Indian authorities relax Kashmir curfew on 7th day

SRINAGAR, India: Violence ebbed in Indian Kashmir on Saturday and authorities relaxed the curfew for six hours to allow people to buy food and other essentials, police said.

Two groups of hundreds of protesters briefly came out onto the streets of Kashmir's largest city, Srinagar, but dispersed after raising banners saying "We want independence from India" and "Release separatist leaders."

There was no confrontation with thousands of security forces deployed to enforce the curfew, a police officer said on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media.

The officer said 109 activists from the All Parties Hurriyat Conference, an umbrella group of separatist political and religious leaders, have been arrested since the curfew was imposed last Sunday.

Two months of angry protests have left at least 42 people dead, most of them killed as soldiers opened fire on Muslim protesters demanding an end to Indian rule in the disputed Himalayan region. The violence is the worst to hit Kashmir in more than a decade.

Kashmir has been divided between Hindu-majority India and Muslim Pakistan since 1947, when the two fought their first war over the region in the aftermath of Britain's bloody partition of the subcontinent. Both countries claim Kashmir in its entirety.

On Friday, the day Muslims usually congregate to pray together, the curfew was relaxed briefly in the evening, but police did not allow prayers at the main Jamia Mosque for the first time in 17 years. The chief priest of the mosque was put under house arrest and was freed later in the day.

Authorities arrested another senior separatist leader, Shabir Ahmed Shah, on Friday for "breach of peace," senior police official S.M. Sahai said.

Three other top separatist leaders, Syed Ali Shah Geelani, Mirwaiz Omer Farooq and Mohammed Yasin Malik, were arrested on Monday.

The Jammu-Kashmir Liberation Front, a pro-independence group, appealed Saturday to the international community to ask India to immediately release separatist leaders.

"It's not a curfew, but as if emergency rule has been imposed here," Bashir Ahmed Bhat, the party's vice chairman, said in a statement. "All of Kashmir has been converted into a prison."

The crisis began in June when Muslims launched protests over a government plan to transfer land to a Hindu shrine in Kashmir. The plan was quickly scrapped, angering the region's Hindu minority, but the Muslim protests have snowballed into a broader anti-India movement.

The office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights on Thursday urged a thorough investigation of the killings that have occurred in the unrest. It also called on Indian authorities to respect the people's right to protest peacefully and "comply with international human rights principles in controlling the demonstrators."

India reacted angrily, saying the statement was "uncalled-for and irresponsible."

There have been numerous separatist movements in the Indian-ruled portion of Kashmir. Most were peaceful until 1989, when Islamic insurgents took up arms hoping to win independence for the territory or its merger with Pakistan.

The fighting has killed an estimated 68,000 people.