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JKLF pauses, to resume march on Tuesday

Pro-independence Kashmiri activists today interrupted their march towards the Line of Control for a night after Pakistani security forces fired warning shots and teargas to prevent them from crossing into India.

Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front chairman Amanullah Khan, who went into hiding to escape arrest, announced from an unknown location that thousands of JKLF activists would resume their march tomorrow to try to symbolically cross the LoC.

JKLF workers were attempting to cross a cordon thrown by the Pakistani security forces in the Hajira area of Pakistan-occupied Kashmir.

Khan, who went into hiding last week after Pakistani authorities launched a crackdown on activists of his party, was also on his way to Hajira, situated 26 kilometres from the LoC, when police lobbed teargas and used batons to disperse the protestors.

At least eight demonstrators were wounded in the clashes, JKLF sources said.

In the latest crackdown, police arrested 27 JKLF activists in Phagwati village, where the organisation had planned to assemble for its symbolic breach of the LoC.

Khan had called for the march across the LoC at Madarpur to draw attention to the Kashmiris' "freedom struggle" and to reject the division of the predominantly Muslim state.

Pakistan deployed thousands of police and paramilitary forces in the Hajira area in the southern Poonch district, and erected barricades to prevent a repetition of a similar attempt made by the JKLF in 1992, in which Pakistani forces killed nine marchers.

DPA

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