September 13, 2010

Kashmir Protests, Nicolas Duncan

Over the course of the summer the northern most state of India, Kashmir has been a hot spot of protests and violence. Kashmir is an Indian-administered state and there is discontent among the Muslim people living there. Discontent has been widespread this summer due to certain circumstances; On June 11th of this year a 17 year old student was killed by a tear gas shell during a protest in Srinagar, the capital of Kashmir. Ripples from this event were felt in the form of violent anti-India protests in streets across the region causing numerous deaths over the summer. Due to the extent of protests curfews have been imposed in certain regions over Kashmir. One of the most violent protests happened this Monday, September 13^th which wasn’t fully caused by events going on in the state. News spread throughout the region about the extremely controversial idea of burning Korans in Florida by the church Dove World Outreach Center. Protests and mobs flooded the streets past curfews in protest of this news; mobs set fire to several government buildings, a school, and a police station. Government owned vehicles had stones thrown at them while security fought with protesters that were advancing on a Christian church. Teargas was used in order to disperse the protesters, however, in some areas where protests were most violent; such as in the Budgam district, police fired ammunition into the mobs to break them up. This left 18 civilians dead and more than 100 people injured. This was the largest tally of casualties in a single day since the outbreak of protests. The death toll has now reached above 75 as of early September. The Indian government stated it was “deeply distressed” by the violence as well expressing “profound grief at the loss of life and offers its sincere condolences to the bereaved families”.