SRINAGAR
Indian police have arrested more than a dozen resistance leaders and activists over the past two days in Indian-held Kashmir, ahead of elections in the disputed valley.
The police claimed that the arrests were preemptive and preventive in nature, and were necessary in order to have a disturbance free poll.
The Kashmiri resistance leadership, however, said the arrests went against the core of democracy -- where everyone has the right to put forward their view.
“These arrests have shown yet again that there is no democracy here but an occupation. They do not allow us to speak to people and put us in prisons -- then they say that they had democratic elections,” Syed Ali Shah Geelani, a senior Hurriyat leader, complained.
86-year-old Geelani has been under house arrest for most of the last four years and was under house arrest when he spoke to the Anadolu Agency.
Among the senior leaders arrested by the police are the Jammu Kashmir Liberation Front's chairman Yasin Malik and leader Zafar Akbar Bhat as well as Hurriyat leaders Shabir Ahmad Shah, Nayeem Khan and Mohammad Yousuf Naqash.
“There was a raid late last night and the police arrested Shabir Shah and Nayeem Khan in their homes. Many of our activists from other districts are being arrested too,” Zameer Ahmad Sheikh, a Hurriyat activist said.
Geelani told the Anadolu Agency that the Indian Government manages elections through violence and oppression and then talks about democracy.
The spokesperson of Geelani's Hurriyat movement, Ayaz Akbar, was arrested by police in the afternoon. Another of the movement's senior leaders, Mohammad Ashraf Sehrai, was arrested around the same time.
Moderate Hurriyat leader and cleric of the historic Jamia mosque, Mirwaiz Umar Farooq, was also put under house arrest to prevent him from reaching out to people.
Inspector General of Police, Abdul Gani Mir, told the press that the arrests were made so that no one could disrupt the election process.
Describing the arrests as preventive detentions, Mir said that they would send a very clear message to all those who try to intimidate people.
A senior police official told the Anadolu Agency, on condition of anonymity, that more arrests were going to be made and that the arrested leaders would not be set free until elections ended on Nov. 25.
“It is the Election Commission of India which is very strict about any anti-poll activities. They asked us to enforce the warrants and take people into preventive detention ahead of the polls to ensure a smooth election,” the police official added.
The resistance leadership has called for a boycott of any election held under the Indian constitution and asks for a plebiscite, to be held under foreign observers, through which the Kashmiri people could determine their own political fate.
Several elections in Indian held-Kashmir have been officially accepted to have been rigged, including the 1987 elections that became one of the important factors for the mass armed movement against Indian rule in 1989.
Kashmir, a Muslim-majority Himalayan region, is held in part by both India and Pakistan and claimed in full by both.
The two countries have fought three wars – in 1948, 1965 and 1971 – since they were partitioned in 1947, two of which were fought over Kashmir.
Since 1989, Kashmiri resistance groups have been fighting against Indian rule for independence, or for unification with neighboring Pakistan.
More than 70,000 people have reportedly been killed in the conflict so far.
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