| NEW YORK | RUPEE NEWS | August 15th, 2008 | Moin Ansari | The Indian Union in is trouble not becuase of Kashmri but because the country is not solidly divided on ethnic and religious grounds. The Hinduvata extreemists in a well planned starategy have tried to get an electoral advantage by playing the Jammu card and by demoniszing the Muslims. The BJP Advani-Modi led anti-Pakistan movement is now holding demonstration all across the conglomeration of 560 states called Bharat.
Ladakh has a Muslim majority map. Kashmir valley map
No doubt, the Hindu-Muslim angle to the ground situation is an altogether new political dimension, which New Delhi has worked hard to avoid in all the past 60 years of the Kashmir problem. Indeed, India always maintained that the Kashmir problem was not a Hindu-Muslim problem. In the longer run, arguably, the current tensions assuming the contours of a communal divide will undercut and weaken the basic Indian stance.
Bhadrakumar at Asia Times
Kashmiris protesting Indian Occupation
Yet, the available indications are that there are interested parties who are precisely ensuring that such a Hindu-Muslim communal divide crystallizes in J&K, a region which historically enjoyed a composite ethnic culture. While extremist elements among Kashmiri separatists have always stoked the fires of religious passions, for the first time in a major way, Hindu nationalist elements have jumped into the fray. They seem to anticipate that a communal polarization would not be a bad idea for making electoral gains in polls in J&K slated for November and to get embedded as a “factor” in the Kashmir issue in the medium term.
Indeed, part of the problem is that the Indian political scene is hopelessly muddied, to a point that it has become virtually impossible to evolve a consensus on any national issue. The drawn out acrimony over the India-United States civilian nuclear agreement has taken a heavy toll in Indian politics. The ruling coalition’s controversial attempts to divide the opposition political parties by reportedly bribing their members of parliament to defect to its side over the issue of the nuclear deal, has generated a lot of bitterness.
Occupied Jammu and Kashmiris want to sell their produce in Azad Kashmir. Northern Areas are not part of Kashmir and Azad Kashmir
This polorization may get them the votes to form another BJP led government, but it is this sort of bigotry that allows the extremists to recruit volunteers in discontended groups like SIMI.
The agitation in the Kashmir Valley has assumed in the meanwhile an old, familiar anti-India overtone, as Muslim protesters resorted to pro-independence rallies, the biggest the valley has seen in the past two decades. In police firings, over two dozen lives have been lost, with scores injured, which triggered further protests, with large numbers of Muslims ignoring the curfew and taking to the streets.
In the capital of Srinagar, tens of thousands of people defied the curfew to bury a separatist leader who died in police fire on a huge crowd of Muslims protesting against an alleged blockade – “economic blockade” – of the road linking the valley to the rest of India via the Hindu-dominated southern regions of Kashmir.
. Bhadrakum at Asia Times
Indian Occupied Kashmir: Kashmiris protesting Indian Occupation
Kashmir is back on a razor’s edge. Muslims say the “economic blockade” leaves them no choice but to resort to trade with Pakistan-administered Kashmir across the heavily guarded Line of Control dividing the Indian and Pakistani controlled parts of Kashmir. Enter Pakistan into the turmoil
Map shows Pakistan, Azad Kashmir and Indian Occupied territory
The Kashmirs have once again shown their preference for Pakistan by lining up more than 500 trucks which wanted to go and sell their merchandise in Muzaffarabad-Azad Kashmir. This movement of the traders backed by more than 500,000 protesters will grow and fester.
Indian Occupied Kashmir: Kashmiris protesting Indian Occupation
Last week, the Upper House of the Pakistani parliament passed a resolution condemning the Indian government’s handling of the situation. On Monday, the Pakistan Foreign Ministry issued a statement expressing “deep concern” over the situation, which, it said, held “serious humanitarian implications”, and called on New Delhi to “address the situation and prevent human-rights violations”. Bhadrakumar at Asia Times
The same day, Islamabad dramatically raised the ante by several notches with Foreign Minister Makhdoom Shah Mahmood Qureshi issuing a separate statement. The minister’s statement was couched in strong language expressing the condemnation by the Pakistan government of the “excessive and unwarranted use of force against the people of Indian-occupied Kashmir”. Qureshi also expressed deep concern over the “deteriorating situation” and called on the Indian government to take “immediate steps to end violence against innocent Kashmiris”.
Most important, the Pakistani minister linked the prevailing situation in J&K to the India-Pakistan bilateral dialogue and the larger issue of the “long-standing dispute of Jammu and Kashmir”. New Delhi has taken exception to the Pakistani statements, terming them as “clear interference” in India’s internal affairs and cautioning that such rhetoric wouldn’t help the bilateral dialogue move forward.
