Parvez Musharraf's Kashmir formula the second best: Research

Srinagar, Nov 4:   After the elusive plebiscite under the auspices of the United Nations, former Pakistan president Mr. Pervez Musharraf’s four-point formula is the second best option available for the resolution of the complex Kashmir issue, according to a research conducted by a Kashmiri student, reports Rissing Kashmir (31/10)

The findings sum up a research titled ‘Musharraf’s 4-point formula: A study in Kashmir Response’ by Sameer Ahmad, a Kashmiri scholar at the Department of Political Sciences, University of Kashmir. The extensive research, carried out over a period of two years, says a staggering 68 percent of the people in Kashmir believe that the formula is a significant initiative towards normalization of the relations between the two nuclear  neighbour-countries.

It was in December 2006 that Pakistan, then led by General Parvez Musharraf, departed from its traditional stand and came out with his four-point formula on Kashmir resolution.

The formula included “identifying certain regions, demilitarizing the identified regions along with curbing militant aspect of the freedom movement to give comfort to the common people in Kashmir, introducing self-rule in these areas and developing a joint mechanism with India, Pakistan and certain degree of representation from Kashmir to oversee self-government and deal with residual subjects common to all identified regions”.

The research shows that a vast majority of Kashmir population (59 percent) believes that the porous border between the two nuclear countries - India and Pakistan - not only helps increase the economic well-being but also facilitates restoring of the much-needed peace in the subcontinent.   

On the question of demilitarization, an overwhelming 87 percent people believe that troops have to be withdrawn. There is a widespread notion that Kashmir is a heavily militarised region, not only in South Asia but across the globe.

Although there is some kind of uncertainty over the element of self-governance and joint management, still a significant 43 percent of people consider these as helpful to resolve the over 60-year-old dispute.

The proposal, when floated, received fair amount of acceptability and mention in both the mainstream political circles and the moderate faction of Hurriyat; however, the Hurriyat faction led by Syed Ali Geelani outrightly rejected the proposal.   The proposal has also been criticized on the ground that it was said to be based on religious identities.

Says Balraj Puri, noted journalist and human rights activist, “The proposal is based on religious identities which defies the ground realities. A solution to Kashmir problem on religious basis was unacceptable to India as it would threaten not only the secular basis of the country but also the unique Kashmiri identity and peace in the subcontinent.”

U.S. intelligence trades on fear

Tehran, October 31: We are in the grip of yet another so-called terror plot designed to terrify the wits out of everyone.
Anyone of a nervous disposition was sent in to a tailspin of panic over the increasingly dramatic news coverage… this manifested itself in a tsunami of 911 calls in America which paralyzed parts of New York, Maine and Philadelphia for several hours, reports Tehran Times.

Mercifully in Britain the majority of us refuse to get caught up in this bloody nonsense for many different reasons. The primary one being we had already endured more than three decades of this during the height of the IRA activities in London.

Virtually every single day for 30 years there would be some terror alert in the English capital -- it was called shoestring terrorism. One telephone call could bring a halt to a section of the London Underground.

The police would make their necessary checks, the media would ignore it and we all got on with our lives refusing to be intimidated by Irish terrorism.

And that is exactly how we should have treated Friday’s terror nonsense -- that does not mean to say people should be reckless or less vigilant but governments should stop trying to impose a fear factor on its citizens.

We can not sacrifice our freedoms and liberties just because the United States wants to impose its own neurosis, hysteria and paranoia on the rest of the world.

While British anti-terror police say no explosives were found in a suspicious package found onboard a UPS flight, the White House issued a statement completely contradicting this. Now the parcel has been removed for full forensic testing!

Call me cynical, but I find it too much of a coincidence that this bizarre alert came less than 24 hours after British Airways chairman Martin Broughton has accused the country of bowing to U.S. demands for increased airport security measures.

Mr. Broughton criticized the U.S. for imposing more security checks on U.S.-bound flights, but not on its own domestic services.

