Date:14/09/2002 URL: http://www.thehindu.com/2002/09/14/stories/2002091404670100.htm

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Baramulla voters may boycott poll

By Anjali Mody

There was tension in Srinagar on Friday as youth took to the streets against the killing of two youth at Gow Kadal in Lal Chowk allegedly by the BSF in `cold-blood' the previous day. The BSF denied the charges. Shopkeepers downed the shutters and stones were hurled at Civil Lines part of the city injuring 12 persons. — Photo Nissar Ahmad

Baramulla SEPT. 13. The men leaving the Baitul Muqarram Masjid in Baramulla after the Friday namaz waved copies of a pamphlet, issued by Shabir Shah's Jammu and Kashmir Freedom Party, supporting an election boycott.

The pamphlet follows the poll boycott call given by the All-Party Hurriyat Conference a few days ago. Its effect: to harden the resolve in Baramulla to keep away from polling booths on Monday.

The reasons vary from private bitterness to a sense that the elections mock the situation in the State. The overwhelming view is that elections will ``not solve the real problem''. A man, who identified himself as Rehman, said the elections were simply ``India having a joke at Kashmir's expense''.

They would change nothing, ``they will not bring peace, they will not let us live in peace''. Just yesterday morning, he said, there was a gun battle at the small crossroads in the middle of the bazaar.

Mohammed Abdul, who runs a shop on the main stretch of the highway running through the town, said the elections were meaningless to people like him. Two of his brothers had been killed by the BSF. The armed forces and paramilitary forces ``treat all of us like terrorists''.

Pointing to an elderly man being searched by a soldier on a nearby bridge, he said ``does he look like a terrorist''.

Khurshid Ahmed, a Ph.D scholar at Chandigarh University, said that participating in the election would be a betrayal of the thousands of young Kashmiris who had died in the last 14 years. India and Pakistan, he said ``are playing a cricket match with Kashmir as the trophy ... they are not concerned about us. The fact is that we want neither''. Did they want freedom? A man outside the mosque said ``we will decide what we want, but let India get out first'', to which the gathered crowd responded with inshallah (God willing).

In the villages around Baramulla the feeling is no different, although people express themselves less freely. The sense of being trapped from both sides is stronger.

An old man, who refused to give his name, said in Baramulla town no one could force anyone to vote. But in Najibatt, a village of some 80 families where a curfew is in place from 5 p.m. to 8 a.m. it was the uniformed men who ruled.

He said that in 1996 they were ``beaten and forced to vote'' adding, ``why should it be any different this time.''