Tension is running high in some Srinagar areas and in some other parts of the Valley as the authorities have placed under house arrest several separatist leaders and are contemplating a security clampdown in vulnerable quarters ahead of the Kashmir martyr’s day.
Official sources here said that since various separatist parties and groups have called for a shutdown and also announced to organise rallies and processions to mark the occasion on Friday, a security review meeting would be held at the police control room here later on Thursday evening to decide on the urgency and nature of preventive measures.
On July 13, 1931, as many as 21 Kashmiri Muslims were killed when the autocratic Dogra Maharaja Hari Singh’s troops opened fire on a group of people which had gathered outside the Srinagar central jail where an in-camera trial of Abdul Qadeer Khan, a non-local chef with an English visitor, was underway. Khan had been charged with sedition and instigating people for violence after he made fiery speeches against the Maharaja’s “oppressive” rule at a Friday congregation and while pointing towards his Palace asked people to raze it “brick by brick.”
The bloody incident heralded the Kashmiris’ struggle against autocracy and denial of civil liberties and since then July 13 is observed as “martyrs’ day” in both parts of divided state as well as by Kashmiri expatriates elsewhere.
July 13 is an official holiday in both Jammu and Kashmir and PoK. However, displaced Kashmiri Pandits, since they left the Valley following the outbreak of separatist violence in 1989-90 have been observing July 13 as a “black day” on the premise that the “persecution” of the minority community began on this day 81 years ago.
On Thursday evening, police and CRPF reinforcements fanned out in central Srinagar and also sealed Mazaar-e-Shohda or the martyrs’ cemetery in Khawaja Bazaar where chief minister Omar Abdullah, his father and Union minister Farooq Abdullah, Opposition PDP leaders Mufti Muhammad Sayeed and Mehbooba Mufti and several other mainstream leaders and ministers are scheduled to offer fateha prayers and lay the wreaths at the graves of the July 13, 1931 martyrs. Both factions of Hurriyat Conference and other separatist parties too have announced to organise processions from different parts of the City to Mazaar-e-Shohda to follow the tradition. But official sources said that separatists are unlikely to be allowed to converge at the cemetery.
In his martyrs’ eve message, the chief minister said their sacrifice to free the society from autocracy and lay edifice for democracy and human dignity is one of the richest chapters of the history of Jammu and Kashmir.