Kashmir | News & Discussions.

[civfanatic]

27 AUG 2010 Syed Ali Shah Geelani Addresses People at Srinagar

 

[civfanatic]

 

[RollingStones]

Your signature suits your personality perfectly, take a cue from it. Bash your head against the keyboard and repeat until unconscious.

Back on topic:

Same can be said for articles mentioning India in a negative spotlight.


No, it's crap because it's crap... 75,000 rounds of ammo... Spare me, please!


and by posting that statement your exhibiting the epitome of maturity, right? Listen to yourself!


So now your Judge, Jury and Executioner?



That's funny ever since i have been visiting these forums all i see here is Indian trolls trying to undermine Pakistan and strut around in a shameless display of self glorification.



Same can be said to you regarding IOK... Now take a chill pill and do consider what i said about the keyboard meeting your face, a few hard blows to your cranium may get those synapses sparking again.

Paladin..nevertheless NY Times is the paper on record for Americans. It greatly influences American foreign policy and defense decision making and policies. America, for all its troubles, still spends $500B on defense and foreign aid. And that gives it enormous clout, still. If America starts making noises about Gilgit, Pakistani and Chinese rulers will have to listen. So, I wouldnt dismiss a NY Times article just like that. Several correspondents of NY Times go on to become advisors in the government. Learn how governments and decision making works in a mature manner before dissing things. Pakistan is a broke state from a financial perspective. American has great influence in Pakistan still, whether you like it or not. If you want to be independent of world powers, you need to build yourself into a strong independent country where the rule of law flourishes, there is equal opportunity for people, and governance is for the people and by the people. Make Pakistan a great global destination where people are truly empowered and you'll find yourself in a strong position. Keep undermining pillars of your country and shut eyes to revealing world opinions, you'll find yourself as a vassal state manipulated by anyone who can get a foothold there for years to come.

 

[somebozo]

Ridiculos article as best. The author has never read anything about history of Pakistan, India and Kashmir. Bringing in MQM into this conflict?? Ohh for god sake!! MQM is another sepratist party, an Indian agent and legacy of terror across whole Pakistan. The way he sums MQM has party of Indian emmigrants from UP and Bihar pretty much exposses who is funding his daily rice and curry (alternative to authentic bread and butter)

 

[GUNNER]

Vale of tears

In Kashmir freedom is much farther than a stone’s-throw away

Aug 26th 2010

OWAIS hardly looks like a serious danger to the security of India. Slender and frail, he says he is 17 but seems younger as he basks shyly in the praise of the men gathered in a garden in Srinagar, summer capital of Indian-ruled Kashmir. But he is proud to show off the scars and stitch-marks that cover his belly. He has just emerged from hospital, lucky to be alive. He took a bullet in an anti-Indian protest on August 2nd in Kupwara, some 90km (56 miles) away. His uncle died that day, one of more than 60 people, mostly young, killed in a wave of unrest that began on June 11th.

Owais and those like him have presented the Indian government with a new and perhaps insoluble Kashmir crisis.

They are self-proclaimed “stone-pelters”, named after their weapon of choice. Well-organised—on Facebook, to a large extent—the pelters emerge at short notice to throw stones at police stations and other targets, and get shot at. In response to their protests much of the Kashmir valley that surrounds Srinagar has been shut down—both by hartals, or strikes, called by separatist leaders, and by government-imposed curfews.

On most days, Srinagar is a ghost town of shuttered shops and empty streets. Paramilitaries point their rifles out from bunkers or lounge on street corners, idly tapping their lathis (heavy batons) on their padded legs. On the one or two designated “shopping days” each week, the traffic is gridlocked.

Setting the hartal “calendar” is Syed Ali Shah Geelani, an 81-year-old separatist leader. It is in his garden that Owais waits. When the old man emerges, he kisses the boy on both cheeks and the forehead, hugs him tight, and poses for a photograph with him. Mr Geelani seems a strange icon for a movement of teen-aged Facebookers.

