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India-controlled Kashmir Srinagar – A series of targeted killings of civilians in Indian-controlled Kashmir this week has caused fear among minority communities, and many Hindus have begun to leave the area.
On Thursday, a Sikh principal and her Hindu colleague were shot dead in a school on the outskirts of Srinagar, the main city of the region. This was the third attack in a week. Officials said the attackers first checked the teacher’s ID, then isolated a 46-year-old Sikh woman Supinder Kaur and a local Hindu teacher Deepak Chand, and then shot them to death on the campus.
In the recent series of killings, a total of seven people were killed, which was attributed to the rebels who rebelled against Indian rule.
The authorities have asked members of the Hindu community not to risk going out. But this did not eliminate their fears. Some of them have quietly left the area, bringing back memories of the 1990s when the Hindu community was fleeing.
After an armed rebellion broke out in 1989 and some members of the community were targeted, tens of thousands of people from a small Hindu community were forced to leave, mainly to the southern city of Jammu.
However, despite the precarious security situation, about 800 families have decided to stay where they are. They include the family of 23-year-old *Rudresh Chaku from Srinagar, who graduated in computer science.
“The recent attack reminds people of memories from the 1990s,” Chaku, a member of the Hindu Bandit community, told Al Jazeera.
“I was not born in the early 1990s, but today my parents have witnessed flashbacks to those times, and I can see up close how difficult those times will be,” Chaku.
The young computer graduate saw his future in Kashmir, but said his parents were worried.
“They regret not having immigrated in the 1990s. If these things continue, we can’t stay here anymore,” Chaku said, adding that the family had not left the house for the past five days.
“Although my Muslim friends have been seeking any help and support that made me feel safe, the fear still exists,” he said.
Hundreds detained
The police have detained hundreds of people because they promised to bring the perpetrators to justice.
An unnamed police official said that during the raid in the area, more than 300 people were detained, most of them young people. The official said that most of these people had participated in “stoning and violent protests” in the past.
Kashmir is one of the most militarized regions in the world [File: Dar Yasin/AP Photo]The authorities tried to assure minority communities that the recent killings should not be viewed through a public prism and emphasized that of the 28 civilians killed by the insurgents this year, 21 were local Muslims. The police said these deadly attacks were part of a larger pattern of killings of civilians in the turbulent area, where deadly violence has taken place for decades.
The most recent attack began with the killing of Majid Ahmad Gojri and Mohammad Shafi Dar in the old city of Srinagar. On Tuesday, the rebels killed him in the shop of a famous pharmacist Makhan Lal Bindroo in Srinagar. He was a Hindu. Later that day, two more people were killed, including a Muslim taxi driver in the northern city of Bandipora.
The police chief of the area, Vijay Kumar, issued a statement shortly after the killing, saying: “We call on the public, especially the minority communities, not to panic.”
Muslim religious leaders unite
Muslim religious leaders in the area condemned the killings in mosques and demanded that people take steps to make ethnic minorities feel safe in the area.
Mirwaiz Umar Farooq, a senior pro-freedom leader, condemned the killings and said he was “deeply saddened.”
“When militarization is enshrined as a national policy of dealing with ongoing conflicts rather than seeking to resolve them, the result is bloodshed and loss of precious lives,” said the senior leader, who has mostly been under house arrest in the past two years. It said in a statement after Article 370 was repealed in August 2019.
Indian paramilitary soldiers stood guard next to a group of teachers. They were sitting in a government school. Two teachers were shot and killed by the attackers on the outskirts of Srinagar. [Dar Yasin/AP Photo]The killings aroused dissatisfaction and anger in the region and throughout India, with opposition parties criticizing the deteriorating security situation of the ruling Indian Nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).
Interior Minister Amit Shah is a close friend of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, and the surge in violence has been particularly criticized because Kashmir falls within the jurisdiction of his department. Two years ago, the Shah played an important role in abolishing the limited autonomy of the region and placing it under central rule.
The Shah held an emergency security meeting in New Delhi, the capital of India, to review security measures in the disputed Muslim-majority area. Pakistan and India both claim to own the entire Himalayan region, but only manage a part of it.
Many pro-Indian politicians said that the changes in land and residence laws have aroused the concerns of the local Muslim population, who are worried that the BJP government’s goal is to bring demographic changes in the region.
The former chief minister of the region, Mehbooba Mufti, stated that “the government has made the whole situation public”.
“these things [civilian killings] Unfortunately, they are the result of the government’s very repressive, strict and tough policies. People feel more alienated, and if you say something, you will be hit by the anti-terrorism law. The medium space or middle ground has been completely erased. Now, it’s either belligerent or security forces,” she told Al Jazeera.
‘More obvious’
Sanjay Tickoo, chairman of Kashmiri Pandits Sangharsh Samiti (KPSS), said that in the current tension, “the Muslim majority population is also shrinking and the fear is more pronounced”.
Tickoo said that he kept receiving desperate calls from members of the Kashmir community.