Azad Kashmir: Part of Kashmir that was liberated and is now free
The diplomatic spat between Islamabad and New Delhi has now taken an international dimension with the US not siding with India despite its recent tilt towards New Delhi
A Pakistan Foreign Ministry spokesman announced in Islamabad on Wednesday that Pakistan had begun approaching international bodies like the United Nations and the Organization of Islamic Conference (OIC). The spokesman ignored an earlier Indian warning and repeated that Islamabad was “deeply concerned over the deteriorating situation” in J&K, which, he said, was “resulting in loss of life and property of the Kashmiri people”. Bhadrakumar at Asia Times
The swiftness with which Islamabad crossed the red line to internationalize the issue implies a calculated readiness on the part of Islamabad to endanger the climate of relative calm and good-neighborliness that has characterized India-Pakistan discourses in recent years.
Kashmiris protesting Indian occupation in 2008
Thousands demand independence in Indian Kashmir By AIJAZ HUSSAIN – 15 hours ago
SRINAGAR, India (AP) – Thousands of Muslims poured into the streets of Kashmir on Thursday, demanding independence from India hours after archival Pakistan called on the United Nations to stop what it characterized as gross human rights violations in the divided Himalayan region.
Pakistan’s statement drew a sharp rebuke from India, which called the comments “deeply objectionable.”
More than six weeks of unrest in India’s part of Kashmir have pitted the region’s Muslim majority against its Hindu minority and left at least 34 people dead, many of them protesters shot during violent clashes with police and soldiers. Villages have been attacked, police stations torched and, in at least one town, security forces have been ordered to shoot on sight any protesters violating a curfew.
The latest death came Thursday when police opened fire on protesters in Srinagar, Kashmir’s main city, killing at least one and wounding three others, police and hospital officials said.
The trouble was grown out of a dispute over a government plan to transfer land to a Hindu shrine in Kashmir.
Another man, a Hindu, committed suicide Thursday in Jammu, Kashmir’s only Hindu-majority city, to protest the scrapping of the land transfer. He was the second Hindu to kill himself in protest.
The spiraling unrest has unleashed pent up tensions between Kashmir’s Muslims and Hindus and threatened to snap the bonds between India and its only Muslim-majority state. There are also growing fears that the violence could drive a wedge between Hindus and Muslims in other parts of India, where Hindu nationalist political parties have been organizing rival protests and calling for the government to give the land back to the shrine.
The latest protests, which began overnight in Srinagar and continued Thursday, were sparked by a rumor that security forces were breaking into houses and beating up women and children.
“This is a question of our honor, come out of your homes,” said announcements played over the public address systems at various mosques in Srinagar.
People in Srinagar – a mountain town once famed for its cool summer weather and the houseboats that ply the lake in its center – responded by the thousands, pouring into the streets and chanting “Long Live Pakistan!” and “We Want Independence!”
Perhaps more than anything seen in the last six weeks, it is those sentiments that are most worrying to India.
Kashmir has been divided between India and Pakistan since 1948, and is at the center of their six-decade rivalry.
There is also a long history of separatist movements in New Delhi’s part of the region. Most were peaceful until 1989 when a bloody Islamic insurgency began. The insurgents want to see India’s part of the region merged with Pakistan or given independence.
The rebellion that has so far killed an estimated 68,000 people still festers, and India accuses Pakistan of aiding the insurgents – a charge Pakistan denies.
On Wednesday, Pakistan’s Foreign Ministry called for the United Nations to step in and curb “the gross violation of human rights” in Kashmir.
Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf followed that up a few hours later, saying: “I strongly condemn the human rights violation and the suppression on these oppressed people.”
India’s reaction was swift and angry.
“To call for international involvement in the sovereign internal affairs of India is gratuitous, illegal and only reflects reversion to a mind-set that has led to no good consequences for Pakistan in the past,” the Foreign Ministry said in a statement released soon after Musharraf’s remarks.
On Thursday, former Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif – a key power broker in its ruling coalition – said the matter was of deep concern to Pakistan. “This matter of Kashmir is not India’s internal affair, it is as much a matter for Pakistan as it is for Kashmiris.”
Meanwhile, two international human rights groups – Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International – demanded in separate statements that India stop police and soldiers from using guns against protesters unless the officers lives were being threatened.
Pakistan tells India to take “immediate steps to end violence against innocent Kashmiris.”
| PAKISTAN LEDGER | August 14th, 2008 | Moin Ansari | Pakistan has protested the action of the Indians against the Kashmiris and from all signs, the Indians really didn’t like it. Both India and Russia are in the news this week, both trying to occupy people and lands.
Pakistan raps ‘use of force’
ISLAMABAD: Pakistani Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi yesterday condemned “excessive and unwarranted” force by Indian security forces against Muslim protesters in the disputed territory of Kashmir.
Qureshi’s statement came as officials said that Indian security forces in the Himalayan region had shot dead 10 demonstrators yesterday and five on Monday, including a prominent separatist leader.
“We are deeply concerned over the deteriorating situation… which is resulting in loss of life and property of the Kashmiri people. We call for immediate steps to end violence against innocent Kashmiris.”
Qureshi said he had learnt with great sorrow and grief about the martyrdom of Shaikh Abdul Aziz, a moderate political leader at the forefront of the political struggle against Indian rule.
He was shot and killed by Indian security forces on Monday during a protest near the Line of Control, which divides the Indian and Pakistani Kashmir.
- Pakistanis celeberating kashmir Day every February in Pakistan