Few share his Islamist pro-Pakistan ideology. And many still seem to be ignoring his edict to give up throwing stones and stick to peaceful protest. But, unlike other political leaders, Mr Geelani has never wavered in his refusal to compromise with Indian rule. Sheer, cussed consistency has earned him a pivotal role. So have India’s past tactics to divide its opponents. More moderate separatists, who have engaged in “dialogue” with India, have had nothing to show for it, and ended discredited and compromised. This seems less clever than it did at the time. Now Mr Geelani ignores a call for talks from India’s prime minister, Manmohan Singh.

This is the third successive summer of big anti-Indian protests. For India, they have marred a victory of sorts. The two-decade-long insurgency, backed by Pakistan, which has never renounced its claim to all of Kashmir, is almost defeated. “Infiltration” across the “line of control” dividing Indian and Pakistani bits of Kashmir, has fallen.

The conflict is killing far fewer, though still 375 last year by one count, out of more than 40,000 killed since 1989 by the army’s reckoning, and 100,000 by the separatists’. When turnout in an election for the state government in 2008 reached an unprecedented 60%, many Indians misread this as belated Kashmiri acquiescence in Indian rule.

Boys like Owais neither trained in camps in Pakistan, nor are they stooges of the militants and spy agencies that have fuelled the war. They have grown up knowing nothing but insurgency. They may fear the insurgents and dislike their methods. But they sympathise with their goal. They see Indian troops in Kashmir as an often brutal occupying force. Why does Owais protest? “We are oppressed.” What will it achieve? “Azaadi!” (Freedom!).

That is not on the cards, even if it were clear what it meant. Of the five parts of the former “princely state” of Jammu & Kashmir, divided by the first India-Pakistan war in 1947-48, two are in Pakistan (and a bit of one was ceded to China by Pakistan—illegitimately, says India).

Of the three bits in India, Hindu-majority parts of Jammu, along with Ladakh, with many Buddhists, would, given a choice, probably stay in India. Only the Muslim-dominated Kashmir valley and adjacent parts of Jammu seem hellbent on secession. In the valley, politicians dream of an independent country linked to old Central Asian trading routes, looking anywhere but south over the mountains to Delhi.

Dream on. India has responded to the unrest in time-worn fashion: with extra troops, live bullets, the detention of separatist leaders who might lead big processions and, now, search-and-cordon operations to lock up suspected stone-pelters. Mr Geelani says protests will continue until India accepts the “disputed” status of Kashmir. India will never do that: the official line remains that Jammu & Kashmir, its only Muslim-majority state, is integral to its national identity: “the idea of India”. It will not tolerate the circulation of maps (in most cases) that show Pakistan-controlled Kashmir as, well, Pakistan-controlled.


Finding India’s collective conscience

So, it is most likely that these protests will end as so many before them did: with India making no more than token concessions. Fed up with the disruption, worried about keeping children out of school, and appalled at the loss of so many young lives, Kashmiris will sooner or later have to go back to life as usual, nursing their anger to take it out another day.

Eventually, however, India may have to contemplate a political solution, for two reasons. One is that small cracks are already appearing in the national consensus behind its repressive policies. So long as it was fighting Pakistan, even liberal Indian opinion seemed ready to tolerate a heavy hand in Kashmir.

Less so now that its troops are killing children armed only with stones. Secondly, without change, the cycle of protests will resume.

And at some point they will become so big that they can only be contained by killing more of its citizens than a democracy can stand. Owais and his classmates may be misguided, but they fear nothing, and “martyrdom” least of all.

 

[Devil Soul]

