Divided families urge India, Pakistan to leave Kashmir. Hundreds of Kashmiris stage an emotional demonstration, ask India, Pakistan to withdraw troops. Hundreds of Kashmiris stage an emotional demonstration, ask India, Pakistan to withdraw troops. PHOTO: AGENCIES/FILE KERAN: Hundreds of Kashmiris on Sunday staged an emotional demonstration to urge India and Pakistan to withdraw troops from the disputed Himalayan region. On the Pakistani side, tearful relatives waved across the gushing Neelum, which separates the two countries, to their family on the Indian side, using loudspeakers to try to speak to them, an AFP photographer said. But the deafening roar of the river, about 200 feet wide at the village of Keran, was too loud for the cries to carry across to the Indian side. About 600 men and women gathered by the river in Keran, about 90 kilometres northeast of Muzaffarabad, the capital of Azad Kashmir. The gathering, called by nationalists, was a rare occasion – the authorities do not normally allow such events on the river.
“Let me go. India's Independent Weekly News Magazine. Who let the dogs out? ‘Dog bites man’ is not supposed to be news. But in Kashmir, a barbaric man-animal conflict is playing out in the streets of Srinagar Baba Umar reports. ON A chilly winter evening on 20 January, a carefree Mudasir Ahmad Wangnoo, 12, was returning home from tuition classes in Baagwanpora, downtown Srinagar, when he suddenly came face-to-face with two dozen stray dogs. What happened next on the banks of the partially frozen Dal lake was like a scene out of Animal Planet. “I saw the canines tossing him up and down, tearing him apart like a pack of hyenas,” recalls eyewitness Syed Sajad Hussain.
“Two dogs shredded his jacket 10 feet away. While the aggressive ones attacked his legs and torso, the weaker lot licked the blood splattered in the snow.” So vicious was the attack that a horrified Hussain expected to see a dead body when he and his son managed to scare away the dogs. “Doctors from four departments are treating him. “It’s scary. THEN A pied piper appeared. India, Pakistan and the Snow Leopard: Javed Naqi. Guest post by JAVED NAQI Photo Credit: Flickr User Tambako the Jaguar Amongst the lesser known casualties of the conflict between India and Pakistan is wild life.
In times of war, we hear of the loss of life and property but seldom notice the huge impact on wildlife. Animals found in the vicinity of the disputed India-Pakistan border in Jammu and Kashmir are on the verge of extinction. One such is the snow leopard in the border district Kargil. Kargil, a district in the state of Jammu and Kashmir is a remote, arid-cold and high altitude area. Since the district lies on the ceasefire line, the Line of Control, that marks the territorial divide between India and Pakistan, the region has witnessed the brutal brunt of Indo-Pak enmity.
Natural habitat of the snow leopard Uncia uncia, the snow leopard, the world’s most elusive feline, is usually found in the mountains at elevations of 3,000 to over 5,000 m (10,000 – 17,000 feet). Photo credit: Aishwarya Maheshwari/WWF-India Like this: Inshallah Kashmir: Living Terror - Preview, the first seven minutes. Chaîne de TehelkaKashmir. Mir Shafqat Hussain - The Good Lawyer Part 1 - Kashmir Uncut. Mir Shafqat Hussain - The Good Lawyer Part 2 - Kashmir Uncut.
Distribution of Pak channels to become cognizable offence. India is set to counter the continued information war waged in Jammu & Kashmir and other border states by Pakistan by making the carriage and distribution of Pakistani channels in India a cognizable offence. So far,a number of Pakistani channels are freely available in border states of J&K,Punjab,Rajasthan and Gujarat even though they are not permitted by the Indian government.
As a result,3,000-odd cable operators in J&K,parts of northern Punjab and Rajasthan would be jailed for up to five years and fined up to Rs 5 lakh if found distributing Pakistani channels. Financial Express (FE) was first to report in October that stricter norms were on the anvil for cable operators carrying illegal channels. A cognizable offence is one in which the police is empowered to register an FIR,investigate and arrest an accused involved in cognizable crime without a court warrant. Pakistani channels that are freely available in parts of India include the state-run PTV,PTV Home,and PTV World. India and Pakistan: The world's most dangerous border. On Kashmir India acts as a police state, not as a democracy | Mirza Waheed.
Many years ago, I met two journalists from India in London and we found ourselves talking about Kashmir. Mostly, they listened patiently to my impassioned tale of what goes on, but the moment I touched upon the brutal counter-insurgency methods employed by the Indian security apparatus in the disputed territory – among them notorious "catch-and-kill" operations to execute suspected militants – they looked incredulous, made a quick excuse and left.
