Sheikh Mushtaq
SRINAGAR, Feb 1 (2007): The leader of Indian Kashmir’s main separatist alliance said on Thursday that his life was in danger but he was not intimidated, a day after suspected militants threw a grenade at his office.
Suspected separatist Muslim militants threw a grenade on Wednesday at the office of the Hurriyat alliance in Kashmir’s main city, Srinagar, apparently in protest against Mirwaiz Umar Farooq’s call on guerrillas to support a peace process.
“I am not scared at all,” the All Parties Hurriyat (Freedom) Conference chief told Reuters. “I am with my people. I would have been scared if I was all alone … Hurriyat is not going to be cowed down by threats and by frustrated elements.”
No one was hurt in the attack, police said.
The Hurriyat has begun a dialogue with New Delhi to try and resolve the 17-year revolt in Jammu and Kashmir state, which has killed more than 40,000 people, officials say. Human rights groups put the toll at around 60,000 dead or missing.
The attack came days after Farooq and his colleagues travelled to Pakistan for meetings with officials and top Kashmiri militants based there. No group claimed responsibility for the attack.
A grenade was also thrown near Farooq’s house shortly before he left Srinagar for Pakistan earlier last month.
Farooq — who returned to Srinagar on Thursday to a rousing welcome, with thousands of people surrounding his cavalcade of cars from the airport — said the Hurriyat team met some militant “commanders” in Pakistan who supported the path of peace.
“We didn’t meet groups but we met individuals, commanders and they are also supportive,” he said, without elaborating or naming the militant leaders.
During his Pakistan trip, where he also met President Pervez Musharraf, Farooq made a strong pitch for a political, and not armed, solution to the decades-old problem.
“The problem is political — India, Pakistan, Kashmir have to find a political solution to the problem. You cannot have a military solution to the issue,” he said.
Farooq, who is also the chief cleric of Muslim-majority Kashmir, asked militant groups fighting Indian rule in Kashmir to join the dialogue process between India, Pakistan and Hurriyat.
“I have said the militants should definitely support these initiatives and this is high time. We can move forward,” he said.
India is holding talks with Pakistan to resolve the territorial row over the Himalayan region, which is split between the two nuclear-armed rivals but claimed by both.
Separately, more than 2,000 people demonstrated in north Kashmir against the killing by police of a villager in what they said was a faked gunbattle.
Police say the deceased, 35-year-old father of five children Abdul Rehman Padder, was a militant while his family said he was a carpenter.
“God is great … we want freedom,” the angry protestors shouted, pumping their fists into the air in Sumbal village, 25 km (15 miles) north of Srinagar, where Padder was buried.