Facebook, YouTube used as weapons in Kashmir fight
By AIJAZ HUSSAIN, Associated Press Writer – Fri Aug 27, 6:36 am ET
SRINAGAR, India – Before hitting the streets, Ahmed reaches for his two essential protest tools: a scarf to mask his face and a cell phone camera to show the world what is happening.
The 23-year-old, who posts videos to YouTube under names such as "oppressedkashimir1," is part of a wave of Web-savvy protesters in Indian-controlled Kashmir who have begun using social networking to publicize their fight and keep fellow demonstrators energized and focused.
"(I am) an anonymous soldier of Kashmir's resistance movement, using Facebook and YouTube to fight India," Ahmed said, showing off his most recent work, a montage of protest videos and photos set to London-based Sami Yousuf's popular song, "Try Not to Cry Little One." Like other protesters, he declined to give his full name for fear of arrest.
The last three months have seen an upsurge in violent protests against Indian rule in Kashmir, a region divided between India and Pakistan and claimed by both.
The protesters, mostly youths wearing jeans and hooded shirts, call themselves "sangbazan," or the stone pelters. They have covered Srinagar and other major Kashmiri towns with pro-independence graffiti and mounted fierce stone barrages against security forces, sometimes surrounding armored vehicles and throwing stones inside through the firing slats.
At least 64 people, mostly teenage boys and young men in their 20s, have been killed. Prabhakar Tripathi, a spokesman for the paramilitary Central Reserve Police Force, said it's difficult to respond to such attacks. "We use bullets in self-defense as a last resort," he said.
With student discussion groups banned and thousands of security operatives believed to be snooping on protesters, the youth of Kashmir are using the Internet as a virtual meeting place.
Social networking sites, though presumably under Indian surveillance, have proven to be more effective than any previous form of political communication in Kashmir, said Shuddabrata Sengupta, a New Delhi-based writer who follows new media issues in India.
"The struggle on the streets and in the corners of cyberspace have a mutually complementary nature," he said.
The stone pelters use Facebook to debate the weekly calendar of protests, discuss ways to hold Kashmiri leaders accountable and trade daily news updates, some of questionable reliability.
One user sparked a debate about the role of Kashmiri intellectuals in the fight by posting a picture of the Palestinian-American literary theorist Edward Said symbolically throwing a stone near the Israel-Lebanon border. In Kashmir, many intellectuals do not openly identify with the struggle, though privately they may embrace it.
Another user, whose Facebook name is "Kale Kharab," a Kashmiri term for a hothead, recently posted methods to counter the effects of tear gas and administer first aid to a shooting victim.
"They're shaping the political discourse and raising the bar for pro-independence political groups in Kashmir and authorities in New Delhi," said Sheikh Showkat Hussain, a law professor at the University of Kashmir.
Marketing and information technology experts estimate at least 40,000 Kashmir residents are on Facebook. The page for "Bekaar Jamaath," or the Idle Group, amassed about 12,000 members in four months before being hacked, removed and re-established recently.
The posting of well-produced Kashmiri protest videos began more than two years ago with the expansion of Internet service in the remote Himalayan region and access to better cell phone technology.
One of the first videos combined images of women and children wailing at graveyards and the bodies of slain Kashmiris with a moving song written by Abdul Ahad Azad, an early 20th-century Kashmiri revolutionary poet. Two other videos were set to singer Chris de Burgh's "Revolution" and "Oh My Brave Hearts."
Now young Kashmiris are uploading video shot furtively from windows showing government forces damaging vehicles and property during curfews, when there are no journalists around.
"Because of this video evidence that cannot be denied, some people outside Kashmir have started believing the horrors we have been living under," said Rayees, a young protester who uploaded a clip to Facebook showing paramilitary forces hurling stones and smashing the windows of homes in a Srinagar neighborhood.
"There are aberrations," said Tripathi, the paramilitary spokesman. "The commanders in their areas of responsibility have been directed to listen to the public grievances and see if people are facing any problems."
Another video of intense stone throwing by protesters, set to the Everlast song "Stone in My Hand," has become a hit with the demonstrators and made its shadowy creator — known only as a computer engineer — a revered figure among them.
"He made it appear as if the song was composed for Kashmir," said Shabir, a college student and stone thrower. "He showed us how one can be more meaningful and imaginative and yet continue to be a stone pelter."

 

[SparklingCrescent]

self delete......................

 

[Gucci]

max wat will happen,govt will ban these sites there.

 

[Bhairava]

Vale of tears

In Kashmir freedom is much farther than a stone’s-throw away

Aug 26th 2010

OWAIS hardly looks like a serious danger to the security of India. Slender and frail, he says he is 17 but seems younger as he basks shyly in the praise of the men gathered in a garden in Srinagar, summer capital of Indian-ruled Kashmir. But he is proud to show off the scars and stitch-marks that cover his belly. He has just emerged from hospital, lucky to be alive. He took a bullet in an anti-Indian protest on August 2nd in Kupwara, some 90km (56 miles) away. His uncle died that day, one of more than 60 people, mostly young, killed in a wave of unrest that began on June 11th.

