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March 30, 2019•Update: March 31, 2019
SRINAGAR, Jammu Kashmir
Indian administrators have formed a new eight-member group to further crack down on pro-independence activists and sympathizers in the disputed Kashmir region, according to a Home Ministry order on Friday.
The “terror monitoring group” has been formed to “ensure and concerted action against terror financing and other terror-related activities in Jammu and Kashmir," said the order.
The group includes the police intelligence head in Kashmir, Kashmir’s police inspector general, the additional director of India’s Intelligence Bureau (IB), and representatives of four other Indian intelligence agencies.
The group, according to the order, will also take action against hardcore sympathizers of the independence movement among government employees, including teachers, who are providing covert or overt support.
The group will meet on a weekly basis and review actions .
Last month, India’s government banned the socio-political and religious organization Jamaat-e-Islami and arrested over 300 members of the group and other pro-Independence activists. Earlier this month, the pro-independence Jammu Kashmir Liberation Front was banned. Most of the top pro-independence leaders and activists have been languishing in Indian prisons on changes of funding militant groups and pro-independence demonstrators.
Since a Feb. 14 bombing in which at least 40 Indian paramilitary personnel were killed, Indian forces have further intensified operations in the Kashmir region.
Jammu and Kashmir, a Muslim-majority Himalayan region, is held by India and Pakistan in parts and claimed by both in full. A small sliver of Kashmir is also held by China.
Since they were partitioned in 1947, the two countries have fought three wars -- in 1948, 1965 and 1971 -- two of them over Kashmir.
Also, in Siachen glacier in northern Kashmir, Indian and Pakistani troops have fought intermittently since 1984. A cease-fire came into effect in 2003.
Some Kashmiri groups in Jammu and Kashmir have been fighting against Indian rule for independence, or for unification with neighboring Pakistan.
According to several human rights groups, thousands of people have reportedly been killed in the conflict in the region since 1989.
