SRINAGAR: A general strike and curfew shut Indian-controlled Kashmir on Monday following the death of a Muslim teenager attacked by a Hindu mob over rumors of cows being slaughtered.
Hindus consider cows to be sacred, and slaughtering the animals is banned in most Indian states.
Businesses, schools and shops remained shut due to the strike called by anti-India separatists and traders to denounce the killing. State authorities canceled all university and college examinations on Monday fearing protests.
Thousands of people who attended Zahid Rasool’s funeral in Botengo village in southern Kashmir shouted anti-Indian slogans demanding freedom from Indian rule.
Rasool and another truck driver were set ablaze by a mob after their vehicle stopped in the Hindu-dominated Udhampur neighborhood. A third person in the truck escaped unhurt. The injured were flown to New Delhi for treatment, but Rasool died from his burns on Sunday.
Police officer Danish Rana said nine people have been arrested in connection with Rasool’s death.
Authorities laid razor wire across the main crossings and declared curfew in parts of Kashmir’s capital city, Srinagar, and in nearby Anantnag town to stop protests and clashes.
“Go India, go back” and “We want freedom,” the crowd shouted at Rasool’s funeral. Clashes also erupted in Botengo village as security forces fired tear gas to stop rock-throwing protesters from marching to the nearby main highway.
Differences have deepened within Kashmir’s ruling coalition, with the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party demanding a ban on slaughtering cows and selling beef in the Muslim-majority state.
A colonial-era law banned cow slaughter in Kashmir, but no one paid heed to it until a local court ordered its strict enforcement recently.
Muslims resented the order and later India’s Supreme Court suspended it for two months.
Since Prime Minister Narendra Modi, a Hindu nationalist, took office last year, hard-line Hindus have been demanding that India ban beef sales. Most beef sold across India is buffalo meat.
There has been outrage across India after a 50-year-old Muslim man was beaten to death by a mob last month over rumors that his family had eaten beef for dinner. Last week, a village mob in northern India beat a Muslim man to death and injured four others, accusing them of smuggling cows to be slaughtered for beef.
Teen’s death in Indian Kashmir mob attack sets off protests
Teen’s death in Indian Kashmir mob attack sets off protests
French publisher recalls dictionary over ‘Jewish settler’ reference
- The entry in French reads: “In October 2023, following the death of more than 1,200 Jewish settlers in a series of Hamas attacks”
- The four books are subject to a recall procedure and will be destroyed, Hachette said
PARSI: French publisher Hachette on Friday said it had recalled a dictionary that described the Israeli victims of the October 7, 2023 attacks as “Jewish settlers” and promised to review all its textbooks and educational materials.
The Larousse dictionary for 11- to 15-year-old students contained the same phrase as that discovered by an anti-racism body in three revision books, the company told AFP.
The entry in French reads: “In October 2023, following the death of more than 1,200 Jewish settlers in a series of Hamas attacks, Israel decided to tighten its economic blockade and invade a large part of the Gaza Strip, triggering a major humanitarian crisis in the region.”
The worst attack in Israeli history saw militants from the Palestinian Islamist group kill around 1,200 people in settlements close to the Gaza Strip and at a music festival.
“Jewish settlers” is a term used to describe Israelis living on illegally occupied Palestinian land.
The four books, which were immediately withdrawn from sale, are subject to a recall procedure and will be destroyed, Hachette said, promising a “thorough review of its textbooks, educational materials and dictionaries.”
France’s leading publishing group, which came under the control of the ultra-conservative Vincent Bollore at the end of 2023, has begun an internal inquiry “to determine how such an error was made.”
It promised to put in place “a new, strengthened verification process for all its future publications” in these series.
President Emmanuel Macron on Wednesday said that it was “intolerable” that the revision books for the French school leavers’ exam, the baccalaureat, “falsify the facts” about the “terrorist and antisemitic attacks by Hamas.”
“Revisionism has no place in the Republic,” he wrote on X.
Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack on Israel resulted in the deaths of 1,221 people, with 251 people taken hostage, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures.
Authorities in Gaza estimate that more than 70,000 people have been killed by Israeli forces during their bombardment of the territory since, while nearly 80 percent of buildings have been destroyed or damaged, according to UN data.
Israeli forces have killed at least 447 Palestinians in Gaza since a ceasefire took effect in October, according to the Hamas-run health ministry.
