March 1, 1990: When 47 civilians were massacred for Azadi

Mir Faheem Aslam

(from greaterkashmir.com)

Srinagar, Feb 28: In the newly constructed market at Zakoora Crossing, 14 km northeast of Srinagar, it’s hard to find any trace of a carnage the Army soldiers carried out 17 years ago, killing about 30 unarmed civilians after firing indiscriminately on them. But the mayhem still haunts eyewitnesses and survivors of the incident.

It was the afternoon of March 1, 1990—those days entire Valley was up in arms demanding freedom from India and protesting against atrocities by the Jagmohan regime—when a group of about 2,000 people decided to rush to Srinagar office of the United Nation’s Military Observer Group in India and Pakistan (UNMOGIP) to submit a memorandum.

Comprising young and old, the protesters, many of them clad in shrouds, were immersed in the din of Azadi slogans, recalled a shopkeeper at the Zakoora Crossing. In the meantime, he said, a convoy of five Army vehicles led by three Junior Commissioned Officers was returning from Sonamarg to Srinagar but found the road blocked near the crossing.

Initially, the locals said, three policemen who were guarding the crossing told the soldiers to wait for sometime till the protesters pass. “This led to a heated argument between the policemen and the soldiers,” the locals said.

Unprovoked firing

“We still remember an Army official telling the cops ‘give way or we’ll shoot you’,” many eyewitnesses of the incident said. They said three Army vehicles were fitted with light machine guns (LMGs) and as the convoy turned towards the demonstration, the soldiers opened fire. “Soon bodies piled up. I myself counted 11, they had died on the spot,” the shopkeeper, who requested not to be named, told Greater Kashmir. “Later many more succumbed to their injuries. And when I removed some people to the SKIMS, Soura, the doctors said they were no more,” he said. “Army wanted to kill them all because very few people had bullets in legs.”

In all, 26 civilians fell to the soldiers bullets while 50 more were injured in the incident that later came to be known as the Zakoora massacre.
The mayhem continued for more than two hours, with the injured, helpless and hopeless, watching the bloodbath from a distance. None from the civil administration came to their rescue.

Only the locals rushed there ferrying the injured to hospitals, said Ali Muhammad, one of the eyewitnesses, insisting that the protesters had no clash or argument with the Army. “The firing was simply unprovoked,” he recounted.

‘Can I meet my son’

A shopkeeper at the Zakoora Crossing said a 50-year-old survivor of the carnage, a deaf, often visits the spot where his son, who also was among the protesters, died. “He only says, ‘can I meet my son’,” the shopkeeper said.

Another massacre

On the ill-fated day, 21 more Kashmiris were killed at about 5 pm by the Army soldiers who fired at a bus near Tengpora, Bye-Pass. They too were unarmed. The dead included five women.

Next day, global watchdog, Amnesty International issued a second appeal for urgent Action on Kashmir pertaining to Tengpora and Zakoora. A detailed account appeared in the March 31, 1990 issue of the Economic and Political Weekly of Bombay, which reproduced the text of “India’s Kashmir War” by a team of four members of the Committee for Initiative on Kashmir.

S. Mulgaokar quoted excerpts from the same report in the “Diary of a Recluse” in April 7, 1991 edition of The Indian Express.

Copyright and courtesy of Greater Kashmir. com [link]
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