Police in Indian-controlled Kashmir fired tear gas in a clash with hundreds of rock-throwing protesters demanding an independent probe into nearly 1,000 unidentified graves recently discovered in the region.
About 350 people gathered for a protest that began peacefully on Friday but turned violent when protesters began to pelt police and soldiers with stones, a local police officer said on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media.
At least six protesters and two television cameramen were injured, the police officer said.
The protests began after a top separatist leader, Mirwaiz Omer Farooq, demanded a probe by international human rights groups during Friday prayers in the main mosque in Srinagar, the main city in India’s Jammu-Kashmir state.
The new spate of protests come after the Association of Parents of Disappeared People, a prominent local rights group, said in a report last month it discovered 940 unidentified graves scattered in cemeteries around the violence-wracked town of Uri. The town is located near the Line of Control, the de facto frontier that divides Indian and Pakistani-controlled Kashmir.
The rights group said some of the graves may hold the bodies of innocent people who disappeared and were killed by Indian government forces.
The Indian army has dismissed the report as an attempt to malign the military.
Earlier on Friday, hundreds of people offered funeral prayers for the unidentified people buried in the unmarked graves.
Human rights groups say an estimated 8,000 to 10,000 people have disappeared since violence erupted in Kashmir in 1989.
More than a dozen rebel groups in Indian-controlled Kashmir have been fighting for independence or a union with predominantly Muslim Pakistan. More than 68,000 people have died in the conflict.
The Indian government says most of the people who have disappeared in the conflict are Kashmiri youths who crossed into Pakistan for weapons training.
Kashmir is divided between India and Pakistan, but the territory is claimed by both countries and has been the cause of two of their three wars since they won independence from Britain in 1947.
‘IN A DIFFERENT PLACE’: The envoy first visited Shanghai, where he attended a Chinese basketball playoff match, and is to meet top officials in Beijing tomorrow US Secretary of State Antony Blinken yesterday arrived in China on his second visit in a year as the US ramps up pressure on its rival over its support for Russia while also seeking to manage tensions with Beijing. The US diplomat tomorrow is to meet China’s top brass in Beijing, where he is also expected to plead for restraint as Taiwan inaugurates president-elect William Lai (賴清德), and to raise US concerns on Chinese trade practices. However, Blinken is also seeking to stabilize ties, with tensions between the world’s two largest economies easing since his previous visit in June last year. At the
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese
RIVER TRAGEDY: Local fishers and residents helped rescue people after the vessel capsized, while motorbike taxis evacuated some of the injured At least 58 people going to a funeral died after their overloaded river boat capsized in the Central African Republic’s (CAR) capital, Bangui, the head of civil protection said on Saturday. “We were able to extract 58 lifeless bodies,” Thomas Djimasse told Radio Guira. “We don’t know the total number of people who are underwater. According to witnesses and videos on social media, the wooden boat was carrying more than 300 people — some standing and others perched on wooden structures — when it sank on the Mpoko River on Friday. The vessel was heading to the funeral of a village chief in