Some phone lines restored in Indian-held Kashmir

By News Desk

SRINAGAR: Seventeen out of around 100 telephone exchanges were restored on Saturday in the occupied Kashmir Valley, the local police chief told AFP, after an almost two-week communications blackout.

New Delhi cut landlines, mobile phones and the internet in early August as it stripped the Muslim-majority region of its autonomy. It also sent thousands of extra troops to the area and imposed severe restrictions on the movement of people.

Dilbag Singh, police chief in occupied Jammu and Kashmir which encompasses the Kashmir Valley, said mobile internet had also been restored to five areas of the more peaceful region of Jammu.

“We have opened up 17 telephone exchanges. Landline connections have been opened in some parts of each district in Kashmir,” Singh said. Around two dozen people who spoke to an AFP reporter in Srinagar, on Saturday morning said their landlines were still dead however.

The disputed territory’s Chief Secretary BVR Subrahmanyam had said on Friday there would be a “gradual” restoration of phone lines over the weekend. He added though that the easing would “(keep) in mind the constant threat posed by terrorist organisations in using mobile connectivity to organised terrorist actions.” Government offices opened on Friday and school would resume “area-wise” after the weekend from Monday, he said.

The lockdown has failed to stop public anger boiling to the surface however. On Friday in Srinagar several hundred protesters clashed with police, who responded with tear gas and pellet-firing shotguns, another AFP reporter on the ground said.

Protesters hurled stones and used shop hoardings and tin sheets as improvised shields, as police shot dozens of rounds into the crowd. No injuries were reported. The clashes broke out more than 3,000 people rallied in the Srinagar locality of Soura that has witnessed regular protests since New Delhi’s surprise move on August 5. A week earlier around 8,000 people staged a protest, with police also responding with tear gas and pellet-firing shotguns, residents said. On Saturday morning, most shops remained closed in Srinagar with people out buying essential items.

“We want peace and nothing else but they have kept us under this lockdown like a sheep while taking decisions about us,” resident Tariq Madri told AFP. “Even my nine-year old son asked me why they had locked us inside,” he said.

Mohammed Altaf Malik, 30, said people were angry about the stripping of Kashmir’s special status “and the way it was done”. “We were locked down and not even asked,” he told AFP as he went to visit a sick neighbour in hospital.

“There is widespread corruption and the police here has made it a business to pick up any people it wants and then ask for money to release them from detention. We don’t see anything changing from this for ordinary people like us,” he said. “I want the government to know that this aggression and aggressive policies don’t work on the ground,” said Adnan Rashid, 24, an engineering student.