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| Refugee strike shuts down Jammu city | | |
Mon Nov 6
JAMMU, India - Shops and schools were shut and buses went off the roads on Monday in Jammu city, winter capital of Kashmir, in response to a strike called by refugees who had come from Pakistan decades ago.
The shutdown came on the day the state government shifted its offices from the region's summer capital, Srinagar, to Jammu, which becomes the administrative headquarters of the revolt-torn region each winter.
"The strike is almost 80 percent complete," Anil John, a state government employee, said. "I had to ask for a ride to reach my office on time".
Around 150,000 Hindu and Sikh refugees from Pakistan live in the Jammu region. They came in 1947 when the subcontinent was partitioned on religious lines at the end of British colonial rule.
They complain that they have not been given voting rights and have not been rehabilitated properly by the state government.
The strike, organised by the Refugees United Front (RUF), an umbrella group of refugees, was backed by the country's main opposition party, the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party.
"Our call for Monday's strike is an attempt to highlight our plight rather than a political one as we have no other demand behind it", the RUF said in a press statement.
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