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.

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