Kashmir: News & Discussions

[Kashmiri Nationalist]

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Srinagar: Emphasizing the need of countering the “misleading propaganda” of Indian government and media vis-�-vis the Kashmir situation, Hurriyat Conference (M) Wednesday said it would gear up efforts to apprise the Indian public about the “gross human rights violations and infringement of political and religious rights of Kashmiris.”

In this regard, the amalgam’s chairman, Mirwaiz Umar Farooq and senior leader, Bilal Gani Lone today left for Chandigarh to attend a seminar, on November 25, titled “Jammu and Kashmir problem with reference to Indo-Pak relation.” The seminar has been organized by Internationalist Democratic Party, a Chandigarh based non-governmental organization.

“Besides the seminar in Chandigarh, the two Hurriyat leaders are also scheduled to attend another seminar, ‘Jammu and Kashmir the way forward’ in Kolkatta, the capital of West Bengal. The seminar has been organized by a local non- governmental organization, Centre for Peace and Progress” a spokesman of the amalgam said.

The Hurriyat leaders, the spokesman said, will also meet the envoys of Organisation of Islamic Countries and Muslim and Western countries in New Delhi. “The envoys would be apprised in a detailed manner about the curbs imposed on the political and religious rights of Kashmiris and would be urged to use their influence and pressurize India to put an immediate end to the unabated human rights violations committed by its forces in Kashmir,” the spokesman added.

The spokesman said that while the while word knew about the Kashmir issue, the Indian government and a section of Indian media were distorting the historical facts about the Kashmir dispute and keeping the Indian public in ignorant about the worst kind of human rights violations committed against Kashmiris by government forces.

“The need of the hour, therefore, is to take all practical steps to inform the Indian public, civil Society and justice loving orgsanisations about the present situation in Kashmir and seek their support for our cause,” the spokesman said. (PBI)

[nick_indian]

Stuff like this makes India a true democracy because this can only happen in one.

About mirwaiz , India people are patriots , this wont make a difference plus he will be grilled with questions about kashmiri minorities . Won't work. He will have to try something different.

The only person it will work on is Dhoti roy .

[CaptainJackSparrow]

Neither Azad Nor Kashmir

While emphasising the involvement of Pakistan in any initiative on Jammu & Kashmir, Centre-appointed interlocutors recently expressed a desire to involve the people and leadership of Pakistan-administered J&K (PAJK) in the resolution process. It is an idea that has remained integral to several official as well as civil society initiatives between India and Pakistan.

While the Indian side of J&K has hogged international attention for the recent youth unrest, there seems to be a paucity of scholarship and information about the political, ethnic and economic aspects of PAJK.

The region known as 'Azad Kashmir' in Pakistan has a population of more than three million and comprises one-third of the erstwhile princely state of J&K. At the world stage, the region has come into focus during the 2005 earthquake or as one of the bases of militant outfits like the Lashkar. However, the region's impact on South Asian politics and even outside has remained a less studied subject of contemporary scholarship, though it has one of the largest South Asian diasporas living in Britain which has played a central role in internationalising the Kashmir issue since the early 1990s.

Some sections of the Pakistani and pro-Pakistan PAJK elite have often marketed PAJK as an independent state. PAJK, officially known as "Azad (independent) Jammu and Kashmir" in Pakistan, has its own Supreme Court, high court, flag and legislative assembly comprising 49 members, of whom 41 are directly elected and eight are nominated by the government. The head of the government in PAJK is known as prime minister and the head of the state is designated as president.

In January 2006, Sardar Abdul Qayuum Khan, the former president of PAJK and father of the region's current prime minister, Attique Khan, told me at Muzaffarabad that the struggle of his party, the Muslim Conference, would continue till the Indian side of J&K gets the same degree of political freedom as he enjoyed in his own region.

Some of the basic myths about PAJK need to be demolished before discussing the politics of the region. The region is quite distinct from the Kashmir valley and the majority of the people are Pothwari-speaking, which on the Indian side is referred to as Pahari. Except religion, linguistically and ethnically there is hardly anything in common between the Kashmir valley and PAJK.

In January 2009, Sardar Attique Khan, the then prime minister of PAJK, blamed the loss of his majority in the legislative assembly on the Pakistani state and remarked that democracy has been slaughtered. More than a year later, Attique Khan is back again as the prime minister of the region.

