SRINAGAR, Aug 27 (1989): At least three Buddhist protesters were killed on Sunday when police opened fire on a rampaging mob in the mountainous town of Leh. Police said they had imposed an indefinite curfew on Leh, the biggest town in the Ladakh region of Kashmir. Kashmiri speaking, mostly Mulims, are in a minority in Leh but Buddhist say they have increasingly taken over much of the town's commerce. At least 30 policemen were hurt, mostly by stones thrown by protesters demanding separation from...

SRINAGAR, Aug 26 (1989): The chief minister of Jammu and Kashmir state vowed on Saturday to crush a secessionist movement in the state but said he was ready to pull back from direct confrontation over press censorship. Farooq Abdullah, speaking a few hours after security forces besieged Kashmir's largest mosque in Srinagar to flush out extremists, said the militants posed a grave threat to the state's security and its tourist-based economy. "We must not take it sitting down or by being complacent," he...

SRINAGAR, Aug 23 (1989): Jammu and Kashmir legislators passed a press censorship law on Wednesday to curb reporting of civil strife in the region but journalists vowed to go to jail rather than bow to it. "I am ready to go to prison and even lose my press rather than submit to this law," said Sofi Gulam Mohammad, editor of Kashmir's leading Urdu paper, the Srinagar Times. State Chief Minister Farooq Abdullah said the law was necessary to stop publicity for secessionist groups fighting to take...

SRINAGAR, India, Aug 22 (1989): Jammu and Kashmir state, wracked by violent civil strife, proposed a tough law on Tuesday to censor local reporting of its troubles. Law Minister Sheikh Mohammad Maqbool told the state assembly in the summer capital Srinagar the bill would cover any news regarded as prejudicial to public order or security. Though the constitution guaranteed freedom of the press, he said, reasonable restrictions were allowed in the interests of state security. Local journalists and...

SRINAGAR, Aug 21 (1989): Unidentified gunmen ambushed and killed a senior worker of Kashmir's ruling National Conference party in Srinagar, police said. They said Yusuf Halwai was walking through the downtown area of Srinagar when two gunmen shot him and fled through the narrow lanes of the old city. Halwai, an area president of the National Conference, was the first senior member of the ruling party to be killed in a violent campaign by separatists. Last week there were a spate of bomb blasts at...