Owais and those like him have presented the Indian government with a new and perhaps insoluble Kashmir crisis.

They are self-proclaimed “stone-pelters”, named after their weapon of choice. Well-organised—on Facebook, to a large extent—the pelters emerge at short notice to throw stones at police stations and other targets, and get shot at. In response to their protests much of the Kashmir valley that surrounds Srinagar has been shut down—both by hartals, or strikes, called by separatist leaders, and by government-imposed curfews.

On most days, Srinagar is a ghost town of shuttered shops and empty streets. Paramilitaries point their rifles out from bunkers or lounge on street corners, idly tapping their lathis (heavy batons) on their padded legs. On the one or two designated “shopping days” each week, the traffic is gridlocked.

Setting the hartal “calendar” is Syed Ali Shah Geelani, an 81-year-old separatist leader. It is in his garden that Owais waits. When the old man emerges, he kisses the boy on both cheeks and the forehead, hugs him tight, and poses for a photograph with him. Mr Geelani seems a strange icon for a movement of teen-aged Facebookers.

Few share his Islamist pro-Pakistan ideology. And many still seem to be ignoring his edict to give up throwing stones and stick to peaceful protest. But, unlike other political leaders, Mr Geelani has never wavered in his refusal to compromise with Indian rule. Sheer, cussed consistency has earned him a pivotal role. So have India’s past tactics to divide its opponents. More moderate separatists, who have engaged in “dialogue” with India, have had nothing to show for it, and ended discredited and compromised. This seems less clever than it did at the time. Now Mr Geelani ignores a call for talks from India’s prime minister, Manmohan Singh.

This is the third successive summer of big anti-Indian protests. For India, they have marred a victory of sorts. The two-decade-long insurgency, backed by Pakistan, which has never renounced its claim to all of Kashmir, is almost defeated. “Infiltration” across the “line of control” dividing Indian and Pakistani bits of Kashmir, has fallen.

The conflict is killing far fewer, though still 375 last year by one count, out of more than 40,000 killed since 1989 by the army’s reckoning, and 100,000 by the separatists’. When turnout in an election for the state government in 2008 reached an unprecedented 60%, many Indians misread this as belated Kashmiri acquiescence in Indian rule.

Boys like Owais neither trained in camps in Pakistan, nor are they stooges of the militants and spy agencies that have fuelled the war. They have grown up knowing nothing but insurgency. They may fear the insurgents and dislike their methods. But they sympathise with their goal. They see Indian troops in Kashmir as an often brutal occupying force. Why does Owais protest? “We are oppressed.” What will it achieve? “Azaadi!” (Freedom!).

That is not on the cards, even if it were clear what it meant. Of the five parts of the former “princely state” of Jammu & Kashmir, divided by the first India-Pakistan war in 1947-48, two are in Pakistan (and a bit of one was ceded to China by Pakistan—illegitimately, says India).

Of the three bits in India, Hindu-majority parts of Jammu, along with Ladakh, with many Buddhists, would, given a choice, probably stay in India. Only the Muslim-dominated Kashmir valley and adjacent parts of Jammu seem hellbent on secession. In the valley, politicians dream of an independent country linked to old Central Asian trading routes, looking anywhere but south over the mountains to Delhi.

Dream on. India has responded to the unrest in time-worn fashion: with extra troops, live bullets, the detention of separatist leaders who might lead big processions and, now, search-and-cordon operations to lock up suspected stone-pelters. Mr Geelani says protests will continue until India accepts the “disputed” status of Kashmir. India will never do that: the official line remains that Jammu & Kashmir, its only Muslim-majority state, is integral to its national identity: “the idea of India”. It will not tolerate the circulation of maps (in most cases) that show Pakistan-controlled Kashmir as, well, Pakistan-controlled.


