NEW YORK: Much of Srinagar has been burnt down, Indian security forces and paramilitary police have been accused of haying “deliberately carried out arson that has spread destruction throughout Srinagar”, killing 125 people last week alone, reports the New York Times in its Sunday edition.
In a front page, first lead article headlined “Indian troops are blamed as Kashmir violence rises much of capital burned and 125 die in struggle for a separate Stale”, the Times reports that in the last two weeks, the Kashmir valley, “has been engulfed by a Storm of violence A seemingly endless tide of death, arson, torture, Kidnapping and disappearances has swept the valley and large sections of Srinagar have been burned.
The Times says: “Much of the killing and distinction has been done by Indian troops, according Io human rights groups and witnesses in the Valley. Although, some of it is also blamed on the “separatist guerillas” that attacked the Indian troops.”
A senior Official of the Indian Border Security Force told the Times correspondent: “The blaze in Srinagar, the first major conflagration to consume a significant section of the city, was set by rampaging Border Security Force.
A cop came and told me the BSE is burning everything in Sight”, said the senior official to Times, who would speak only with an assurance of anonymity. “I asked him how he knew? He said “one of the BSF men borrowed a matchbox from me.
But the Times observes that the “burning of Srinagar was not the first arson attack by paramilitary forces. In carly January, the Border Security Force bummed down a Swath of Sopore, a town of 70,000 people after guerillas ambushed Indian troops and killed one soldier.”
Indian paramilitary troops swept into town, sprinkled kerosene inside more than 200 shops and homes and set them on fire, according to local residents, journalists and human rights groups who visited the town. Even the Indian government, when the evidence became overwhelming, conceded that its troops had gone on the rampage, writes the Times.
In the detailed account, which spans eight columns of the international pages, the Times interviewed a senior civil servant, Ashok Jaitly, in New Delhi, who said: “It’s very bad; I don’t know what’s happening. Obviously, something has gone wrong somewhere, seriously wrong.”
The new governor of Kashmir, a retired army general, K.V.Knshna Rao, and his senior adviser refused an interview On the situation to the American paper, after first agreeing to it.
Several Kashmiri leaders spoke of fear, despair. “Everybody is afraid” said Burhanuddin Farooqi, a former High Court judge, who now chronicles human rights abuses in the Valley,a compulsion that has prompted many people to say that he will be the next victims of the violence, “Everybody feels insecure, especially someone like me involved in human rights issue,” the Times quotes him as saying.
Commenting on the Times article, Kashmiri leaders living in the US vowed to take their petitions and memorandums {o the American political leaders in Washington and to the Secretary General of the United Nations.
They also indicated that they would also hold rallies here to draw attention of the Americans towards the Kashmir situation.
The Kashmiris observed: “The, preoccupation of Pakistanis with the internal political crisis in the country has given the Indian government a chance to turn full throttle on containing the unrest in the occupied Kashmir, with massive force and by killing, raping and burning down Srinagar and its people.
Article extracted from this publication >> May 14, 1993
