Scotland’s referendum stirs Kashmiri demands for
vote
* Kashmiri leaders demand India follow through on a
promise to grant a similar vote in disputed region * Geelani says London should
now put pressure on India
·
Reuters
September 19, 2014
SRINAGAR: Kashmiri separatist leaders have seized
on Scotland’s referendum on independence to demand that India follow through on
a promise to grant a similar vote in the disputed Himalayan region.
Scotland was voting on Thursday on whether to split away from the United Kingdom in a ballot moderate Kashmiri separatist leader Mirwaiz Umar Farooq said was an example of how Kashmiris’ demands for a say on their future could be solved peacefully. “We hope India will also change its approach and realise the fact that people’s rights can’t be trampled upon,” Farooq, the head Muslim priest in the Indian-held Kashmir, where a violent insurgency against New Delhi’s rule raged through the 1990s and resentment still runs high, said on Wednesday.
“It is encouraging that in a peaceful
manner people will be deciding their future.” Kashmir has been divided between
India and Pakistan since a war after independence from Britain in 1947, and the
two nuclear-armed neighbours have fought two of their three wars over the
territory. India has never carried out a promise made more than six decades ago
to hold a plebiscite that would determine the wishes of the Kashmiri people. It
now considers the entire region of snow-capped mountains and fertile valleys an
integral part of its territory and maintains a massive military presence in
Jammu and Kashmir, its northernmost and only Muslim-majority state.
Foreign Minister Sushma Swaraj
blurted out her horror at the thought of New Delhi’s former colonial master
splitting apart, when questioned at a news conference last week. “A break-up of
the UK? God forbid,” she said.
“I don’t think any such possibility exists at
the moment.” After a senior civil servant whispered in her ear, Swaraj
corrected herself, commenting: “It is up to the people of Scotland to decide.”
Another Kashmiri separatist leader Syed Ali Shah Geelani praised the United
Kingdom for giving Scotland the vote, adding that London should now put
pressure on India to grant Kashmiris a referendum. “India should learn lessons
from UK and honour its commitment of granting right to self-determination to
people of Kashmir,” Geelani said.
About 150,000 people are stranded in
their homes a week after Indian-held Kashmir’s worst flood in over a century
and fears grow of an outbreak of diseases from vast fields of stagnant brown
water. Indian army and civilian boats trawled through the streets -now water
channels - of the state capital Srinagar – picking up residents and delivering
water, food and basic medicine to people who chose to remain camped out in the
upper floors of their houses.
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