Finding India’s collective conscience

So, it is most likely that these protests will end as so many before them did: with India making no more than token concessions. Fed up with the disruption, worried about keeping children out of school, and appalled at the loss of so many young lives, Kashmiris will sooner or later have to go back to life as usual, nursing their anger to take it out another day.

Eventually, however, India may have to contemplate a political solution, for two reasons. One is that small cracks are already appearing in the national consensus behind its repressive policies. So long as it was fighting Pakistan, even liberal Indian opinion seemed ready to tolerate a heavy hand in Kashmir.

Less so now that its troops are killing children armed only with stones. Secondly, without change, the cycle of protests will resume.

And at some point they will become so big that they can only be contained by killing more of its citizens than a democracy can stand. Owais and his classmates may be misguided, but they fear nothing, and “martyrdom” least of all.

Ahhh another article glorifying the paid stone pelters,rioters and arsonists.

As for India's collective conscience - this struggle based on a flawed religious concept was/is/will never be accepted nor will find favour with anybody.

And the bolded parts everything is true except for the "loss of young lives" part.

Is the Indian sec forces going home to home,dragging out the boys and killing them.??

These arsonists( so called innocent youths) are on the streets - destroying and burning anything and everything and they are getting what they deserve.Period.

 

[EjazR]

^^^^
Looks like you have no idea of history. Do you know from Muhammed Ali Jinnah came?
The reality is that the forefathers ofthe Muhajirs played a prominent role in establishing Pakistan. If you don't know the history, then it is better to not make comments liek these.

 

[S_O_C_O_M]

No talks until India admits Kashmir a disputed territory ​

Written by KMS
Friday, 27 August 2010 19:46

Srinagar, August 27, 2010: APHC(G) Chairman, Syed Ali Gilani has said that holding talks with India will be a futile exercise until it accepts the disputed nature of Jammu and Kashmir, starts demilitarisation, revokes black laws and releases all Kashmiri political prisoners without any condition.

Syed Ali Gilani, who was addressing a public gathering at Gulshanabad in Hyderpora said, “We were never against talks. But when, on the one hand, there are talks about talks and, on the other, Kashmir is declared as an integral part, there remains nothing meaningful about the dialogue. Holding of talks will be a futile exercise until India gives up its stubbornness, proclaims Kashmir as a dispute, starts the process of demilitarisation, revokes all the draconian laws and releases all the detainees unconditionally.”


Syed Ali Gilani condemned the torturing to death of an innocent student, Umar Qayoom by Indian forces. He said that cruel and callous attitude of police towards people would not be tolerated. He said that Kashmiris’ liberation struggle was absolutely peaceful and indigenous. “Those protesting on roads do not carry any gun, grenade or other weapon. They are not being paid by anyone. The Indian agencies are using underhand tactics to malign our movement,” he said.

Surprised over the closure of Srinagar Airport from September 1, Syed Ali Gilani termed it torture to Kashmiris. “It can be tactic to keep the prevailing grim situation away from the view of outside world,” he added.

Syed Ali Gilani maintained that all the minorities including Sikhs are safe in Kashmir. He appealed to the Muslims to assure the minorities in their respective localities that they were safe and secure.

APHC(M) chairman, Mirwaiz Umar Farooq demanded India to withdraw its troops from Occupied State of Jammu & Kashmir. He also urged India to stop state terrorism in the occupied territory and take steps to settle the Kashmir dispute by holding talks with Pakistan and genuine Kashmiri leadership.

Syed Ali Gilani led a big protest in Hyderpora and while addressing a gathering on the occasion, pointed out that the people of Jammu & Kashmir had been rendering sacrifices to secure their inalienable right of self-determination and not for perks and privileges.

Other APHC leaders, Agha Syed Hassan Al-Moosvi, addressing protesters in Badgam and Ghulam Ahmed Mir in Thanamandi emphasised that India would not be able to subdue Kashmiris’ movement through force. Anti-India demonstrations were also staged at Lal Chowk, Soura, Buchpora and Residency Road in Srinagar and in Islamabad, Bijbehara, Sangam, Pulwama, Tral and other towns. Liberation leaders addressing the demonstrators urged India to show seriousness in resolving the dispute in accordance with the Kashmiris’ aspirations.

