(NEW DELHI) — Hundreds of people have held a street protest in Indian-controlled Kashmir as India’s government assured the Supreme Court that the situation in the disputed region is being reviewed daily and unprecedented security restrictions will be removed over the next few days.
Carrying green Islamic flags and placards reading “Stop Genocide in Kashmir, Wake Up World,” young and old people took to the streets in Srinagar, the region’s main city, after Friday prayers.
Some hurled stones and clashed with security forces, who responded with tear gas.
Earlier Friday, a senior Indian official in Kashmir, B.V.R. Subrahmanyam, confirmed there would some loosening of restrictions on the region’s residents, saying that landline phone services would be restored gradually beginning Friday night and schools reopened from Monday.
The U.N. Security Council is meeting behind closed doors to discuss the situation in Kashmir for the first time in decades at the request of China and Pakistan following India’s revocation of the region’s special constitutional status and downgrading of its statehood.
The U.N.’s most powerful body was being briefed Friday morning by Assistant Secretary-General Oscar Fernandez-Taranco and Gen. Carlos Humberto Loitey, the U.N. military adviser.
U.N. officials said the council session may be its first on Kashmir since the late 1990s, or possibly since the 1971 India-Pakistan war.
Russia’s deputy U.N. ambassador, Dmitry Polyansky, told reporters as he headed into the meeting that Moscow is concerned about the latest developments, but he said it is “a bilateral issue.”
Amnesty International Secretary General Kumi Naidoo said in a statement that council members “need to remember that their mandate is to protect international peace and security — and they should seek to resolve the situation in a way that puts the human rights of the people in this troubled region at its center.”
A lawyer for a Kashmiri newspaper editor says India’s top court has heard petitions challenging the revoked status and lockdown in Indian-administered Kashmir.
The court gave no immediate ruling after hearing the petitions Friday. The petitions were filed by advocate M.L. Sharma and by Kashmir Times editor Anuradha Bhasin.
Vrinda Grover, the attorney for Bhasin, said the government assured the court that the ground situation in Kashmir was being reviewed daily and that the restrictions will be removed over the next few days. Grover said the judges decided to give the government more time.
The lockdown now in its 12th day includes a near-constant curfew and a news blackout in the disputed Himalayan region. Some analysts have said the revoked status was illegal because it was done without Kashmiri representation.
The family of a Kashmiri journalist working with a regional English daily says he has been detained by Indian armed forces.
Irfan Amin Malik is 26 and works for Greater Kashmir, one of the largest circulating newspapers in the region.
Malik’s father Mohammed Amin Malik told The Associated Press that Malik was taken into custody late Wednesday night at his house in Tral in Pulwama, a southern district in Kashmir. He said, “We are worried about our son.”
Jammu and Kashmir Principal Secretary Rohit Kansal said he was looking into the case. Jammu and Kashmir police chief Dilbagh Singh declined to comment on the issue.
Malik’s is the first detention of a journalist in the region since India decided to revoke Kashmir’s special constitutional status on Aug. 5.
Kashmir is claimed by both India and Pakistan and divided between them.
Pakistan’s military says Indian troops have fired across the Line of Control in the disputed Kashmir region, killing another soldier and bringing the death toll to six in less than 24 hours.
Army spokesman Maj. Gen. Asif Ghafoor in a tweet Friday said “another brave son of soil lost his life in the line of duty” in Buttal town.
Pakistan’s military and police said Thursday that Indian firing killed two civilians and three soldiers in Pakistan’s part of Kashmir, which is split between the nuclear-armed rivals and claimed by both in its entirety.
New Delhi downgraded the autonomy of the part of Kashmir it controls last week and imposed a lockdown now in place for a 12th day.
India’s top court on Friday will hear petitions challenging the revoked status.
