Oxfam responds to the critical situation in locust-affected West Africa
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Kashmiris turn out for polls despite boycott call
01 Feb 2005 13:30:47 GMT
Source: Reuters
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SRINAGAR, India, Feb 1 (Reuters) - Demonstrators in Indian Kashmir burnt tyres and threw stones at police on Tuesday, protesting against the first municipal polls in 27 years, police and witnesses said in the revolt-racked Himalayan territory. They reported no injuries in the protest. Many shops and businesses were closed in the revolt-racked region's main city, Srinagar, in response to a call by the main political separatist alliance, the All Parties Hurriyat (Freedom) Conference, to boycott the elections. The poll to choose town councils in Kashmir, the cause of two out of the three India-Pakistan wars, is being held in four phases. Tuesday was the second stage of voting. "We appeal to people to exhibit their resentment against the futile exercise by remaining indoors on election day," a statement of the hardline faction of Hurriyat said. In downtown Srinagar, the summer capital of Indian Kashmir, many polling stations were empty but in other areas of the city people stood in long queues to vote. In the first phase of the civic polls, nearly 60 percent of voters exercised their franchise on Jan. 29. WINNING HEARTS? The protests came as India's army chief said on Tuesday he will focus on winning hearts and minds of Kashmiris during his three-year-term. Hundreds of thousands of troops are deployed in Kashmir to quell a 15-year-old separatist revolt against New Delhi's rule which has killed more than 45,000 people. "If you don't harm innocents, you are winning hearts and minds," General Joginder Jaswant Singh, India's first army chief from the Sikh community, told reporters a day after he took over the world's third largest army. "If people have a positive image of soldiers, it is more important than the number of terrorists killed." Singh was replying to questions about allegations of abuses by troops, including the molestation of a 10-year-old girl and her mother by a major last October in Jammu and Kashmir, Hindu-majority India's only Muslim-majority state. Rights groups blame Indian forces and rebels for widespread rights abuses. But the army says violations by troops are isolated incidents and that offenders are punished. About a dozen militant groups are fighting in the Indian-ruled part of Kashmir. Most want it to join Pakistan, which rules the other portion of the divided state, while a few seek independence.
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