Virus lockdown shuts Kashmir year after autonomy is stripped

Authorities on Wednesday enforced security restrictions in many parts of Indian-controlled Kashmir, a year after New Delhi revoked the disputed region’s semi-autonomy in a decision that set off anger and economic ruin amid a harsh security clampdown.

Officials lifted a curfew in the restive region’s main city of Srinagar late Tuesday, but said restrictions on public movement, transport and commercial activities would continue because of the coronavirus pandemic.

Government forces erected steel barricades and razor wire across many roads, bridges and intersections. Shops and businesses remained shut and police and soldiers stopped residents at checkpoints, only letting an occasional vehicle or pedestrians pass.

Several residents said government forces stopped them at checkpoints, saying the curfew was still in place.

“You call it a curfew or virus lockdown, the fact is that we’re under a brutal siege and this siege is a year old now,” said Ishfaq Ahmed, a Srinagar resident.

On Aug. 5, 2019, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalist government stripped Jammu and Kashmir’s statehood, scrapped its separate constitution and removed inherited protections on land and jobs.

The region was also split into two federal territories — Ladakh and Jammu-Kashmir. Following the tectonic move, Indian authorities enforced an information blackout and a security clampdown in Kashmir for months. Thousands of Kashmiri youths and pro-independence leaders, as well as pro-India Kashmiri politicians, were arrested. Hundreds of them are still incarcerated.

As some of the restrictions were eased, India enforced another harsh lockdown to combat the spread of the coronavirus, deepening the economic crisis in the restive region.

In Ladakh’s Muslim-majority Kargil district, where people have resented India’s move, religious and political groups demanded revocation of the order, calling Aug. 5 a “black day.” Businesses and shops remained closed in most of the district.

Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan demanded Wednesday that the international community “force India to reverse its present course against the Kashmiri people.”

“Pakistan will always be with its brothers and sisters” in Indian-controlled Kashmir, Khan said in a statement.

On Tuesday, Khan unveiled a new map of Pakistan that included Indian-held Kashmir and Junagadh, part of the western Indian state of Gujrat, in the Muslim-majority country’s boundaries for the first time in 70 years. India rejected the move as “an exercise in political absurdity.”

The status of Kashmir has been a key point of dispute between Pakistan and India since the two split after the end of British colonial rule. They each control part of Kashmir and have fought two wars over their rival claims.

Initially, the anti-India movement in the Indian-controlled portion of Kashmir was largely peaceful, but after a series of political blunders, broken promises and a crackdown on dissent, Kashmiris launched a full-blown armed revolt in 1989.