He urged the UK to stop kowtowing to demands for passengers to take their shoes off and to put any laptop computers through scanners to be screened separately.

The UK government said it would give airport operators permission to review their security procedures and I hope they stick to their promise despite all this nonsense.

One of the most ridiculous procedures we have to go through is to submit all of our potions, lotions and liquids to airport security.

This came about because of the so-called plot to blow 10 airliners out of the sky. That the fools behind this crazy scheme didn’t even have passports or a collective IQ of George W. Bush mattered not.

A video was shown of an explosion onboard a plane if this chemical had been mixed with that chemical.

The fact the bombmakers would have had to create sub zero laboratory conditions onboard a plane which would take around 40 minutes, mattered not.

As a frequent flyer I can tell you no one would be allowed to hog the tiny toilets for more than five minutes.

Yet despite this nonsense we have to hand over our liquids, but can buy them in vast quantities minutes later having past through airport security.

Just recently I was stopped because I had a brand new 200ml jar of Eve Lom face cleanser and was told I could not take it through. I pleaded for some commonsense from the security officer and he even went to his superior when I pointed out that the jar cost more than my airline ticket.

A nearby passenger who had just wistfully given up his full bottle of Remy Martin brandy sympathized with me.

Since when did Eve Lom become a threat to Britain's national security?

The British Government’s COBRA emergency committee is meeting as I write this. God only knows what will transpire but I hope this coalition government distances itself from these crazy security terror alerts coming over from the Americans.

U.S. President Barack Obama is facing his mid-term elections this weekend… if either he or his team have resorted to the “terror threat” ploy so often used by his predecessor to try and win votes then shame on them.

Of course what better way to divert voters’ minds from Afghanistan, Iraq and Wikileaks than to create a fresh new bogeyman… Yemen.

Any government which uses security and fear to win votes does not deserve to be in power.

Yvonne Ridley is a presenter for Press TV's show The Agenda and co-presenter of the Rattansi & Ridley show.

Why Kashmiris observe October 27 as Black Day!

by M Raza Malik
Kashmiris on both sides of the Line of Control and across the globe observe October 27 as Black Day and consider it as the blackest day in the history of Kashmir. This is the Day when India landed its army in Jammu and Kashmir, in total disregard to the Indian Independence Act and Partition Plan in 1947.

In order to change the demographic composition of the territory, Indian troops, the forces of Dogra Maharaja Hari Singh, and Hindu extremists massacred over three hundred thousand Kashmiri Muslims within a period of two months.

The Indian Independence Act and Partition Plan of 1947 had stated that the Indian British Colony would be divided into two sovereign states, India, with Hindu-majority areas, and Pakistan, with the Muslim-majority areas of Western provinces and east Bengal.

India by landing its Army in Jammu and Kashmir violated the guidelines set for deciding the future of Hyderabad, Junagarh and Kashmir, three of the independent Princely States at that time, which were given the choice to either accede to Pakistan or India, considering the geographical situation and communal demography. It forcibly occupied the Hyderabad and Junagarh, which had Hindus in majority but their rulers were Muslims. Kashmir was a Muslim-majority state and had a natural tendency to accede to Pakistan, but its Hindu ruler destroyed the future of Kashmiri people by announcing its accession to India under a controversial accession document (Instrument of Accession). Many neutral observers deny the existence of such document with the argument that had it been there Indian government had made it public either officially or at any international forum.

It is a historical fact that if the partition was done on the principles of Justice then India had no land route to enter into Jammu and Kashmir but the so-called Boundary Commission, headed by British Barrister, Cyril Radcliff, that demarcated partition line, under a conspiracy split Gurdaspur, a Muslim majority area, and handed it over to India, providing it terrestrial access to the territory.

