Thousands of Kashmiris staged a demonstration on Friday against the visit of India's prime minister to inaugurate a train link and power project in the disputed region that has seen the biggest anti-India protests in years. Police fired teargas shells and used batons to disperse several thousand Muslim demonstrators who marched the streets in Srinagar, the summer capital, shouting “We want freedom”. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, accompanied by Sonia Gandhi, leader of the ruling Congress party, on Friday inaugurated a 450-megawatt hydro power project at Baglihar Dam on the Chenab river, which flows from Indian Kashmir into Pakistan. Islamabad has objected to the dam, saying it will shrink its access to water. India has rejected the charge and says the project is crucial for power-starved Kashmir. Built at a cost of more than 55 billion rupees ($1.1 billion), the project would bring the state more than 9 billion rupees a year, Singh said in his address. “The same amount could be now used for the welfare for the people and other developmental schemes in the state”, he said. Singh is also scheduled to flag off the first ever train service in the Kashmir Valley on Saturday, covering a distance of 117 km between Baramulla town in the north and Qazigund in south Kashmir. The separatist alliance, the All Parties Hurriyat (freedom) Conference, has called for peaceful protests and a strike on Saturday to protest Singh's visit. “Kashmir's problem is neither of laying railway links, nor providing economic packages or power projects,” said Mirwaiz Umar Farooq, chairman of Hurriyat. “It is the question of political aspirations of the people.” Tens of thousands of Indian troops earlier this week thwarted a planned pro-independence rally in Lal Chowk, the historic center of Srinagar.
