In strife-hit Valley, nowhere to go on Eid

Azhar Qadri

Tribune News Service

Srinagar, September 14

On its second day on Wednesday, the festivity of Eid-ul-Azha was missing as curfew, restrictions and shutdown continued to remain in effect across the Kashmir valley, leaving its residents confined to the interiors of their localities.

There were no signs of festivity in the region on the second of the three-day-long festival, normally celebrated by offering congregational prayers, sacrificing an animal, and visiting kith and kin.

As curfew remained in effect across all 10 districts of Kashmir on the first day of Eid, when congregational prayers are offered in the morning hours, residents were forced to offer prayers in mosques located in the interiors of neighbourhoods instead of offering it in huge gathering in vast open grounds.

The government’s bar on civilian movement, which continued today, also grounded the residents from visiting their relatives.

“It is for the first time in my life that I have not been able to see my mother on Eid. She lives with my younger brother in Palpora locality,” said Farooq Makhdoomi, a resident of Bemina on city outskirts. With private phone networks shut by the government as a counter-measure to the separatist call for a march to a local office of the United Nations on first day of Eid, no calls could be made either.

The region remains in the midst of a paralysing unrest, sparked by the killing of militant commander Burhan Wani on July 8, and the call for the march made by separatists had prompted strict curbs, including imposition of curfew in all 10 districts of Kashmir.

The shutdown, which has continued uninterruptedly for the past nine weeks, also continued on Eid days as no markets opened and public transport remained off roads.

A police spokesman said curfew remained in force on the second day of Eid in parts of north Kashmir, including Baramulla, Pattan, Tangmarg and Handwara towns, while restrictions on movement of civilians were in place in the rest of the region.

The relaxation in curfew allowed a partial movement on the second day of festival but police and paramilitary forces continued to barricade roads with rolls of concertina wire as a part of the restrictions. “We have an order not to let anyone pass through here,” a CRPF constable told motorcyclists at a barricade near Batamaloo in the city here.

A little distance away on the road leading into a residential neighbourhood of Batamaloo, protesters were throwing stones at police and paramilitary personnel in the afternoon, a sign of unabated tension in the region.