Right from the day one, the people of Kashmir did not accept India's illegal occupation and started an armed struggle with the total support of public in 1948, which forced India to approach the UN Security Council to seek help of the World Body to settle the dispute. The UN Security Council through its successive resolutions nullified Indian invasion and occupation of Kashmir. It also approved a ceasefire, demarcation of the ceasefire line, demilitarization of the state and a free and impartial plebiscite to be conducted under the supervision of the World Body. Although the ceasefire and demarcation of the ceasefire line was implemented while demilitarization of the occupied territory and a free and impartial plebiscite under UN supervision remain unimplemented till date. As a result of the demarcation, about 139,000 square kilometers area of Jammu and Kashmir remained with India while 83,807 square kilometers constituted the territory of Azad Jammu and Kashmir.

Indian rulers promised before the UN to resolve the dispute and provide the people of Kashmir with their basic right of self-determination, but later backed away from their commitments. India has been putting peace, security and stability of the entire South Asia at stake by demonstrating continued rigidity and stubbornness and not responding positively to the efforts made by the international community to settle the Kashmir dispute during the last more than six decades.

Disappointed at the failure of all the efforts aimed at resolving the Kashmir dispute through peaceful means, the people of occupied Kashmir launched a massive uprising in 1989 to secure their right to self-determination. This movement gathered momentum with the passage of time and pushed the Indian authorities to wall, forcing them to sit around the negotiation table with Pakistan in January 2004. The talks process continued till it was hampered after Mumbai attacks on November 26, 2008, when India without any substantive evidence laid the responsibility of these attacks on Pakistan and its intelligence agencies. However, Prime Ministers of the two countries, Yousuf Raza Gilani and Manmohan Singh after a meeting at Sharm El-Sheikh, on July 16, 2009, in a joint statement declared to resume the composite dialogue process to resolve all outstanding issues.

It is worth mentioning that Pakistan demonstrated considerable flexibility in the dialogue process by floating various proposals including demilitarization, self-governance and joint-management to settle the conflict over Kashmir, but India's intransigent approach continued to remain the biggest hurdle in making successful any effort made in this regard. The ground situation in the occupied territory remains unchanged, as the confidence building measures and the dialogue process could not provide Kashmiri people respite from the Indian state terrorism.

India has exhausted all its resources and means but has not been able to deter Kashmiris from continuing their liberation struggle. It has given a free hand to its troops and police to subject peaceful protesters to brute force. Over 70 people were killed only within a period of two months in 2008 when Indian police personnel resorted to indiscriminate firing to break up demonstrators in Kashmir. The Chairman of All Parties Hurriyet Conference, Mirwaiz Umer Farooq was placed under house arrest for two months to prevent him from addressing public gatherings. Liberation leaders including Syed Ali Gilani, Shabbir Ahmed Shah, Aasiya Andrabi, Nayeem Ahmed Khan, Muhammad Ashraf Sehrai, Masarat Alam Butt and Muhammad Saleem Nunnaji have been booked under the infamous draconian law, Public Safety Act to keep them away from the people. The troops have been setting new records of human rights violations by killing innocent people, arresting youth, disgracing and harassing women and setting residential houses afire with impunity.

The troops have killed over ninety-two thousand Kashmiris, widowed more than twenty five thousand women, orphaned more than one hundred thousand children and molested or gang-raped around ten thousand Kashmiri women during the past 20 years. The whereabouts of thousands of innocent Kashmiris, disappeared in the custody of troops, are yet to be made known while hundreds of unnamed graves have been discovered in the occupied territory, which are believed to be of disappeared Kashmiris. This whole mayhem is being carried out with the protection of draconian laws, by virtue of which any person can be killed or put behind the bars without any accountability.

The All Parties Hurriyet Conference sources made a shocking revelation recently that in line with a new scheme, Indian troops were killing innocent Kashmiri youth in fake encounters in the areas near the Line of Control after arresting them from different parts of the occupied territory. According to the APHC sources through these killings India wanted to mislead the international community by propagating that Kashmiri youth were trying to enter Indian occupied Kashmir after crossing over the Line of Control.

The Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, Asia Watch and other international humanitarian organizations in their regular reports over the unabated rights abuses in the occupied territory have been raising their concern. Even the European Union Parliament during its session in Strasbourg on July 10, 2008 unanimously passed a resolution calling upon the Indian Government to urgently conduct an independent and impartial probe into the issue of discovery of mass graves in the territory. It also strongly condemned unlawful killings, enforced disappearances, torture, rape and other human rights abuses, which have been taking place at the hands of the occupation troops in Jammu and Kashmir since 1989.

It was yet another exposition of India's callousness that the Prime Minister, Manmohan Singh on India's Independence Day, this year, tried to hoodwink the international community by stating that the elections in Kashmir had rendered the freedom element irrelevant. To protest this unrealistic statement Kashmiri people observed crippling strike on August 22. Pakistan's Foreign Minister, Shah Mehmood Qureshi while addressing a meeting of Kashmiri leaders on September 4, 2009 in Islamabad categorically emphasized that the elections in Indian occupied Kashmir could not be a substitute of Kashmiris' right to self-determination. He reaffirmed his country's moral, political and diplomatic support to Kashmir liberation movement. The mammoth anti-India protest demonstrations, participated by millions of people in Indian occupied Kashmir, last year, should be taken as Kashmiris' referendum against the Indian illegal occupation of their soil.

These are the reasons that why Kashmiris observe October 27 as Black Day. The observance is intended to send a loud and clear message to the international community to take cognizance of the miseries of Kashmiri people, help stop human rights violations in the occupied territory and play its role in bringing about a solution of the Kashmir dispute in accordance with Kashmiris' aspirations. It is also aimed at calling upon India to read writing on the wall, accept the ground realities and come forward with a realistic approach to settle the dispute for the larger interest of the people of the region.

(The writer is working as Senior Editor at Kashmir Media Service, Islamabad, and can be reached at razamalik849@yahoo.com) 

PIL against shutdowns, curfews

Srinagar, Oct 27:  The Public Interest Litigation (PIL)  filed by two NGOs last week against frequent shutdowns and imposition of curfews in the Valley has been listed for hearing before a Division Bench of High Court on November 2, reports Rissing Kashmir (26/10/2010)

The  PIL before was filed  by Jammu and Kashmir Tameer-e-Muashra Executive member Muhammad Sidiq Malik and Akhil Bharatiya Priyanka and Rahul Gandhi Foundation state president Ghulam Qadir Kullay on October 18. The PILs have sought court’s directions to separatist leaders not to disrupt normal life in the Valley by calling for frequent strikes and shutdowns.

The PIL has also made the Chief Secretary, the Home Secretary, the Director General of Police and the Additional DGP (Law and Order) as respondents  for imposing frequent curfews, which also disrupt normal life in Kashmir.

“ The PIL filed last week  has been listed  in the supplementary cause list before any  available Division Bench on next Tuesday (November 2),” sources in the High Court Registry told Rising Kashmir.

The litigants have sought court’s directions to prohibit Hurriyat (G) Chairman Syed Ali Geelani, Hurriyat (M) chairman Mirwaiz Umar Farooq  and Masrat Alam from issuing protest calendars.

“Frequent strikes and curfews have badly hit tourism and business sectors in the Valley and has crippled the education sector as well”, the litigants have submitted in the PIL.

Providing statistics and figures in support of its claims, the PIL states that shutdowns and resultant clashes have resulted in loss of over 100 precious lives and injuries to more than 8,500 people including 4,000 security men.

It is pertinent to mention here that High Court had played a pivotal role in ending over three month long strike of government employees by observing that there is “no fundamental, legal or statutory right for the employees to go on strike”.

The observations of HC’s Division Bench on  April 13 this year came after two lawyers approached the Court with a PIL, seeking indulgence  of the court in the sufferings and hardships  faced by the  public  due to the  indefinite strike called by government employees.