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India Grants Sweeping Powers to Troops in Southern Kashmir
JAMMU, Indian-held Kashmir, Aug 9 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - India's central government granted sweeping powers late Wednesday to security forces and the police in Hindu-dominated southern districts of Kashmir to combat Muslim activists, officials said.
A security committee headed by Home Minister L. K. Advani declared the districts of Jammu and Doda in southern Kashmir as "disturbed," extending sweeping powers of arrest to law enforcing agencies.
Most of northern Kashmir has been declared "disturbed" since 1989, under laws that give extra powers to Indian troops to fight activists.
The decision followed a daring raid Tuesday night by Kashmiri combatants in Jammu's main railway station which left 11 dead and 30 injured.
"The districts of Jammu and Doda have been declared as disturbed under the provisions of the Armed Forces Special Powers Act," a home ministry official said.
Indian-held Kashmir state Chief Minister Farooq Abdullah, who attended the meeting, defended the move.
"Security forces will now be armed with greater powers to combat militancy on a war footing in Kashmir," Abdullah told reporters.
According to BBC news, the extension of the decade-old Disturbed Areas Act allows security forces, including the army, to arrest and detain suspects without a warrant, to open fire without getting clearance from civilian authorities, and to conduct search and cordon operations in Jammu and other Hindu-dominated regions in Muslim-majority Kashmir.
But Abdul Gani Bhat, the chairman of Kashmir's main alliance, the All Party Hurriyat Conference, said that extending the "disturbed area" boundaries would only give license for human rights abuses.
"To declare these districts disturbed areas will not alter the situation under any circumstances," he said.
"The granting of special powers to troops did not produce any change in the Kashmir valley, which was declared a disturbed area much earlier," Bhat told AFP. "It only increased human rights violations by the security forces."
Human rights groups have criticized the laws, arguing that the unfettered powers led to rampant abuse and custodial deaths of suspects.
"Muslims in Jammu have been suffering at the hands of the security forces for years," Bhat said. "I therefore think that the situation may further aggravate rather than ease."
Even pro-India politicians had reservations about the central government's move.
"I have been to all four southern districts recently and security forces are already equipped with all the powers they need," said Mehbooba Mufti, a leader of the pro-India Peoples Democratic Party (PDP).
"There is no military solution to the Kashmir issue," she said.
Four days before the Jammu train station raid, Muslim activists were blamed for the deaths of 15 Hindus in Doda, a mountainous district bordering Pakistan which has come under attacks eight times since August 2000.
The Indian army was put on high alert in Jammu Wednesday and soldiers staged "flag marches" in the city, where a curfew was imposed after the shootout at the station.
"The army has not been deployed as such but it has been put on high alert in Jammu," a defense ministry spokesman told AFP, adding the city authorities had sought the military's help in this winter capital of Kashmir.
Witnesses said contingents of combat troops in battle gear drove across Jammu, where rightwing Hindus held protests against the station shootout, and imposed a curfew.
In Rajouri town near the Pakistan border, police fired in the air and used teargas to disperse hundreds of stone-throwing protestors denouncing the state and central governments for failing to protect civilians. Ten people were injured.
Officials said the curfew was extended to Udhampur, 40 miles from Jammu, as a precaution.
The dead from Tuesday nights attack included two women, two soldiers, a Muslim activist and a Hindu holy man.
India and Pakistan have fought two of their three wars over the scenic Himalayan territory of Kashmir. The separatist movement, which started in 1989, has cost up to 35,000 lives - Pakistan, which puts the death toll at 70,000 claims that it provides only moral and diplomatic support to the Kashmiri freedom struggle.
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