“…I told them we overcame the 1990s, and this will pass. If someone knocks on the door, I will lock the door of my house, and I will go upstairs to see who is coming,” Tickoo said, adding that according to Information shared by his community members, 70 families, about 300 people, left Kashmir for Jammu for safety reasons.
Another local Hindu organization, Citizens for Justice and Peace (CJP), has started an online petition to Manoj Sinha, the chief executive of the region, for protection.
“The more than 100 KPSS memos failed to elicit any specific response, and a ruthless regime also ignored the two hunger strikes organized by Kashmir Pandit,” wrote an online petition that has been signed by more than 700 people.
Most families who left in recent days returned to Kashmir after 2010 because they provided them with work and housing under the Prime Minister’s rehabilitation plan for immigrants. Officials say that in the past 10 years, nearly 3,800 Hindu families have returned to Muslim-majority areas.
But those who decided to stay in Kashmir in the 1990s mostly continued to live with their Muslim neighbors.
Local Hindus working in government departments have temporarily been granted leave. Students from various states in India have been provided with safe accommodation provided by their institutions.
‘Living in fear’
In the turbulent Pulwama area of southern Kashmir, a local Hindu family has lived among their Muslim neighbors for decades, and because of widespread fear, they refused to talk to Al Jazeera.But Sandeep, a 30-year-old engineer living in the Old City of Srinagar, told Al Jazeera, “More [Hindus] You can leave in the next few days.”
“I live with my sister and mother, but they are now worried about my life. When I left home, my family kept calling. It was like a reenactment in the 1990s. I was still very young at the time. When I get older, I would never choose to stay here,” he said, adding that “It’s better to leave than to live in fear.”
Members of the Sikh community carried the body of the murdered government school teacher Supinder Kaur in the funeral procession in Srinagar [Mukhtar Khan/AP Photo]“It’s impossible to stay at home all the time because we have to earn money to eat. Now, we don’t know if we will go home safely at night,” he said, adding that “a few people deserve the government’s security and one-off solutions. “
The Bharatiya Janata Party, which claims to be a proponent of the cause of Hinduism, promised to bring displaced Hindus back to the Kashmir Valley, where there are approximately 7 million people, most of whom are Muslims.
Since coming to power in 2014, it has been pursuing a tough policy in Kashmir, refusing to talk to politicians who support freedom. Two years ago, it suspended local councils and threw hundreds of pro-Indian politicians, including the former chief minister, into prison-a move that was criticized by the opposition.
After the abolition of Article 370, which gave Kashmir a special status in August 2019, tens of thousands of soldiers were deployed to the area, which is already considered to be one of the most militarized areas in the world.
The government said that the unprecedented move two years ago was to eradicate “terrorism”-but critics now say that the government’s tough policies do not seem to work.
The relationship between Sikhism and Muslims
On Friday, hundreds of angry Sikhs attended the funeral of the murdered principal Kaul and marched through the streets of Srinagar to express their dissatisfaction with the “shocking incident.”
Jagmohan Raina, the head of the All-Party Sikh Coordinating Committee (APSCC), an advocacy organization for 150,000 Sikhs in the region, told Al Jazeera that “ordinary Muslims have nothing to do with such incidents.”
“We have made a decision at the community level to prohibit women from entering the office until further decisions are made,” he said.
But Sikh leaders like Reina are also conscious. He said the community will fight against factors that try to create religious differences between Muslims and Sikhs due to these events.
“We are not afraid of Kashmir civilians, but those who are used in these targeted killings,” Reina said.
Despite decades of turmoil, Sikhs and Muslims in the region have generally maintained friendly relations for many years.
“US [Sikhs] It has been an important part of this community for 500 years. We are not going anywhere,” Reina said.
“Protection of ethnic minorities”
The global human rights organization Human Rights Watch (HRW) requires the government to take measures to protect the ethnic minorities in Kashmir.
“The authorities should protect the ethnic minorities in Kashmir and ensure that justice is done for victims of abuse by the security forces,” Human Rights Watch South Asia director Minaksh Ganguli said in a statement.
She said: “The Indian government’s failure to face up to its own rights violations has contributed to the cycle of cruel violence in Kashmir.”
Ganguly said that this kind of violence will not end if “justice is not done to past and present abuses, and people’s rights and freedoms are not respected.”
Kashmiri woman mourns the death of Supinder Kaur at her residence [Al Jazeera]The Resistance Front (TRF), a rebel group, claimed responsibility for the recent killings. The armed group is believed to be a branch of Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), which first surfaced in March last year.
After Article 370 was repealed in 2019, the police immediately referred to it as the LeT Local Front “initiated by Pakistan”.
Police sources told Al Jazeera that the insurgents are taking advantage of the heated debate about changes in residence and land laws that have led to “demographic changes” in the area.
“The terrorists are targeting ethnic minorities and Hindu nationalists among Kashmir Muslims, including local BJP workers, to fabricate narratives about demographic changes. In the past two years, about 23 BJP workers have been killed by terrorists. , Most of them are Muslims,” an official said. “But these strategies will not succeed.”
*Change name to protect identity
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