Farooq Haider, the deposed prime minister, accused the Pakistan Peoples Party-led federal government of uniting with his political rivals in the state, which resulted in his resignation. This is the third time in the last four years that the sitting prime minister has lost his majority in the assembly.

An objective study will better explain the patron-client relationship between the ruling Pakistani elite and the PAJK political elite. In 1949, the Muslim Conference, one of the political outfits in J&K, was recognised as the permanent representative of PAJK, with powers to strike agreements with the sovereign country of Pakistan. It was seen as a political reward for the Muslim Conference, a political outfit that supported J&K's accession to Pakistan in its July 1947 executive body session at Srinagar. In the political system that existed from 1947 to 1960, the person at the helm of the Muslim Conference was nominated as the president of PAJK. The major constitutional change came in 1970 when adult franchise was introduced to elect the president. In 1974, the parliamentary system was introduced in PAJK.

The democratic leadership of Pakistan continued the tradition of military dispensation to bring arbitrary executive changes in the region. In 1990, PAJK prime minister Mumtaz Rathore was 'escorted' to Islamabad in a helicopter and forced to sign a letter of resignation by the Nawaz Sharif government.

Moreover, there are visible contradictions between the Pakistani and PAJK constitutions. For instance, Article 257 of the Pakistani constitution holds that the "people of Jammu and Kashmir will define their relationship with Pakistan after obtaining freedom". However, under section 5(2)(vii) of the PAJK Legislative Assembly Election Ordinance 1970, "a person will be disqualified for propagating any opinion or action in any manner prejudicial to the ideology of Pakistan, the ideology of state's accession to Pakistan or the sovereignty and integrity of Pakistan". The Islamabad-based "Azad Jammu and Kashmir Council" is headed by the prime minister of Pakistan. This key institutional body shapes the economic policy of the region.

The post-1990 phase has opened up space for new political players in the region with demands for democratisation and respect for autonomy of the region's institutions by the federal government. Any developments in this respect will impact Pakistan's Kashmir policy, which has defined the country's overall strategic and tactical calculations since its creation. The understanding of various aspects relating to PAJK, a less studied subject, and other factors in Pakistan is a prerequisite for any constructive and result-oriented dialogue between India and Pakistan.

The writer is the author of a book based on field study in Pakistan and Pakistan-administered Jammu & Kashmir.

Neither Azad Nor Kashmir - The Times of India

[CaptainJackSparrow]

Old India itch gives Pak a red face in UN

New York, Nov. 22: A politically correct effort by the United Nations to mollify Islamabad for what its top diplomat here peevishly described as an “inadvertent” omission of Kashmir from the annual report of the Security Council has, in fact, made Pakistan the laughing stock in the world body.

The conciliatory gesture by Farhan Haq, acting deputy spokesperson for the UN secretary-general last week has, instead, drawn attention to documents revealing that Pakistan has surreptitiously kept “alive” at the UN Hyderabad’s merger with India and the secession of East Pakistan to form Bangladesh.

An Arab diplomat at the UN, who would normally have been sympathetic to Islamabad exclaimed that “not many people even in Pakistan any longer remember that there was once a dispute between newly-independent India and Pakistan over how Hyderabad became a part of India.”

Reflecting a popular view among the UN’s membership, he regretted that Pakistan has now been caught misusing the outdated and obsolete procedures at the UN to keep alive its obsession with India and in the process weaken the credibility of the UN as a body which ought to be dealing with genuine, current threats to peace instead of a single country’s hobby horses.

The unexpected and rapid turn of events here stemmed from a complaint by Pakistan’s acting permanent representative to the UN, Amjad Hussain Sial, in the General Assembly a fortnight ago that “an inadvertent omission” in the annual report of the Security Council had left out Kashmir as “one of the oldest disputes on agenda of the Security Council.”

Responding to a predictable uproar in Pakistan that Kashmir is no longer on the Council’s agenda, Haq told reporters that the Indo- Pakistan dispute, “by a decision of the Council, remains on the list for this year” of issues which have not been eliminated altogether from its purview.

But Haq’s helpful gesture towards Pakistan has actually opened a Pandora’s Box for Asif Ali Zardari’s fragile government in Islamabad, whose diplomats are now scurrying to overcome the embarrassment caused for them at the UN from a logical fallout of Haq’s clarification.

