Iran Press/Asia: Seeking to tighten its grip on the region also claimed by neighboring Pakistan, India this week scrapped the state’s right to frame its own laws and allowed non-residents to buy property there.
Since Sunday telecoms links have been suspended, at least 300 leaders detained and public gatherings banned, effectively confining residents to their homes in the revolt-torn region, Reuters reported.
Television images showed dozens of people walking on the streets of Srinagar, the region’s main city, for the first time this week to offer prayers at mosques guarded by police.
Leaders in Kashmir had warned that scrapping the special status would be seen as an act of aggression against the people of the Himalayan state, where more than 50,000 people have killed in a 30-year crackdown on the Muslim population.
Policemen in riot gear were posted every few meters around the Jama Masjid mosque in Srinagar’s old quarter.
In New Delhi, however, foreign ministry spokesman Raveesh Kumar told a news briefing that Kashmir was calm and the inconvenience expressed by its people was “very temporary”.
This is while, thousands of additional paramilitary troops flooded into Kashmir, already one of the world’s most militarized regions, ahead of Monday’s announcement of the change in constitutional status.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government also broke up the state into two federal territories, a step regional leaders decried as a further humiliation.
Meanwhile, dozens of university students, many from Jammu and Kashmir, hold a sit-in protest in New Delhi after India removes Kashmir's autonomy.
Kashmir journalists frustrated by communications blockade
Kashmir has nearly 180 English and Urdu daily newspapers, but only five are publishing these days due to restrictions imposed by Indian authorities to prevent unrest after New Delhi revoked the state’s autonomy.
That is frustrating for the region’s journalists, many of whom are veterans of covering a long insurgency in Jammu and Kashmir and operating under prolonged curfews.
With phone lines and internet services suspended, six newspaper editors and journalists told Reuters they have no way to access wire reports or any outside online news sources, their district correspondents, and seek comment from government officials.
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