VIDEO: Separatist protester arrested for trying to hold demo marking activist’s execution
Most parts of Indian-controlled Kashmir remained under curfew on Tuesday as separatist activists tried to hold protests to mark the execution anniversary of an independence leader.
About a dozen of pro-independence protesters were detained by police in the heart of Srinagar, the main city in Indian Kashmir, as they tried to stage a rally.
Jammu-Kashmir Liberation Front founder and Kashmiri independence leader Mohammed Maqbool Bhat was hanged in a New Delhi jail on 11 February 1984 after being convicted of killing an intelligence officer.
Shops and businesses remained closed in Srinagar and most people stayed indoors, while police and paramilitary soldiers patrolled the lakeside city’s deserted streets.
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The separatists want Bhat’s remains to be returned to Kashmir for burial.
“This strike is in the memory of late Maqbool Bhat and Afzal Guru and we demand that the mortal remains, which are buried at the Tihar jail be given back to the families, so that we can bury them in Kashmir,” said businessman Bilal Furkani.
Bhat’s family have asked the Indian government several times for the remains but have been refused.
The government has never given an official reason, but it is thought that they fear the creation of a martyr’s shrine to Bhat.
Many parts of the Himalayan region were under curfew on Tuesday, with major roads blocked by razor wire and barricades, as authorities sought to prevent anti-India protests and possible violence during a three-day strike that began on Sunday and is staged every year.
Last year, Mohammed Afzal Guru was secretly hanged on 9 February in the same New Delhi jail for involvement in a 2001 Parliament attack that killed 14 people, including five gunmen.
Kashmiri separatists have long demanded the region be given independence or be allowed to merge with neighbouring Pakistan.
Since 1989, an armed uprising and an ensuing crackdown in the region have killed an estimated 68-thousand people.
Kashmir, a mostly Muslim territory is divided into an Indian-administered region and a Pakistani-held portion.
Both countries have claimed the mountain territory in its entirety, though anti-India sentiment runs deep throughout.
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