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Unrest in Kashmir Claims New Casualties: Schools
By SAMEER YASIR and HARI KUMAROCT. 28, 2016
HABBER, Kashmir — It happened again on Thursday night: Another village school was burned to the ground.
After the sun rose, families of the Kashmiri town of Habber gathered around the smoking remains of its middle school, which had recently reopened its doors in an attempt to re-establish some kind of normal routine after months of curfews and unrest.
Jameel Ahmad Parry, a laborer, sat on a boulder, with his arm around his daughter, a fifth grader, watching dense streaks of bluish smoke risk into the sky. He stroked her hand, as if to comfort her, but he looked frightened himself.
“Why burn down buildings where the children of poor people study?” he said. “It doesn’t make sense. Burning police stations might serve some purpose, but why burn schools?”
It was the 24th school in Kashmir to be burned in the past seven weeks, as the regional government has tried to reopen schools and declare an end to a sustained, powerful wave of protests against the Indian military’s presence there. It is a striking departure from previous flare-ups, when police stations or military installations were frequently attacked but schools were largely spared, treated as neutral territory.
Over the past week, the school burnings have accelerated, with one set ablaze on Monday and another on Thursday night.
Mehbooba Mufti, the chief minister of the state of Jammu and Kashmir, said Friday that separatist leaders had ordered schools to be burned because they “want a generation of uneducated youth who can pelt stones” at the police. Kashmir’s top police official, Syed Javaid Mujtaba Gillani, said Friday that young men arrested for throwing stones had been “involved in burning some of the schools in south Kashmir.”
The All Parties Hurriyat Conference, a coalition of separatist groups, said in a statement that the school burnings were part of a “well-planned strategy to malign the ongoing movement and paint it as violence and anarchy.”
But the arsonists’ underlying message comes through clearly: Kashmir will not return to normal anytime soon.
“It almost seems to be destruction for the sake of destruction,” said Radha Kumar, a policy analyst who served as a government-appointed interlocutor in Kashmir during prolonged protests in 2010. “That anyone should see this as a legitimate display of anger and frustration, it seems to be absolutely tragic. It’s a tragic display.”
She said she could not remember any schools’ being burned like this in the past 20 years of conflict in Kashmir.
The territory is claimed by India as part of the state of Jammu and Kashmir, but has a large separatist movement that India says is stoked by Pakistan-supported militants. Many Kashmiri residents complain of abuse by the Indian security forces. Pakistan maintains that a referendum should be held so Kashmiri residents can decide whether to go their own way.
The reopening of schools at the end of a wave of protests has been a flash point in the past because government officials projected it as “a sign of normalcy,” Ms. Kumar said. Most of Kashmir’s educational institutions were closed as part of curfews starting July 9, when security forces killed a charismatic militant leader, setting off protests that spread throughout the region. The separatist leaders’ strike instructions, which Hurriyat issues on a weekly basis as part of the protests, require all educational institutions to be closed.
In a statement released Thursday, the leader of the Hurriyat Conference, Syed Ali Geelani, refused to change those instructions, saying the government’s push to reopen schools was “nothing but mockery and imperialistic designs to strengthen this unwanted occupation.”
Ms. Kumar said officials had been trying to reopen schools since August, but that this year’s protests had proven “longer and more aggressive” than in years past. Beginning in September, some schools in calmer areas began quietly reopening, said Inderjeet Sharma, the chief education officer in the Budgam district.
In interviews, educators in south Kashmir said they encountered anger — and sometimes explicit threats — from neighbors and acquaintances when they announced they were reopening their schools. Bashir Ahamad Dar, the headmaster of high school in the village of Aripathen, which was damaged in a fire on Sunday, said the government’s decision to resume classes clearly angered “local elders,” who threatened to burn the building.
When the school opened anyway, he said, local youths threw rocks at the building.
“They wanted to scare us,” he said. “We continued to go to school. Two days later, the school was burned.”
Asked who had made the threats, Mr. Dar said, “I can’t identify those people.” He said school has now reopened, but that students were too afraid to come.
“This is a dangerous village,” he said.
Mr. Sharma said he is hard-pressed to convince headmasters in the Budgam district, where four schools have been burned, even to file police complaints after the fires. Educators are afraid they will become targets of violence if their names appear on police reports, he said.
He said he believed that the fires were set by “people from the same area.”
“Even if they did know who did it, nobody will admit it, nobody will say anything,” Mr. Sharma said. “People are scared. Anything can happen to anybody here.”
Headmasters from the villages of Ompora and Habber also said they had received threats that their schools would be burned if they reopened. Both reopened anyway and were attacked by arsonists.
“What can we do?” Sayed Hilal Rizvi, the headmaster of Habber’s middle school, said. “It is our duty to run the school. We have to come to school. We can’t run away.”
In the meantime, many communities are adjusting to life with no school at all.
Mohammad Muzaffar Salroo, the principal of a higher secondary school in Bugam, said he received a telephone call at 7 a.m. on Oct. 22 telling him that the building was on fire. By the time firefighters arrived, he said, a “large part of the building was already burned.”
He called it a “very beautiful old building,” built in 1948, with a library containing 3,000 books added later. He said he had devoted many years of his life to it.
“There were tears in my eyes when I saw the burned school,” he said. “It was like my home burned.”
He added, “Now I am waiting for my retirement.”
Follow Sameer Yasir and Hari Kumar on Twitter @sameeryasir and @HariNYT.
