Kashmir’s top separatist has warned India’s heavy-handed crackdown on protests in the Muslim-majority region could trigger a renewed violent upsurge in the long-running separatist revolt.
Mirwaiz Umar Farooq, also the disputed region’s most prominent cleric, said New Delhi needed to accept that Kashmiris were as opposed as ever to Indian rule and a referendum on self-determination was the only way out of the crisis.
“We will continue to fight peacefully and politically,” Farooq said in an interview, which had to be conducted by telephone within Srinagar because he is under house arrest.
“[However] If India pushes us too hard to the wall, tomorrow you can’t really ignore the fact the youth might be angered and forced to resort again to arms,” Farooq said.
Militant violence has fallen sharply since nuclear-armed India and Pakistan began a peace process in 2004 aimed at settling all outstanding issues including the future of Kashmir, which they both claim in full.
But in the past few months, the Kashmir valley has witnessed the biggest pro-independence demonstrations since the revolt erupted in 1989, triggering a violent crackdown by Indian security forces.
Thousands of police and federal paramilitary reinforcements have been deployed in the already heavily militarized city of Srinagar to keep the peace during the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan.
Farooq, 34, and two other top separatist leaders — Syed Ali Geelani and Yasin Malik — have been placed under house arrest as security forces struggle to contain public anger.
India should be told by the “world community not to use brute force and intimidate the people,” said Farooq, who was catapulted by his father’s assassination in 1990 into the hereditary position of chief Muslim cleric for the area.
The massive protests, which peaked last month, were triggered by a state government plan to donate land for use by a Hindu trust which oversees an annual Hindu pilgrimage in the Kashmir valley.
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