At least 30 people were injured in India-administered Kashmir’s summer capital of Jammu on Saturday when Hindu protestors clashed with police to protest the cancelation of transfer of land for a popular Hindu pilgrimage.
Jammu, a Hindu majority region in the mostly Muslim state has been observing a shut-down since Thursday against the state government’s revoking its earlier order of transferring 40 hectares of forest land to a trust that organizes the annual pilgrimage to the Amarnath cave.
All business, commercial establishments and educational institutes remained closed and traffic was off the roads in Jammu city.
Administration officials said 30 people, including protestors and eight policemen, were injured when clashes erupted at several places in Jammu. The demonstrators also set ablaze vehicles and damaged many others.
Police baton-charged demonstrators and fired tear-gas shells to prevent stone-pelting crowds from entering the city center.
The violent protests over the land row picked up after a local committed suicide on Wednesday saying he was “sacrificing his life for the cause.”
“A policeman was critically injured as a mob in the suburbs of Jammu hit him with stones and later thrashed him,” a police official said, requesting anonymity.
The unrest against the government’s transfer of land to the Shri Amarnath Shrine Board, a trust that organizes the Amarnath pilgrimage, began last month in the Muslim-dominated Kashmir valley.
Muslim separatist leaders, who initially called for the protests, said the decision was part of a conspiracy to settle non-Muslims in the region with the aim of altering the demographic character of the state.
The violence claimed five lives and injured more than 500 people before the order was revoked on July 1, drawing the ire of Hindus.
Besides Jammu, the epicenter of the protests, other cities and towns have also witnessed violent Hindu protests this month.
Kashmir, a picturesque region, has been hit by protracted violence and bloodshed since a separatist revolt peaked in the late 1980s.
Government data indicates that more than 40,000 people — civilians, militants and security forces — have been killed in Indian-administered Kashmir since the 1990s.
‘DEVOTED GUARDIANS’: A Chinese foreign affairs official said his nation’s diplomats would not ‘sit and do nothing while our country’s interests are being harmed’ China yesterday signaled no letup in its combative approach to foreign policy in a third term for Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) as leader despite criticism from many Western diplomats that the so-called “wolf warrior” stance has been counterproductive. As relations with the West have soured over issues from trade and human rights to the COVID-19 pandemic, Chinese diplomats have often been confrontational on the public stage, including on social media, a stridency that some critics see as intended for a domestic audience that nonetheless hurts its foreign ties. “We Chinese will not capitulate. We will not sit and do nothing while
AT WASHINGTON SUMMIT: The agreement between the US and 14 Pacific nations came half a year after the Solomon Islands struck a security deal with China The Solomon Islands has joined 13 other Pacific nations in signing a wide-reaching US-led partnership agreement, after early indications it would refuse. The 10-point US-Pacific Partnership deal was announced by the White House on Thursday evening, following the first-ever meeting between a US president and the leaders of every major Pacific nation. It includes commitments for increased action on climate change, economic development and security cooperation. Earlier, US President Joe Biden committed more than US$810 million to a new Pacific initiative. “A great deal of the history of our world is going to be written in the Indo-Pacific over the coming years
Prominent Chinese commentator Hu Xijin (胡錫進) on Sunday said that as China ponders its COVID-19 policies, epidemic experts need to speak out and China ought to conduct comprehensive research and make any studies transparent to the public. Hu’s unusual call on Chinese social media for candor and transparency earned him 34,000 likes on the popular Sina Weibo microblogging platform, as well as frank responses from commentators in a normally tightly policed Internet quick to censor voices deemed a risk to social stability. China’s top leaders warned in May amid the COVID-19 lockdown of Shanghai and widespread restrictions in the Chinese capital, Beijing,
ENVIRONMENTAL DISASTER: Most of the escaped gas is methane, the second biggest contributor to climate change and a ‘potent greenhouse gas,’ an oceanographer said Denmark on Tuesday said it believed “deliberate actions” by unknown perpetrators were behind big leaks — which seismologists said followed powerful explosions — in two natural gas pipelines running under the Baltic Sea from Russia to Germany. European leaders and experts pointed to possible sabotage amid the energy standoff with Russia provoked by the war in Ukraine. Although filled with gas, neither pipeline is currently supplying it to Europe. “It is the authorities’ clear assessment that these are deliberate actions — not accidents,” Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen said. However, she added that “there is no information indicating who could be behind it.” Frederiksen
RSS