DOWN THE SLOPE

THE NEW SPATE OF SELECTIVE KILLINGS OF KASHMIRI HINDUS, SIKHS AND MIGRANT WORKERS FROM OTHER STATES OF BHARAT IS AIMED AT BLOCKING THE NEW COURSE OF HISTORY IN KASHMIR

- VIJAY KRANTI

Kashmir Valley is going through a new phase of violence – target killings. Except for some major events like the historic violent campaign against the local Kashmiri Pandits in 1989-90 and the mass killing of Kashmiri Sikhs in Chhattisingh Pura in 2000, the terrorist violence in Kashmir over past many decades has been mainly focused at killing Indian security forces. While the main purpose of the violence against the Kashmiri Hindus and the Kashmiri Sikhs was to achieve ethnic cleansing of the Valley during 1989-90 and later years, the killings of Indian security forces served the dual purpose of attracting international attention to separatism in Kashmir as well as to please terrorists’ promoters and paymasters sitting in Pakistan and other countries. But things have changed in a big way in the post Article 370 era. Terrorists are now focusing on killing unsuspecting and helpless individual Hindus and Sikhs. Their victims now are Kashmiri Pandits who had returned to the Valley under rehabilitation package of the State Government; non-Kashmiri government employees who have been posted from Jammu region to the Valley; or poor labourers and workers from other States of India who found one or other petty job in Kashmir.

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