India celebrates Republic Day
INDIA: India celebrated its Republic Day yesterday under heavy
security, with tensions running high in Kashmir over efforts by Hindu
nationalists to hold a rally in the troubled region’s state capital.
Security was especially tight in New Delhi where large sections of
the capital were sealed off for the annual parade of military hardware.
Around 35,000 police personnel, including 15,000 members of the
paramilitary forces, were deployed across New Delhi for the event, which
is always considered a possible target of militant attack.
Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono was the guest of
honour.
Snipers manned rooftops along the route of the parade, while
helicopters and unmanned surveillance drones monitored the area from
above.
In Muslim-majority Kashmir, where an anti-India insurgency has
claimed thousands of lives since 1989, a strict curfew was enforced in
the summer capital, Srinagar.
The streets were completely deserted apart from the large numbers of
security personnel who manned barbed-wire barricades across roads
leading to the main downtown area of Lal Chowk.
“No procession or gathering would be allowed in any part of the city,
today,” Srinagar’s district magistrate Meraj Kakroo said.
Authorities also jammed local mobile phone networks.
The Kashmir Valley is usually tense on Republic Day, but particularly
so this year because of a drive by India’s main opposition, the Hindu
nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), to march to Srinagar and hold
a special rally to raise the national flag in Lal Chowk.
Authorities had blocked road links between Kashmir and neighbouring
states on Tuesday and turned back thousands of BJP activists gathered on
the state border.
Several senior BJP leaders were arrested, amid appeals by the Kashmir
government and the federal government in New Delhi to call off the
“provocative” march. Kashmir has been riven by religious and separatist
conflict for the past 20 years. The BJP favours a hardline approach in
the region, refusing any dilution of national sovereignty or relaxation
of tough military laws that have been condemned by human rights groups.
NEW DELHI, Wednesday, AFP
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