It was the women’s turn to kick up a stink on the streets of Srinagar on Thursday. But as they began a march towards Pathat Masjid, a historic Muslim place of worship located deep inside what has been traditionally the most difficult turf to put up with for the law and order agencies, they were met by gun-flaunting policemen and their lathi-wielding women counterparts.
After a brief clash, the women protesters, most of them in head-to-toe veil and being led by Dukhtaran-e-Millat (Daughters of the Faith) chief Sayeda Aasiya Andrabi were, however, disseminated and pushed back into dark alleys of the city’s Chattabal locality, not very far from where they had begun “Pathar Masjid Chalo” march.
The call for the women exclusive protest march had been issued by Syed Ali Shah Geelani-led Huriyat Conference faction as part of its “Quit Jammu and Kashmir” campaign launched in June. “Go India, go back” slogan which reverberates mosque loudspeakers and is simultaneously rehearsed along with familiar “We want freedom” by huge crowds which pour out on the streets in the evenings here nowadays was something the women protesters had picked up for articulation. Or in Ms Andrabi’s words “Pass on the heartbeat of the people of Kashmir and to wake up India to read writing on the wall.” After the women protesters had moved away, a couple of dozen youngsters, many of them wearing bandanas, took up the floor. They hurled rocks on the policemen who responded by firing teargas canisters — a usual scene in Srinagar. Groups of women tried to relocate to Pather Masjid also from some other Srinagar areas, including Natipora, but were dispersed after the use of force by the police. About a dozen people received minor injuries in these clashes but overall the situation remained calm and peaceful.
While hundreds of the CRPF personnel and local policemen continued to be out on the streets here to enforce a curfew clamped on parts of summer capital and other major towns of the Valley to hold back pro-freedom protests set off by the killing of 11 youth in police firings past week, a large number of women security personnel were deployed in the cities and towns to prevent the protest march by women.
Reports from Sopore said that the townsfolk reeling under uninterrupted curfew since last Friday is running short of supplies especially eatables and medicine.