The Martyrs Memorial Park is perched at an altitude of 3,500 meters, in Skyatsags, Leh, Ladakh. Surrounded by willows on three sides, the podium in the park is decorated in cloth buntings of blue, red, and yellow, a visual that has come to represent Buddhist prayers floating into the ether. Each bunting carries the prayer: ‘Om Mani Padme Hum” (Praise to the jewel in the lotus).

The memorial park is dedicated to the three locals who died in the firing by security forces on August 27, 1989, during an agitation for Schedule Tribe (ST) and Union Territory (UT) status at the polo ground in Leh. Surrounded by mighty peaks over 5,000 meters high and peppered with fresh powder snowfall in a distance, many women, in ones and twos, enter the park, their voices hushed, their footsteps quiet.

This is where climate activist Sonam Wangchuk, 59, sat a three-week long hunger strike from September 10 this year. Now detained under the stringent National Security Act (NSA), 1980, Wangchuk had to call off the hunger strike on September 24 after rare violence left four locals dead and around 90 injured. People had been out on the street demanding Statehood and the enforcement of the Sixth Schedule, the part of the Indian Constitution which guarantees special provisions for areas with tribal majorities. In the violence, around 80 cars were found damaged outside the park. Dozens of people remain in police custody, locals say.

Dolma Phunsukh, in her 30s and a member of a non-governmental organisation (NGO), is at memorial park a week after the violence broke out and a curfew was imposed in the town. As the curfew in Leh is being relaxed by eight hours a day, Phunsukh says she has come to pick up her belongings from the protest site. “I have come to check if the mattresses and cushions I would bring along during the hunger strike are still there. I am sure no one will steal them.