Posted on 12/20/2002 12:54:38 AM PST by kattracks
Dec. 20 JAMMU, India (Reuters) - Suspected militants killed three young women in their homes just days after posters appeared in India's Jammu and Kashmir state ordering women to wear a veil, police said Friday.
Two of the women, both aged 21, were shot dead in their house in Rajouri district in the south of the revolt-torn Muslim-majority state Thursday night. The third woman, 22, was taken away and beheaded, an official said.
"There is a possibility these killings are linked with the diktat on dress code. We have sent a police party," he said.
Posters signed by a little known group, Lashkar Jabbar, appeared in Rajouri town and neighboring villages asking women not to step out of their homes without a veil, the official said.
More than a dozen guerrilla groups are fighting Indian rule in Jammu and Kashmir, which is at the heart of more than 50 years of hostility with Pakistan. A few groups in the past have ordered women in the Kashmir valley to wear a veil, but the order was largely ignored.
The Lashkar Jabbar sprayed acid on two women in Kashir's main city Srinagar last year for defying its Islamic dress code.
The group then had threatened to shoot Muslim women if they failed to wear veils. It ordered women from the minority Hindu community to wear a traditional "bindi," the colored dot on the forehead,and those in the Sikh community should cover their heads with saffron-colored cloth.
More than 35,000 people have been killed in 13 years of rebellion in Jammu and Kashmir where a new government took power last month promising to bring peace to the war-weary region.
India accuses Pakistan arming and sending sending Islamic militants across the border into Jammu and Kashmir.
Pakistan, an Islamic country, denies direct involvement in the revolt and says it provides only moral and diplomatic support to a Kashmiri struggle for self-determination.
Copyright 2002 Reuters News Service. All rights reserved.
Any "religion" which approves or advocates killing women for merely showing their face needs to be eradicated from the world.
My, but the Islamists are such manly men, picking on women.
The difference, amongst many others, is that Christianity has evolved beyond mediaeval thinking. Islam has not.
Of course, the above story must be false because PBS just aired a "documentary" on the sublime, soft faith known as Islam.
Absolutely. NOW can only dream of such power. |
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