Defying curfew and other restrictions, thousands of people took to streets in south, north and central Kashmir on Tuesday against India’s brutalities against the Kashmiri people after revocation of occupied valley’s special status, the Kashmir Media Service reported.
Scores of people were injured when occupying forces fired bullets, pellets and teargas shells on protesters in Soura area of Srinagar. A handicrafts store owner, Sameer Wani, told reporters that it was a ‘do-or-die’ situation for Kashmiris amid deliberate destruction of their businesses and trampling of basic rights by the Indian security forces. Many protesters said they were worried about their teenaged sons, who were abducted by the troops during nocturnal raids.
Meanwhile, people in the occupied valley are facing severe shortage of food, medicines and other commodities due to unabated curfew and communication blockade, which entered the 23rd consecutive day on Tuesday. Markets and schools are shut while all internet and communication services including landline phone, mobile and TV channels are closed in the valley and five districts of Jammu region. Local newspapers are offline while most of them failed to bring out their print editions.
Over 10,000 Kashmiris including hundreds of political leaders and workers like Syed Ali Geelani, Mirwaiz Umar Farooq and Ashraf Sehrai continue to remain under house arrest or in jails.
The authorities arrested a doctor, Omar Salim, who is a urologist at the Government Medical College, Srinagar, a day after he informed the media about the terrible health crisis in Kashmir because of long-drawn clampdown by India in the territory.
Unidentified gunmen abducted a man and subsequently killed him in Tral area of Pulwama district.
Leaders belonging to various political parties including Bharatiya Janata Party at a meeting in Drass rejected the bifurcation of Jammu and Kashmir into two Union Territories – Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh. They said that they will remain a part of Jammu and Kashmir.
Addressing a press conference in Lucknow, Samajwadi Party leader Akhilesh Yadav hit out at the Indian government for restricting the movement of people in Jammu and Kashmir saying what happened in Kashmir can also happen to the people of Uttar Pradesh.
Meanwhile, Indian authorities arrested a doctor in IHK for requesting the Indian government to restore telephone and Internet facilities for all hospitals and medical establishments in the region, BBC reported.
“This is not a protest, this is a request. Please restore landline and Internet connectivity for all hospitals and medical establishments in [occupied] Jammu and Kashmir,” read the placard being carried by Dr Umar.
Before his arrest, the doctor talked to the BBC and warned that the prevailing situation in IHK might cause a humanitarian crisis.
“We are [otherwise] able to provide free-of-cost treatment to patients below the poverty line in government and private hospitals under the [Indian] National Health Protection Scheme. But due to lack of connectivity, we have not been able to provide medical treatment to [needy patients] for the last three weeks. Now we are observing that several patients have been arranging medicines for their dialysis and chemotherapy treatments on their own.”
“The connection between the Internet and healthcare system is that the healthcare scheme is entirely an Internet-based scheme. [Under the scheme,] each and every patient is issued a card. The patient brings the card to hospital whenever he visits a doctor,” he said, adding that the card is swiped and the doctor concerned – with the help of the patient’s data – determines his treatment and provides him free medicines from the government’s stores.
