Himalayan Hotbed: Tensions Spike in Divided Kashmir

[unhappycamper]

http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/tensions-spike-in-kashmir-between-indians-pakistanis-and-separatists-a-930594.html



Violence is on the rise in Kashmir. Indian and Pakistani units are clashing in border skirmishes, and government soldiers are ruthlessly suppressing separatists. The real victims are the civilians caught in the middle.

Himalayan Hotbed: Tensions Spike in Divided Kashmir
By Wieland Wagner
October 29, 2013 – 04:53 PM

The mourning father points to a short video flickering across the screen of his mobile phone. It shows his son Irfan in front of a computer, swaying enthusiastically to the beat of the music he has mixed for a school party. The 17-year-old was shot to death a day later, right in front of his parents' house, during an operation by Indian soldiers.

Irfan's father is too despondent to talk about what happened on that night in late June in Sumbal. The district is northwest of Srinagar, the capital of Jammu and Kashmir, India's only state with a majority Muslim population.

A cousin says that Irfan had run out of the house at about 3 a.m., suspecting that there were cattle thieves outside. That was where he was shot, says the cousin.

"The soldiers wanted to take along his body," says the cousin. He suspects that the military patrol planned to photograph Irfan with a gun in his hand -- as proof that he was a military separatist in the service of hostile Pakistan or a rebel with one of the Islamist groups fighting against Indian control over Kashmir.