Pakistan celebrated the country‘s 55th Defense Day on Sunday to pay homage to the soldiers and civilians who lost their lives in the war with India in 1965.
The defense day was celebrated amid escalating tensions between Pakistan and India over the latter‘s decision to revoke the Indian-controlled Kashmir‘s special status in August last year.
Pakistan’s army chief will visit Saudi Arabia this weekend, officials said, seeking to calm diplomatic strains over Kashmir as financial support for Islamabad hangs in the balance.
“I think the return of Kashmiri Pandits is being instrumentalized to justify a settler-colonial project in Kashmir,” Mona Bhan, an associate professor of South Asian Studies at Syracuse University in New York, said.
Bhan told Middle East Eye that there remains a deep anxiety among Kashmiri Pandits that their pain is being weaponised to further the goals of the BJP-led government. She says the event on Saturday seemed to be an attempt to allay those fears.
The Indian government has asked third party contractors to help it build a massive surveillance network utilizing thousands of cameras and the current cream of the facial recognition crop at the time of deployment. The whole thing needs to be in place less than 8 months after the contract is secured, suggesting the government is more than happy to move forward with whatever it has on hand rather than whatever might actually do the job well.
It‘s also climbing the global censorship charts, trailing only Russia, China, and Turkey in various social media platform demographics. But it is the king of Facebook censorship, delivering more takedown demands to Facebook than closest rival, Russia. When you‘re out-censoring Russia, you‘re playing the censorship game right.
(9.11.2019) On his first ever visit to Pakistan after he left his village of Gah as a young boy during Partition, former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said, “It is a good thing for both countries that the corridor has opened after a demand of 72 years”.
As Xi lands in the coastal city of Chennai Friday for a two-day visit to India, it‘s the Kashmir Valley at the northwestern tip of the mountain range that‘s poised to spoil efforts to improve Sino-Indian ties.
The Saudi stance on the issue was conveyed to India in a two-hour-long meeting between National Security Adviser Ajit Doval and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman in Riyadh on Wednesday, sources told ANI.
Trump met separately this week with both Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan, who are both due to address the UN General Assembly on Friday.
24.9.2019
(24.9.2019) Es sei wahrscheinlich, dass die Zahl der Opfer steige.
(24.9.2019) During the meeting, Khan successfully advocated Pakistan’s stance on Kashmir, which prompted President Trump to make another mediation offer on Kashmir.
Senator Bernie Sanders, a US presidential candidate and the longest serving independent in US congressional history, has called out India’s actions in Kashmir.
Speaking at the Islamic Society of North America conference on Sunday, the senator said he is “also deeply concerned about the situation in Kashmir”. Earlier in the day, Prime Minister Imran Khan also addressed the conference via video link. The premier discussed Islamophobia and Kashmir.
ISLAMABAD: After highlighting the Kashmir issue at the United Nation Security Council (UN) and Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), Pakistan has now decided to approach the International Court of Justice (ICJ) over the Occupied Kashmir issue, ARY News reported on Tuesday.
»Es wurde eine grundsätzliche Entscheidung getroffen, das umstrittene Kaschmir vor den Internationalen Gerichtshof zu bringen«, wurde Außenminister Shah Mehmood Qureshi am Dienstag von lokalen Medien zitiert.
As The Post’s Niha Masih reported from Srinagar, streets are no longer crowded with civilians but awash with India’s armed soldiers, and “instead of traffic jams at intersections, there are spools of concertina wire. People remain inside their homes with no telephone, Internet or cable TV service. No one has seen or heard from local political leaders, hundreds of whom are in detention. Of the more than 200 newspapers in the region, only five are publishing physical copies. Their websites are stuck at Aug. 5.”
(10.08.2019)
NEW DELHI: Russia has endorsed India‘s move of abrogating Article 370 and bifurcating the state of Jammu & Kashmir, saying the exercise was „carried out within the framework of the Constitution of the Republic of India.“
In response to questions from the media, the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs on Friday said: „Moscow expects that India and Pakistan will not allow aggravation of the situation in the region due to the change by Delhi in the status of the state of Jammu and Kashmir.
Members of student, faculty and alumni of the prestigious Harvard University have written a letter to the Government of India, asking it to reconsider the detention of Shah Faesal on Wednesday in Srinagar.