Haq quoted from Security Council documents to bolster a firm assertion by Pakistan’s permanent representative to the UN here, Abdullah Hussain Haroon that “the (current) president of the Security Council... the UK, is amply clear on the subject and is cognisant of the matter.”

Haroon, who is under severe criticism from hardliners in Pakistan for his civility and a working relationship in dealings with the Indian mission to the UN, issued an urgent appeal from Karachi to “all concerned not to speculate unnecessarily upon the subject” in an effort to quell the uproar.

But matters are only likely to get worse for Haroon and his foreign minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi on this issue because the documents quoted by the UN spokesperson reveal that the last time the Security Council took Kashmir into account in any of its deliberations was in November 1965.

The document, an annual “statement by the secretary-general on matters of which the Security Council is seized and on the stage reached in their consideration”, has two parts.

The first part is commonly known as the “seizure list” because it lists items, which the Security Council has been seized of at some point in the last three years. That active list of the Council’s agenda does not mention Jammu and Kashmir even by implication.

An Indian diplomat here joked that he was not surprised that this year’s “seizure list” is causing seizures in Pakistan because it is clear that the UN is no longer seized of the Kashmir issue. No country other than Pakistan is interested in it and even Islamabad has been unable to raise it in the Security Council.

A second part of the document “sets out those items which were identified in the summary statement for 2009 as matters of which the Security Council was seized and which have not been considered by the Council at a formal meeting during the (last) three-year period.”

It explains that “the list indicates the date on which each item was first taken up by the Council at a formal meeting, and the date of the most recent formal Council meeting held on that item.”

It amply makes clear that “the India-Pakistan question” — since Kashmir in not mentioned by name even here — was first brought before the Council in January 1948 and has not figured on the Security Council’s active agenda since November 1965.

Pakistan’s desperation to somehow bring Kashmir back on the UN’s agenda is, therefore, understandable since it is an issue that every other country considers as a dead letter.

In 2008, in an effort to streamline the work of the UN and to make the Security Council more effective, it was decided that items “which have not been considered by the Council at a formal meeting during the (previous) three-year period” would be completely removed from its purview.

Accordingly, at the beginning of this year, secretary-general Ban Ki-moon sent out a circular which mentioned Jammu and Kashmir among the items due for such deletion unless at least one UN member requested otherwise by February 28.

On January 7, Pakistan’s permanent representative shot off a letter to the secretary-general and the president of the Security Council demanding that the so-called India-Pakistan question be retained for another year. No other country was interested in such retention.

Haroon’s letter also demanded that the dispute over Hyderabad and the situation in the Indian sub-continent in 1971 should remain under the purview of the Council.

By stating the legalistic position on Kashmir, Haq may have hoped to give Pakistani diplomats here some room for manoeuvre. But what it has achieved is to expose the severe limits of Pakistan’s diplomacy at the UN and to highlight the anachronism of its unforgiving antagonism to India even on matters which the rest of the world considers as settled.

The Telegraph - Calcutta (Kolkata) | Nation | Old India itch gives Pak a red face in UN

[Jackdaws]

Self-delete

[CaptainJackSparrow]

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[Jackdaws]

Pakistan did what it had to do out of domestic compulsions. Can you imagine how the opposition and perhaps Army would have ravaged Pakistan Govt. if they had not reacted in the way they did?

[S_O_C_O_M]

Geelani: India is at war with Kashmiris

TopNews
Written by KMS
Wednesday, 24 November 2010 15:11



Srinagar, November 24, 2010: All Parties Hurriyat Conference Chairman (APHC), Syed Ali Shah Geelani has said that India is at war with innocent Kashmiri of Occupied State of Jammu & Kashmir (OSJK) and using all its resources to suppress their liberation movement.

Syed Ali Shah Geelani in a statement issued in Srinagar said that even aged people and children were being booked under the Indian black laws and youth being subjected to third degree torture in various jails.

“We would hold marches, rallies and protests against such atrocities, but the authorities have closed all such door on us and we are left with no option but strikes to decry this oppression,” Syed Ali Shah Geelani had said.

The APHC Chairman, Syed Ali Shah Geelani urged the people to march towards Eidgah in Srinagar on Friday after Juma prayers to build a memorial wall in memory of the innocent civilians killed in the valley during past five months. He also called for a complete shutdown on Saturday.

