Pakistan halts train, bans films
Pakistan halted its main train service to India yesterday and banned Indian films as it kept up the diplomatic pressure on New Delhi for revoking the special status of Kashmir, the region at the heart of 70 years of hostility between them.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi's government this week withdrew Muslim majority Jammu and Kashmir's right to frame its own laws and allowed people from outside the region to buy property there in a bid to tighten its grip over the contested region.
Kashmir remained under a communications blackout on Thursday with mobile networks and internet services suspended and at least 300 politicians and separatists in detention to prevent protests, according to police, media and political leaders. AFP put the number of detainees much higher.
Kashmir's leaders have warned of a backlash and Pakistan, which also lays claims to the territory, vowed to fight for the rights of people living there.
The nuclear rivals have twice gone to war over Kashmir and fought an aerial duel in February.
Modi's Hindu nationalist led government, which has long campaigned for an end to Kashmir's special status, said it would split the state into two federal territories that the region's leaders labelled a further humiliation.
Thousands of paramilitary police have been deployed in Kashmir's largest city, Srinagar, schools shut and roads and neighbourhoods barricaded.
There have been sporadic protests, two police officers said, speaking on condition of anonymity. At least 13 people have been injured in stone-throwing protests across the city since Tuesday night, one officer said.
"There is a lot of anger among the people," one of the police officials said.
Kashmiris see Modi's decision to withdraw the special status as a breach of trust and opening the way to flooding their region with people from the rest of India, eventually altering the demographics of the territory.
Already tens of thousands of people have died in the armed revolt to secede from India that erupted in 1989 and has ebbed and flowed since then.
Two leaders from the National Conference, a major regional party, said at least 100 politicians – including former state ministers and legislators – had been detained. They did not want to be named because of the sensitivity of the information.
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