Kashmiris urge plane hijackers to free hostages
Kashmiris urge plane hijackers to free hostages
SRINAGAR, India (Reuters): Some residents in the troubled north Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir urged the hijackers of an Indian Airlines plane on Monday to release the hostages unconditionally, saying hijacking violated the tenets of Islam.
"If our boys have done it (hijacking), they have done wrong, that too in the holy month of Ramadhan. The hijackers should immediately release all the passengers unconditionally," said Halima Bano in Srinagar, the state's summer capital.
Ramadhan, the holy month of fasting, began on Dec. 9. "Hostage-taking or hijacking is inhuman and un-Islamic, this will not help our freedom struggle," said Imtiayaz Bhat, a government employee. "The hijackers should end the saga."
The hijackers are holding 155 hostages under threat of death in the southern Afghan city of Kandahar.
They have threatened to start killing the hostages if India failed to free a Pakistani Muslim cleric, Mohammed Azhar Masood, who was arrested in Indian-held Kashmir in 1994.
While some Kashmiri Muslims justified the hijacking, saying it would help internationalize the Kashmir issue, Bano said past hijackings had yielded no results for the Kashmiris or leaders of the dozen-odd separatist groups fighting New Delhi's rule.
In the first incident of its kind in the subcontinent, Kashmiri militants from the Al-Fateh separatist group hijacked an Indian Airlines plane in 1971 to secure the release of their jailed leader Mohamad Maqbool Bhat.
The passengers were freed in Lahore and the plane blasted. Maqbool Bhat, founder member of the Jammu Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF), was hanged in New Delhi's Tihar Jail on February 11, 1984, on charges of killing an Indian intelligence officer.
In April 1993, a Kashmir militant hijacked an Indian Airlines plane in the northwestern city of Amritsar. The hijacker was later overpowered and shot dead.
Jammu and Kashmir is India's only Muslim-majority state. "This is shame for us that in the month of Ramadhan we are putting so many families in trouble," said Mushtaq Ahmad, a pediatrician. "This saga should end immediately."
Some Kashmiris said such incidents would not occur if the Kashmir problem were solved.
"I am proud of the hijackers. They have done the right thing. This will help our freedom struggle and at least people will come to know about the excesses of Indian security forces," said businessman M.A. Khan, echoing calls made by the hijackers.
The hijackers were reported to have called on the world to put pressure on India to solve the 52-year dispute over Kashmir, cause of two of the three Indo-Pakistani wars.
"We have pinned our hopes for 25 years on the world to resolve our dispute. The world, on and off, have paid attention to Kashmir, but not enough," one hijacker told Erick de Mul, a senior UN official monitoring the drama.
Feroz Ahmad, a resident of Srinagar said: "Justified from the hijackers' point of view, they have reason to do it. But if the Kashmir problem is solved such incidents will never happen."
In New Delhi, meanwhile, angry relatives of passengers held captive in the hijacked plane clashed with riot police on Monday, stepping up pressure on India's government to act to end the hostage ordeal.
About 70 agitated relatives, accusing the government of mishandling the situation, stormed the crisis management center in the Indian capital and clashed with 75 riot police.
Some relatives organized a sit-in outside Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee's residence. Vajpayee invited a group of five inside for talks, police officials said.
Distraught relatives at a hotel near New Delhi airport earlier refused to be pacified at a government briefing on the hijacking.
They shouted down officials and demanded the government agree to the hijackers' demand.
"Sixty-seven hours have passed and the passengers are almost dead. What more can the terrorists do before the government decides to take any action?" asked Anil Kumar, whose brother is on the plane.
Dazed government officials stood helplessly as shouting relatives moved threateningly towards the podium.