Later, I learned that at least one of them believed that Kashmiris liked to exaggerate the excesses of the Indian armed forces. In the reaction of those two men, I had witnessed the frightening success of India's policy of denial and misrepresentation on Kashmir. There is nothing astonishing or new in this. For decades, India has not only been unwilling to solve one of the world's most tragic conflicts but has scuttled any attempt at meaningful discourse on the issue, both internationally and within the country. 20-year-old boy a victim of police brutality in Jammu & Kashmir- TIMESNOW.tv | Rights & Liberties. Discriminatory Indefinite Detention Increases in Kashmir | Truthout. Photojournalists beaten by police in Kashmir - Central & South Asia. Security forces have beaten and detained two photographers for several hours in Indian-administered Kashmir after picking them up while they covered a street protest in the capital Srinagar.
Narciso Contreras, who works for the California-based Zuma Press agency, and Showkat Shafi, a freelance photographer who has contributed to the Reuters news agency and Al Jazeera online, said they were attacked while covering protests against Indian rule in the old city on Friday. "I ran away after police and soldiers charged at the stone pelters and got trapped inside a tailor's shop with some protesters. The soldiers descended there and started beating every one, including me,'' Contreras said. "Later they took me to a police station. I repeatedly told them I'm a foreign journalist, but they continued beating me as if I was some criminal,'' he said, adding that their behaviour changed after he identified himself.
Showkat Ahmed, a police officer, said the two were detained along with other protesters. Can We Have ‘Truth and Reconciliation’ without Justice? If perpetrators of human rights abuses are shielded in the guise of reconciliation, a truth commission would be a futile exercise KASHMIR ~ As the controversy over unmarked graves unravels in Kashmir, Chief Minister Omar Abdullah has called for a Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Locally, the idea of such a commission has met with resistance, mostly because Kashmir is not yet perceived as a post-conflict zone.
But there is an even more fundamental question about truth and reconciliation commissions we should be asking. What are these commissions, and why have they found their way into several peace agreements? Is a Truth and Reconciliation Commission appropriate for Kashmir? Several countries undergoing political transitions have established official truth-seeking bodies to confront the legacy of past human rights abuses. Surprisingly enough, from the beginning, there was near consensus on the formation of a Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Scenes from Kashmir. Mallika Kaur: Grave Lessons from Kashmir. For the anniversary of the International Day of the Disappeared, our writer reports on Kashmir’s “half widows” and their unaddressed needs, which threaten to fuel further insecurity in the volatile region and globally. By **Mallika Kaur** On the International Day of the Disappeared, which was observed on August 30, the International Committee of the Red Cross has noted that “[t]he tremendous impact that disappearances have on the daily lives and long-term prospects of the families, and indeed of entire communities, is still largely overlooked.”
Overlooked also is how such apathy towards the “disappeared” in fact fuels the type of insecurity that continues to threaten sustainable peace. Kashmir’s “half widows” are a case in point. Bilquees Begum* repeatedly asks whether my tea is too sweet. She smiles and adds how her husband Ahmed told her that city people liked their tea tasteless. But her smile disappears as she opens a brown suitcase, which the family keeps under lock and key. Kashmir: The forgotten conflict - Al Jazeera English - Kashmir: The Pandit question - Kashmir: The forgotten conflict - Al Jazeera English - The story of Kashmiri Pandits is an extraordinarily difficult one to tell. One the one hand, when the insurgency erupted in Indian-administered Kashmir in 1989, thousands of Pandits left the valley, suggesting that the community suffered enough intimidation to abandon their homes.
On the other hand, the accounts of Kashmiri Pandits who stayed behind in Kashmir contradict claims by Pandits in the diaspora who say that Kashmiri Pandits suffered 'a genocide' and were forced 'into exile'. Indeed, understanding the experience of the Pandits, caught between Kashmir's Muslim majority and the ambitions of the Indian state, is an intricate affair. Even the semantics describing the flight of the Pandits from Kashmir are highly politicised and contentious. Azad Essa speaks to Mridu Rai, the author of Hindu Rulers, Muslim Subjects: Islam, Rights and the History of Kashmir about the Kashmiri Pandit community and how they fit into the dispute.
Why is language so important here? Villager number nine - Kashmir: The forgotten conflict - Al Jazeera English - In one of the remotest villages in Bandipora, about 72kms from Srinagar, the capital of Indian-administered Kashmir, an old two-storey wooden house sits on a picturesque hilltop. It is surrounded by coils of barbed wire interspersed with empty alcohol bottles. It is no longer a home; the Indian military have turned it into a military camp. But before the military paint, troops and barbed wire arrived, it was the most beautiful house in the village.
