J&K needs answers
In the wake of massive protests in Kashmir after Tuesday’s firing in Baramulla, allegedly by an Army unit, in which a young man was killed, an “angry and sad” CM Omar Abdullah said in the Assembly: “What will I tell the people... that it is for this we have been upholding the national flag?
... I ask myself why there was firing on a procession at which, according to my information, no militant was present and from which no one opened fire?”
It is important that the Centre finds quick and fair answers to these questions which are specific. But, historically, they could easily apply to many incidents that have occurred in Kashmir.
Perhaps at the heart of it is a sense of impunity with which the Army and Central forces, and indeed sometimes the state police, are thought to operate in Kashmir. The Army has denied that the Baramulla firing was by any of its units. But such denials will be suspect unless upheld by an independent and transparent inquiry. That should be the government’s first task, AFSPA or no AFSPA.
The Centre’s refusal to allow the return from Tihar Jail of the body of Afzal Guru, hanged there last month, is causing an emotional crisis in the Valley that is being exploited for political ends. This is the reason for many recent protests whose proximate causes may lie elsewhere.
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