Kashmir, life under curfew

Srinagar (India), December 27, 2008. - Back to home before dark, avoid contact with the paramilitaries and to stockpile staples are some informal rules used by the Kashmiris to meet the continuing curfews .
"If half past six I'm not home, my family lives a real drama. Your first thought is you have had any problems with the soldiers, so get calling like crazy, "says Altaf Efe, an economist at Srinagar.
At the heart of Kashmir's summer capital is current setting curfews, enacted by the authorities to deal calls for the strike - "hartaal" - the separatist Hurriyat Conference.
In days of protests or restriction of movement, shops, banks and schools throw the lock and citizens do not leave home, so that the city offers a desolate, only altered by the massive presence of thousands of paramilitaries.
"You have to return soldiers to their barracks. The insurgency has lost a lot and yet, the number of soldiers remains the same. There is no balance, "he complained in an interview with Efe the People's Democratic Party president, Mehbooba Mufti.
According to the Chamber of Commerce, the Valley of Kashmir has been in the past six months one hundred days of curfews formal or informal, which means a daily loss of 14 million.
The center of Srinagar is usually also the scene of demonstrations organized by the separatist Hurriyat Conference, who asked his followers to boycott regional elections recently concluded.
"Kashmir is that explains a dependent-there are hundreds of thousands of soldiers. It is easy to understand: you go out and the first thing you see is a rifle. It's not very nice. "
However, the Kashmiris have come to get used to curfews, as evidenced by the daily cricket matches disputing children, indifferent to the presence of soldiers that lie just a few meters.
Since 1989, tens of thousands have died or disappeared victims of insurgent violence or expedited methods used by security forces.
"Serve this month as an example, Mufti tells. There have been a rape, a girl of 16 years at the hands of a soldier. And in another village a man tried to defend her daughter from the paramilitaries, and two days later found dead. How to accept it? ".
Popular culture is full of stories cashmere sinister about bodies such as the Seventh Battalion and Special Forces, charged with multiple violations of human rights activists from Srinagar.
In his defense, however, the Indian authorities mentioned the need to fight the insurgent groups operating in Kashmir soil and in its violent defiance against the state have not hesitated to attack the civilian population.
Scene of several wars, Kashmir is a territory in dispute and dealt three nuclear powers-India, Pakistan and China, following independence and partition of the Indian subcontinent in 1947.
And besides, your soil has been fodder for a violent insurgent rebellion since 1989, after a fraudulent electoral process that led to the separatists to take up arms against India, with the tacit support of Pakistan.
In recent years, insurgent violence has decreased, are, according to India, 800 rebels, but the Kashmiris continue to use street protests as a way to assert independence and show their anger at the lack of opportunities.
"Here, all say they are fighting on our behalf, but nobody cares. We have twenty years paying the lack of one or the other, and still expect us to vote, "laments a waiter in a hotel, after making sure no one else is listening.
Today there is no curfew, so you can go home.

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Thematic area:

1. Indian Kashmir morning full process to renew the Regional Assembly
2. The National Conference is imposed at the polls in Kashmir
3. Regional elections end with less violence in Kashmir
4. The political conflict is gripping the economy of Kashmir
5. Indian Kashmir voting begins for the Assembly, with separatist boycott