Not anymore. Now an Indian soldier sits in the garden, close to the road and beside a neglected flower bed. On the table next to him is a worn-out register where he notes the number of every vehicle entering the village. Any person going into or leaving the village must register at the camp. The military camp is the gateway into and out of the village.
To reach the village you must navigate a difficult mountainous track. On the road we encounter an old man carrying a hen he purchased in a nearby town. Suspicion The old man climbs out first. Kashmir's 'half-widows in precarious state' - Central & South Asia. More than 1,500 women whose husbands have disappeared but have not yet been declared deceased are in a precarious and dangerous position in Indian-administered Kashmir, according to a new report. The 48-page report titled "Half Widow, Half Wife" released on Thursday by the Association of Parents of Disappeared Persons (APDP), argues that although "direct violence is disproportionately inflicted on males" in Kashmir, women and children whose husbands or fathers "disappear" are caught in a legal conundrum that does little to compensate or protect them.
The report says that the fact that the men have disappeared and have not been declared dead, has left thousands of women, known as "half-widows", and their children in a precarious state, with little legal protection, rendering many desperate and homeless and paving the way for abuse and exploitation. The story of the half-widows of Kashmir "captures the unseen and pernicious face of insecurity in Kashmir", the report says. A mother's tragedy - Kashmir: The forgotten conflict - Al Jazeera English - Sixty-five-year-old Nabza Bano stands near a small cornfield where her three-storey house once stood in Sundbrari village, about 85kms from Srinagar, the capital of Indian-administered Kashmir.
Lost in a melancholic silence, she points out all that remains of her old home - a few burnt logs. She says two of her houses were burned down by the Indian army, along with two cowsheds, but what pains her most is the absence of her three sons - all of them killed by the Indian army. Their loss has inflicted a wound that only festers with the passing years. But years of mourning have dried her tears and she is unable to weep now. After their house was destroyed, Nabza and her family lived in a tent adjacent to the burnt remains of their home for six months during a harsh Kashmiri winter. They live in poverty. Nabza's husband, Las Khan, suffers from asthma and his treatment costs about 15,000 Indian rupees ($340) a month. Picking up the gun Ghulam was the only one of their sons to marry. Kashmir and the politics of water - Kashmir: The forgotten conflict - Al Jazeera English -
The Indus River originates in the Tibetan plateau, making its 3,200km journey southwards along the entire length of Pakistan, before emptying into the Arabian Sea. The river basin is divided between Pakistan, which has about 60 per cent of the catchment area, India with about 20 per cent, Afghanistan with 5 per cent and around 15 per cent in Tibet. The two major riparians, Pakistan and India have extensively dammed the Indus River to provide for irrigation and hydro-electricity. [A riparian zone is defined as the area of interface between land and a river or stream.] The Indus has five main tributaries. The Jhelum, the largest of these, originates in the Valley of Kashmir. As a result, if the Line of Control (LoC) between India and Pakistan in Kashmir, were to move from being a defacto to a recognised international border, India would permanently become the upper riparian and Pakistan the lower riparian of the Indus River and all of its tributaries.
Kashmir: South Asia's Palestine - Kashmir: The forgotten conflict - Al Jazeera English - Tehelka : "Fake Terrorists" -- A series on Kashmiri youth. Fake Terrorists I. FAKE TERRORISTS 1, A series on Kashmiri youth Imran Ahmad Kirmani, 29 Nelipora hamlet, Handwara Jammu & Kashmir Grounded for 5 years, will he ever fly again? WHY: Arrested on the purported charges of being a Lashkar-e- Toiba operative planning to carry out 9/11-style terror attacks in the country. He was sent to Tihar Jail. WHEN: 15 November 2006. WHERE: Dwarka, New Delhi. ANYBODY ACCUSED of crime is supposed to be innocent until proven guilty.
On 15 November 2006, national media outlets screamed that the Delhi Police had foiled a major terror plot by nabbing a terrorist. “Those were the dark days of my life,” recalls Imran, 29, who was acquitted by the Tis Hazari Court on 12 May of all the charges slapped by the police. Hailing from Nelipora hamlet of Handwara, almost 70 km from Srinagar, Imran’s is a story of Kashmiri youth who had a modest background and doting.parents. However, the terror charges stalled his career before it could take off. “I wasn’t arrested from a mall. Fake Terrorists II. Fake Terrorists III. Fake Terrorists IV. KASHMIR: India Grabs It.