India stops Kashmir newspapers from printing amid unrest

Several leading newspapers in Indian-administered Kashmir say they have been have been raided by police seeking to end a week of violent protests.

Around 36 people have been killed and 3,100 wounded, majority by police fire, in the worst outbreak of violence in six years in the disputed territory also claimed by India’s arch rival Pakistan. On way, they were confronted by an irate crowd and the bloody clash followed. The US in its position as the world’s sole superpower must not remain quiet on the issue of human rights violations and the killings in Kashmir following the emergence of reports of widespread violence and civilian deaths in worldwide media. In many parts of Kashmir including Bijbehara, a power supply has been snapped with locals terming it as a deliberate move to suppress anti-India anger ignited by the killing of Hizbul Mujahideen commander Burhan Muzaffar Wani by Indian troops on July 8. Clashes between the protesters and forces have left the 39 persons dead and over 3100 wounded.

“Security forces have been instructed to allow movement of patients along with their attendants”.

This comes after police on Saturday seized copies of Kashmir’s largest circulated newspaper, “Greater Kashmir” following midnight raids. “We have not seen these many and these kinds of injuries to eyes anywhere”, Dr. Sudershan Khokhar, who heads the team of ophthalmologists, told reporters in the city’s general hospital where more than 100 eye operations have been performed since Saturday. No formal gag order has been issued but the authorities have privately justified the curbs saying these were unavoidable in order to discourage “rumour-mongering” which, they insisted, was “adding fuel to the fire”.

He said the situation across the Valley so far is peaceful.

Mobile internet services continued to remain suspended for the seventh day today while trains are also off the tracks in the Valley as a precautionary measure. Even the data speed of broadband services available on fixed lines was reduced.

Cable television services have, however, been resumed after service providers took off all Pakistan TV channels and two private Indian channels.

“The situation in the valley remained more or less under control”, a police spokesperson told IANS. Tens of thousands of people, mostly civilians, have died in the fighting since 1989, when the armed rebellion against Indian rule erupted.

All schools, colleges and universities in the Valley were also shut down. The muted USA response gave the impression that the U.S. government takes the Kashmir issue as purely an internal Indian matter, and that the United States was minding its own business not getting involved in what it calls a bilateral issue between Pakistan and India.

Thiruvanathpuram/New Delhi: The first batch of 156 people, including nine women and three children, evacuated from war-torn South Sudan arrived in India on board an Air Force plane.