Earlier, Syed Ali Shah Geelani, while talking to a two-member Canadian delegation, that met him at his Hyderpora residence, said that appointment of interlocutors by New Delhi was a futile exercise and an attempt to hoodwink the international community. He urged India to give up its rigidity and accept Kashmir as a disputed territory.

The APHC Chairman Syed Ali Shah Geelani had maintained that it is moral responsibility of the international community to help resolve the Kashmir dispute in accordance with the Kashmiris’ aspirations. He told the Canadian delegation that Kashmir was not a territorial dispute between India and Pakistan but was the question of future of millions of Kashmiri people.

“It was India which took the issue of Occupied State of Jammu & Kashmir (OSJK) to the United Nations and six decades have passed but promises made with the Kashmiris have not been fulfilled yet,” he added. Syed Ali Shah Geelani informed the Canadian delegation that peaceful movement of Kashmiris was dealt with brute force by India and its troops.

The All Parties Hurriyat Conference (APHC) leader, Nayeem Ahmad Khan has said that the matchless and unprecedented sacrifices of Kashmiri people will be written in golden words in history.

Nayeem Ahmad Khan, while addressing different gatherings in Tangmarg where he had gone to express solidarity with the family members of the youth recently killed by Indian armed forces during peaceful demonstrations, reaffirmed the Kashmiris’ resolve to continue liberation struggle against India till its logical conclusion.

He said that it was due to the sacrifices of Kashmiri people that the international community had realised the urgency of peaceful settlement of the Kashmir dispute. He said that the ongoing movement had shifted to new generation of the Occupied State of Jammu & Kashmir (OSJK), adding that India should give up its rigid stance on OSJK and come forward to resolve the dispute so that permanent peace could be established in the region.

The Jammu and Kashmir Peoples Movement (JKPM), a constituent of the All Parties Hurriyat Conference, has said that India can no longer prolong its illegal occupation of Jammu and Kashmir by using brute force against innocent Kashmiris.

APHC leader and the JKPM Chairman, Ghulam Ahmed Mir in a statement in Jammu said that the international community should make India realize that resolution of the Kashmir dispute was vital for the peace and development in South Asia.

He called upon the Muslim world to respond to the appeal made by the Iranian supreme leader, Khamenei to extend its support to the Kashmiris, who were being subjected to the worst kind of oppression and suppression by India troops just for demanding their inalienable right of Self-Determination.

Leader of the All Parties Hurriyat Conference (APHC), Mukhtar Ahmad Waza has said that the Kashmir dispute can be resolved through tripartite talks amongst Pakistan, India and the genuine Kashmiri leadership.

Mukhtar Waza in a statement issued in Srinagar said that Kashmir was a political problem and needed a political solution in accordance with its historical perspective and aspirations of the Kashmiris.

He said that the unresolved Kashmir dispute was a potential threat to the peace and stability of south Asian region. He condemned the worst kind of human rights violations in Occupied State of Jammu & Kashmir (OSJK) territory by Indian armed forces and said that such tactics could not prevent the people of Kashmir from continuing their just struggle for right of Self-Determination.

Geelani: India is at war with Kashmiris

[CaptainJackSparrow]

India is and will always be at war with those who seek to break the country apart.

@ Geelani: Only with you and a few thousand deluded people of the valley.

[Capt.Popeye]

Captain Popeye: Correction, India is at war with separatists and insurgents.

[JonAsad]

Let us get out of this WoT, and we will again make Kashmir a burning issue, like it was in the 90's

[graphican]

Captain Popeye: Correction, India is at war with separatists and insurgents.

Thats right.. India is at war with its fears and wants to hold the ones with power who it cannot convince with reasoning.

[CaptainJackSparrow]

Thats right.. India is at war with its fears and wants to hold the ones with power who it cannot convince with reasoning.

You guys tried convincing TTP in Swat na by offering them a peace deal?

What happened?

Laaton ke bhoot, baaton se nahin maante.

[JanjaWeed]

oh well.. same old c$&p recycled under different headlines by the thread starter.. guys don't waste your time discussing this...

Haathi chale bazaar, khutte Bhonke hazaar!!!

[Vajra_Yuddh]

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HAHA! The poor chap either doesn't know the meaning of war or his understanding is seriously doubtful. He calls this as war? . Such a small thinking.