India arrests Kashmiri separatist
September 16, 2016
Khurram Parvez was detained late Thursday night in the region's largest city, Srinagar. Police superintendent Faisal Qayoom could not say what the charges were against Parvez.
"We are looking into it," he said. "For the moment we've taken him into custody."
A tweet from the activist's account appeared to confirm this.
Parvez's wife, Samina, said police came to the family home late Thursday night and arrested her husband. India's Public Safety Act allows police to hold a suspect for six months without charge.
On Wednesday Parvez was blocked by immigration authorities from boarding a plane bound for Switzerland, where he was to meet UN officials.
Parvez is the coordinator of the Jammu Kashmir Coalition of Civil Society (JKCCS). He was booked to fly to Geneva, where he was to brief a session of UN Human Rights Council regarding the latest violence in Kashmir - the predominantly Muslim Himalayan region that is claimed by both Pakistan and India.
He and the JKCCS were the first to report on thousands of mass graves in remote parts of Kashmir and to demand that the government investigate them - identifying who the dead were and how they were killed.
Scathing reports of brutality
The KCCS has also written scathing reports of brutality involving some of the hundreds of thousands of Indian troops in the region, noting that troops posted in the area are granted widespread powers. This, they argue, has led to a culture of impunity and rights abuses.
The death of a militant separatist leader in early July triggered violent, anti-Indian, protests that have been met with deadly force by police - killing more than 80 people and injuring thousands more in the Indian-administered region. It has become one of the deadliest outbreaks of violence since an all-out armed rebellion exploded in the 1990s.
Police and paramilitary forces have fired tear gas and pellet guns at protesters with deadly effect.
Kashmir has been divided between India and Pakistan since 1947, with China controlling a smaller portion in the eastern part of the region.
The two countries, which are both now nuclear powers, have twice gone to war over the territory and accuse each other of provoking violence.
bik/kms (AP, AFP)