslims, officials say.

They say that another person was badly injured in other clashes in the state.
There were also violent clashes between protesters and police for a fourth day in the Hindu-majority region of Jammu.

A curfew remains in place in the area - in the southern part of the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir.

The state government rescinded its decision to grant land along a Hindu pilgramage route to the Amarnath Shrine board after several days of protests by sections of Kashmir's majority Muslim community.

Correspondents say that efforts by the right-wing Bharatiya Janata Party for a country-wide protest over the issue met with a relatively muted response.

In Madhya Pradesh and Bihar, strike supporters shut down transport and businesses. Some roads were blocked, cars were smashed and trains disrupted.

"The response to the strike shows the anger of the people against the government's attack on secular fabric of the country," Prakash Javdekar, a senior BJP leader, told the Reuters news agency in Delhi. source: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/7487609.stm

Land row: Protests continue in curfew-bound Jammu

Land row: Protests continue in curfew-bound Jammu (Lead)

Jammu, July 3 (IANS) Angered by the cancellation of the land allotment order to a Hindu shrine board in Kashmir, some activists of the ruling Congress here Thursday defied curfew orders and took to the streets protesting against their own government’s decision. Earlier, curfew was extended to other parts of the tense Jammu region as angry mobs demanding allotment of the forest land to the Shri Amarnath Shrine Board (SASB) set ablaze a few abandoned houses in a town, forcing the authorities to deploy the army at communally-sensitive places.

Thursday was the fourth day of agitations in Hindu-dominated Jammu, where people continue defying prohibitory orders to take out anti-government processions.

Jai Singh, a Municipal corporator of the ruling Congress, came out with scores of his supporters defying the curfew order. He denounced the government’s decision. Congress activists have also at other places joined the protests, largely sponsored by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP).

Protests in Jammu were triggered after government Tuesday decided to cancel the land allotment to the SASB, ending a controversy but beginning another over an issue that has gained a communal edge.

Earlier on May 26, the government had allotted 40 hectares of forest land to the SASB, which organises the pilgrimage to the high altitude Amarnath cave shrine dedicated to Lord Shiva. The land, according to officials, was meant to create temporary facilities to the hundreds of thousands of Hindu pilgrims visiting the shrine every year.

The decision quietened the violent protests in the Muslim-dominated Kashmir Valley where five people were killed in alleged police firing last week.

But it led to violent demonstrations in Jammu where at least 80 people, including several police personnel, were injured in unrelenting protests since Monday against the cancellation. The authorities were forced to clamp indefinite curfew on Jammu since Tuesday evening.

Rail traffic was halted at Kathua for sometime Thursday morning, while protesters blocked traffic movement on the national highway near Samba, Udhampur and Nagrota.

Reports from Vijaypur, a town 30 km south of Jammu, where protesters stopped trains Wednesday evening, said an agitated mob set ablaze a few “kullas” (huts) of Gujjars, who are up in the mountains with their cattle these days.

According to a report from Banihal, a town 180 km north of Jammu on the Jammu-Srinagar highway, a few Amarnath pilgrims were allegedly pulled out of their vehicles and beaten by some people, who also misbehaved with women pilgrims.

The BJP and the VHP have called for a nationwide strike Thursday to protest the cancellation order.

Authorities here claim they were trying to bring the situation under control.

“We are trying our best to keep the situation under control,” divisional commissioner, Jammu, the highest civilian officer of the province, told media.

“Every one is concerned over the situation. We are determined to protect the properties and lives of all citizens.”

Even in the few parts of Jammu not under curfew, normal life remained paralysed with people holding protests and demanding restoration of the land to the shrine board.

Some of the BJP leaders have either been held or kept under house arrest to prevent their participation in protests.

BJP’s state unit president Ashok Khajuria is under house arrest, while former president Nirmal Singh, and party spokesperson Romesh Arora were held while marching with protesters.
Women protesters have come out in large numbers in the border towns of Samba, Vijaypur, Bishnah and Ranbirsingh Pora raising religious slogans.

Angry protesters have rejected all appeals from the government to calm down.
“This is a government of Islamic fundamentalists, and we are not going to call off our agitation because (Chief Minister Ghulam Nabi) Azad says so,” said Ramesh Kumar, a student leader who led protests in Jammu’s walled city.

“We will continue with our agitation till the government restores the land to the shrine board.”

Over 60 injured in Jammu violence

Jammu, July 3 (PTI) In stepped-up violence, over 60 people, including 15 cops, were injured and more than 110 activists of various groups arrested, as protesters defied curfew orders, clashed with police at many places and torched several vehicles in Jammu region over the Amarnath land revocation row.Curfew was extended to Lakhanpur town today after protesters burnt an inter-state toll post there. Nearly 5,000 demonstrators barged into the toll post, clashed with police and CRPF personnel, who resorted to teargas shelling and baton charge, official sources told PTI.They set afire the post and went berserk, damaging dozens of vehicles at Lakhanpur town of Kathua district.A police post was also set afire at Hatli in Kathua where over people, including 10 cops, were injured in teargas shelling and stone pelting. Over 40 people were arrested.In Jammu, defying curfew orders, over 6,000 people gathered at Bantalab and marched towards city. However, police fired teargas shells and baton charged to disperse them.The All Party Migrant Coordination Committee -- a conglomeration of 16 social, trade and political organisations of displaced Kashmiri Pandits -- also led protests and fought pitched battles with police resulting in the injuring of 12 people, including three cops.Protesters also pelted stoned at the house of Congress minister Moula Ram and broke window panes. Over 17 people were injured and 48 arrested in Jammu district, police said. PTI

Mirwaiz hits out at right wing parties

Mirwaiz hits out at right wing parties
Srinagar (PTI): Expressing concern over the deteriorating situation in Jammu region, moderate faction of Hurriyat Conference on Thursday accused right wing parties like BJP, VHP and Bajrang Dal of giving a communal colour to it.

Its chairman Mirwaiz Umer Farooq said some parties with vested interests were targeting a particular community for vote bank politics.

"Some parties like BJP, VHP and Bajrang Dal are trying to give communal colour to the situation. We want to make it clear once again that Kashmiris are not against the Amarnath yatra and have been facilitating for several decades now," Mirwaiz told reporters here.

He said the agitators in the Jammu region should learn a lesson from their counterparts in the valley as none of the Amarnath pilgrims or tourists were harmed during the nine-day agitation against the land transfer order to Shri Amarnath Shrine Board.

"Our struggle has not been against any community or religion. It has been for our rights and our future. The land in question belongs to our brothers from Jammu as much as it belongs to people of Kashmir," the chairman said.

He also alleged that a conspiracy was being hatched to change the demographic character of Jammu and Kashmir by bringing in people from other states of the country and settle them here.