Wed 21 August 2019:
Via posters in Srinagar, separatist leaders asked people to march after Friday prayers. In the first reported gun battle since New Delhi stripped India-administered Kashmir of its autonomy, a suspected rebel and a policeman were killed, police said.
Separatist leaders in India-administered Kashmir urged people to defy a ban and join a mass march after Friday prayers this week, the first such call since the federal government revoked the Muslim-majority region’s autonomy, stirring anger in the region and beyond.
Hundreds of political leaders and activists, many of them separatists seeking Kashmir’s secession from India, have been incarcerated and the appeal to the public came through posters that appeared overnight in the region’s main city of Srinagar.
“Every person, young and old, men and women, should march after Friday prayers,” the Joint Resistance Leadership, which represents all major separatist groups, said on one poster.
The public must march to the office of the UN Military Observer group in Srinagar, which was set up in 1949 after the first war between India and Pakistan over Kashmir.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government on August 5 scrapped a key law –– Article 370 –– and revoked disputed Kashmir’s statehood under which people from the rest of India could not buy property or compete for government jobs and college places.
Both India and Kashmir rule parts of Kashmir and claim it in full. Kashmiris have been fighting for decades for independence from India.
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