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/29/world/asia/unrest-in-kashmir-claims-new-casualties-schools.html
By SAMEER YASIR and HARI KUMAROCT. 28, 2016
HABBER, Kashmir — It happened again on Thursday night: Another village school was burned to the ground.
After the sun rose, families of the Kashmiri town of Habber gathered around the smoking remains of its middle school, which had recently reopened its doors in an attempt to re-establish some kind of normal routine after months of curfews and unrest.
Jameel Ahmad Parry, a laborer, sat on a boulder, with his arm around his daughter, a fifth grader, watching dense streaks of bluish smoke risk into the sky. He stroked her hand, as if to comfort her, but he looked frightened himself.
“Why burn down buildings where the children of poor people study?” he said. “It doesn’t make sense. Burning police stations might serve some purpose, but why burn schools?”
It was the 24th school in Kashmir to be burned in the past seven weeks, as the regional government has tried to reopen schools and declare an end to a sustained, powerful wave of protests against the Indian military’s presence there. It is a striking departure from previous flare-ups, when police stations or military installations were frequently attacked but schools were largely spared, treated as neutral territory.
Over the past week, the school burnings have accelerated, with one set ablaze on Monday and another on Thursday night.
Mehbooba Mufti, the chief minister of the state of Jammu and Kashmir, said Friday that separatist leaders had ordered schools to be burned because they “want a generation of uneducated youth who can pelt stones” at the police. Kashmir’s top police official, Syed Javaid Mujtaba Gillani, said Friday that young men arrested for throwing stones had been “involved in burning some of the schools in south Kashmir.”
The All Parties Hurriyat Conference, a coalition of separatist groups, said in a statement that the school burnings were part of a “well-planned strategy to malign the ongoing movement and paint it as violence and anarchy.”
But the arsonists’ underlying message comes through clearly: Kashmir will not return to normal anytime soon.
“It almost seems to be destruction for the sake of destruction,” said Radha Kumar, a policy analyst who served as a government-appointed interlocutor in Kashmir during prolonged protests in 2010. “That anyone should see this as a legitimate display of anger and frustration, it seems to be absolutely tragic. It’s a tragic display.”
She said she could not remember any schools’ being burned like this in the past 20 years of conflict in Kashmir.
The territory is claimed by India as part of the state of Jammu and Kashmir, but has a large separatist movement that India says is stoked by Pakistan-supported militants. Many Kashmiri residents complain of abuse by the Indian security forces. Pakistan maintains that a referendum should be held so Kashmiri residents can decide whether to go their own way.
The reopening of schools at the end of a wave of protests has been a flash point in the past because government officials projected it as “a sign of normalcy,” Ms. Kumar said. Most of Kashmir’s educational institutions were closed as part of curfews starting July 9, when security forces killed a charismatic militant leader, setting off protests that spread throughout the region. The separatist leaders’ strike instructions, which Hurriyat issues on a weekly basis as part of the protests, require all educational institutions to be closed.
In a statement released Thursday, the leader of the Hurriyat Conference, Syed Ali Geelani, refused to change those instructions, saying the government’s push to reopen schools was “nothing but mockery and imperialistic designs to strengthen this unwanted occupation.”
Ms. Kumar said officials had been trying to reopen schools since August, but that this year’s protests had proven “longer and more aggressive” than in years past. Beginning in September, some schools in calmer areas began quietly reopening, said Inderjeet Sharma, the chief education officer in the Budgam district.
In interviews, educators in south Kashmir said they encountered anger — and sometimes explicit threats — from neighbors and acquaintances when they announced they were reopening their schools. Bashir Ahamad Dar, the headmaster of high school in the village of Aripathen, which was damaged in a fire on Sunday, said the government’s decision to resume classes clearly angered “local elders,” who threatened to burn the building.
When the school opened anyway, he said, local youths threw rocks at the building.
“They wanted to scare us,” he said. “We continued to go to school. Two days later, the school was burned.”
Asked who had made the threats, Mr. Dar said, “I can’t identify those people.” He said school has now reopened, but that students were too afraid to come.
“This is a dangerous village,” he said.
Mr. Sharma said he is hard-pressed to convince headmasters in the Budgam district, where four schools have been burned, even to file police complaints after the fires. Educators are afraid they will become targets of violence if their names appear on police reports, he said.
He said he believed that the fires were set by “people from the same area.”
“Even if they did know who did it, nobody will admit it, nobody will say anything,” Mr. Sharma said. “People are scared. Anything can happen to anybody here.”
Headmasters from the villages of Ompora and Habber also said they had received threats that their schools would be burned if they reopened. Both reopened anyway and were attacked by arsonists.
“What can we do?” Sayed Hilal Rizvi, the headmaster of Habber’s middle school, said. “It is our duty to run the school. We have to come to school. We can’t run away.”
In the meantime, many communities are adjusting to life with no school at all.
Mohammad Muzaffar Salroo, the principal of a higher secondary school in Bugam, said he received a telephone call at 7 a.m. on Oct. 22 telling him that the building was on fire. By the time firefighters arrived, he said, a “large part of the building was already burned.”
He called it a “very beautiful old building,” built in 1948, with a library containing 3,000 books added later. He said he had devoted many years of his life to it.
“There were tears in my eyes when I saw the burned school,” he said. “It was like my home burned.”
He added, “Now I am waiting for my retirement.”
Follow Sameer Yasir and Hari Kumar on Twitter @sameeryasir and @HariNYT.
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/29/world/asia/unrest-in-kashmir-claims-new-casualties-schools.html