Shah Faesal was sent back from Delhi airport on Tuesday to Srinagar and he was later detained under the Public Safety Act.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov clearly told Qureshi during their telephone call on Wednesday that it does not favour open UNSC session on Kashmir and the Russian mission in New York went along with closed session contrary to some reports that Moscow supported Beijing and asked for an open session, informed sources told ET. These reports are not incorrect, sources stressed.
“Public message of Russia was consistent from beginning. Also Russia supported no statement on the Kashmir issue at the UN,” sources said.
For India, the fact that no country agreed to the ChinaPakistan effort to force a formal meeting, the fact that the informal meeting had no minutes, no votes or show of hands, no resolution, no statements, and no outcome, showed the duo was isolated and was cause for satisfaction. Diplomats pointed out that barring China, not one among the 14 other UNSC members came out to speak on the matter.
A 90-minute private debate among Security Council members on Kashmir is notable. Asked whether the Council had left the Kashmir issue alone for too long, Russia‘s deputy UN Ambassador Dmitry Polyanskiy, told CNN, „Well I was born in 1971.“
„Sometimes it‘s best to not touch on every issue,“ he added.
(11.08.2019)
Kashmiris have not yet forgotten that in August – November, 1947, RSS colluded with the Hindu Maharajah of Kashmir to perpetrate the horrific genocide and exodus of Jammu, whereby hundreds of thousands of Muslims were massacred and an estimated half a million forcibly displaced. This reduced the region’s Muslim majority to a minority. This time, RSS is working through BJP, its political wing, to complete its original mission of ethnic cleansing of Kashmiri Muslims. The genocide is being substituted by settler colonialism, but the objectives remain the same.
More than four million people in India, mostly Muslims, are at risk of being declared foreign migrants as the government pushes a hard-line Hindu nationalist agenda that has challenged the country’s pluralist traditions and aims to redefine what it means to be Indian.
Having listened to the debates on Kashmir in the Rajya Sabha and Lok Sabha, the Prime Minister’s address to the nation, and having watched subsequent developments in Kashmir, we as citizens of India inspired by the life and work of Mahatma Gandhi feel compelled to state that the government has pushed the country into a blind alley. The gun that was used to silence Kashmir is now being used as a telescope through which to see Kashmir. This is shameful, unfortunate and ominous for India.
A whole state has vanished from the map in broad daylight. The Indian Union had 28 states, now it has 27. This is not a magic show, where a magician shows us, we know, something unreal and illusory. Here we are witnessing something cruel, ugly, undemocratic and seemingly irreversible. It reveals the poverty of our democratic politics.
According to a government official, at least 500 local leaders and activists have been arrested or detained across Kashmir since the beginning of last week.
Faesal is not the first Kashmiri politician to be detained in Srinagar over the past week. Since the Centre revoked Jammu and Kashmir’s special status by nullifying Article 370 and divided the state into two Union Territories, two former chief ministers – Omar Abdullah and Mehbooba Mufti – have been arrested and a third, Farooq Abdullah, is said to be under house arrest.
The order to arrest Mufti, the leader of People’s Democratic Party, also held in a Srinagar guest house, said her activities were likely to cause a “breach of peace”.
Kaschmir gilt allgemein als umstrittenes Gebiet. Es wurde zwischen Indien und Pakistan seit ihrer Teilung im Jahr 1947 aufgeteilt. Die Länder haben drei Kriege um das Territorium geführt.
“Thwarted,” said a top UN diplomat in a one-word response about Pakistan’s request for a formal meeting of the Security Council that garnered the support of only one of the body’s 15 members: China.
Soon after the nuclear blasts in 1998, India adopted the “no first use” policy in a bid to address global concerns of an impending nuclear arms race, especially as the Indian tests were followed by tit-for-tat tests by Pakistan.
The promise not to use nuclear weapons first, a policy adopted by several nations including China, addressed the escalation ladder. It also laid to rest apprehensions or misunderstandings about the possible use of nuclear weapons in a conflict.
NEW DELHI: Defence minister Rajnath Singh’s suggestion that India’s no-first-use nuclear posture may not be sacrosanct sparked intense speculation in the midst of heightened India-Pakistan tensions in the wake of the abrogation of special status to Jammu & Kashmir.
