Muslims Protest Unwanted Elections Voters In Jammu, Kashmir Say India Army Troops Forced Them To Polls

In an exercise denounced by many as a parody of democracy, voters in predominantly Muslim areas of the troubled Himalayan state of Jammu and Kashmir were called to the polls Thursday for the first elections in seven years.

Witnesses told reporters that crowds in at least one town charged polling booths, complaining that security forces were trying to force people into voting. The polling - already completed in India’s other states - is for representatives in India’s national parliament and took place in two of the state’s constituencies.

“We do not want elections, we want freedom,” a group of women screamed before police fired tear-gas shells and bullets into the air to disperse about 1,000 protesters in the town of Baramula northwest of Srinagar.

In a square in Sopore, hundreds of people came to shout pro-independence slogans.

In some locales, journalists saw Indian soldiers herding men toward the polls. One man in a group escorted by troops told reporters, “We are being forced to vote. We do not want this election.”

The commander of Indian Army troops in the state denied that his soldiers were pressuring anyone. “Rumors are going around some media that say the army is compelling people to vote. Let me make it very clear we are not doing that thing,” Lt. Gen. J.S. Dhillon told reporters in Srinagar, the state’s summer capital.

When polls closed at 5 p.m., Indian government officials claimed the turnout was 35 percent percent and 43 percent percent, respectively - far higher than expected.

It was a “mandate for the return of peace, normalcy and democracy,” state government chief secretary Ashok Kumar claimed. Participation in the last election in 1989 was little better than 5 percent.

That year, a separatist uprising broke out in India’s only Muslim-majority state. The following year, Jammu and Kashmir was placed under direct rule from New Delhi. More than 25,000 people are believed to have died in the six-year-old revolt.

For Indian authorities, Thursday’s vote will likely serve as proof that their controversial campaign of pacification in Kashmir, which rights organizations say includes torture, rape and summary execution, is succeeding.