The defence minister’s comment, which he also later tweeted, came at Pokhran — the site of India’s nuclear tests.
Though Rajnath Singh didn’t name any country, it is understood the threat was directed at Pakistan. It shows Modi’s growing frustration at his ill-conceived move to strip Occupied Kashmir of its autonomy on August 5.
The Security Council met on Friday to discuss Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s decision to scrap autonomy for Kashmir, though the body was divided on how to proceed, with the U.S. and France blocking a Chinese attempt to get the 15-member body to publicly urge parties to refrain from actions that exacerbate tensions along the line of control, diplomats said.
Prime Minister Imran Khan talked to US President Donald Trump and briefed him about Pakistan’s stance on Kashmir issue.
The telephonic contact took place on Friday, ahead of the United Nations Security Council meeting on the situation in Indian-occupied Kashmir.
The Security Council met to consider the volatile situation surrounding Kashmir on Friday, addressing the issue directly within the UN body dedicated to resolving matters of international peace and security, for the first time since 1965.
Although the meeting took place behind closed doors in New York, the Chinese Ambassador, Zhang Jun, spoke to reporters outside the chamber following deliberations, urging both India and Pakistan to “refrain from taking any unilateral action which might further aggravate” what was an already “tense and very dangerous” situation.
Last week, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said that Beijing was very concerned regarding the situation surrounding Kashmir, stressing that the issue should be resolved by peaceful means and in accordance with the UN Charter, the Security Council’s resolutions and bilateral agreements.
In a separate statement, Yi said that India had changed the status quo in the Kashmir region by amending the Indian Constitution.
Its response has been knee-jerk, unfathomable — and, above all, ironic. Every outburst and flailing against India only validates the Modi government and rallies Indian public opinion behind it. In other words, while claiming to lash out at him, Pakistan is only making Modi look better, even among those Indians who do not agree with the prime minister’s handling of Kashmir.
The New York Times gained one of the first inside views by a news organization of life under lockdown in Kashmir and found a population that felt besieged, confused, frightened and furious by the seismic events of this week.
Hua said China had always opposed the Indian side’s “entry of Chinese territory in the western section’’ of the Sino-Indian border into the administrative jurisdiction of India.
“This position is firm and consistent and has never changed. Recently, the Indian side has continued to damage China’s territorial sovereignty by unilaterally modifying the form of domestic law. This practice is unacceptable and will not have any effect,’’ she said.
“We’re not looking at military option,” Qureshi said, adding, “Don’t we reserve a right to respond in case of any aggression?”
He added, “We have decided to go back to the UN security council to challenge this Indian position, which is morally incorrect.”
India on Monday revoked Article 370 of its constitution stripping occupied Kashmir of its special status.
United States Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary for South and Central Asian Affairs Alice Wells arrived in Islamabad on Tuesday. According to sources, a high-level US delegation arrived in Islamabad and will hold delegation-level talks with the Pakistani leadership.
A joint session of Parliament began at Parliament House earlier today to discuss the deteriorating situation in Indian-occupied Kashmir, after the Indian government revoked Article 370 of the constitution which granted special status to the disputed valley.
His reaction came after the Indian government earlier in the day decided to revoke Article 370 that gives special status to Jammu and Kashmir and split the state into two Union Territories: Jammu and Kashmir with an Assembly and Ladakh without one.
Prime Minister Imran Khan on Monday had telephonic conversations with the heads of two of Pakistan‘s ally nations, Malaysia and Turkey, wherein he termed India’s move to revoke Article 370 illegal and one that would destroy regional peace and security.
“No unilateral step by the Government of India can change this disputed status, as enshrined in the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) resolutions. Nor will this ever be acceptable to the people of Jammu & Kashmir and Pakistan,” said the press release.
“As the party to this international dispute, Pakistan will exercise all possible options to counter the illegal steps,” it added.
Addressing parliament today (Aug. 5) following two days of heightened security in the state, home minister Amit Shah announced that Article 370 would no longer exist. President of India, Ram Nath Kovind, has signed this notification. Shah’s announcement was met with loud protests from opposition parties.