Illegally detained senior APHC leader, Shabbir Ahmad Shah talking to mediamen at a hospital in Jammu said that the present surge in the liberation struggle had unnerved Indian authorities, who were engaged in a genocidal spree in the occupied territory. The authorities had brought him there for medical check-up.


The Executive Director of Kashmir Centre London, Professor Nazir Ahmad Shawl, in a statement in Islamabad said that resolution of the Kashmir dispute was vital to the peace and stability in South Asia. Kashmiri intellectual and lecturer in Delhi University, Syed Abdur Rehman Gilani in a media interview in Bangalore said that the people of Jammu and Kashmir should be given an opportunity to decide their future.

On the other hand, the 43rd death anniversary of prominent Kashmiri liberation leader and religious scholar, Mirwaiz Muhammad Yousaf Shah will be observed, tomorrow, and special functions will be held on the occasion on both sides of the Line of Control.

The Executive Director of Kashmir Centre London, Professor Nazir Ahmad Shawl, has said that resolution of the Kashmir dispute is vital to the peace and stability in South Asia. Professor Nazir Ahmad Shawl said that the Kashmir is an internationally recognized dispute. “The resolution of the lingering dispute in accordance with the aspirations of Kashmiri people will restore a new era in the inter-state relations in South Asia,” he added.

He said that India should concede the existing ground realities and respond to the categorical message of the ongoing movement in the occupied territory. “The dispute should be resolved according to the internationally supervised referendum as promised by the United Nations Security Council,” he maintained.

In Srinagar, at least 40 persons were injured when Indian forces resorted to brute force in Soura area of Srinagar to disperse the demonstrators protesting against the civilian killings and crackdown on youth.

Doctors at the Soura Medical Institute told mediamen that the Institute received 38 persons with pellet injuries. They said that one of the inured, identified as Khalid, 20, had received multiple pellet injuries in abdomen and chest. Another injured person from Rambagh was admitted in the Institute.

The protesters, mainly young boys, demanded the release of the arrested youth. The Indian forces used batons, fired teargas shells and rubber bullets to disperse them. A youth namely Nayeem Ahmad Paul was hit by a rubber bullet and shifted to a hospital.


In Rainawari, protests broke out at Naidyar after a youth was picked up by Indian forces. After the incident, people took to the streets and staged protests demanding his release. The Indian forces used brute force to disperse the protesters. The locals said that the occupation forces damaged private properties and smashed the windowpanes of residential houses in Dalkawpora, Naidyar and Chowdhary Bagh localities.

People also held anti-India demonstrations in Umarabad, Zainakote, Natipora, Rambagh, Wanbal, Sopore, Baramulla and Palhalan, Langate, Kralgund, Kralpora, Trehgam, Shopian, Bijbehara, Islamabad, Pulwama and Kulgam areas. Hundreds of people including women and children in Khaipora area of Tangmarg staged demonstrations against the brutal murder of a teenage girl, Sameera Bhat, who went missing last Monday and later her body with countless injury marks was recovered from an isolated field.

On the other hand, the Indian forces thrashed the newspaper hawkers in Soura, Gulab Bagh and Pandach areas of Srinagar and seized the copies of two local dailies ‘Greater Kashmir’ and ‘Kashmir Uzma’ on Thursday. The hawkers received multiple injuries and were taken to hospital for treatment.

Meanwhile, China has refused visa to a serving Indian army general, B. S. Jaswal, on the ground that he is the incharge of the Indian forces in Occupied State of Jammu & Kashmir. China has been describing Jammu and Kashmir as a disputed territory

No talks until India admits Kashmir a disputed territory

 

[Trac]

No talks until India admits Kashmir a disputed territory

Any buddy care about him

 

[GentlemanObserver]

Any buddy care about him

Same can be said for this guy:

 

[Trac]

Same can be said for this guy:

Well he is elected by people of J&K as their CM several times
So this person is their supreme for sure.

He not like PM of P O K who is puppet of Islamabad nothing else

 

[NoEscape]

Let China & PAKIstan instigate India thousand times over Kashmir, India is not going to budge from it's stand. Just because Kashmir is a Muslim majority state doesn't merit for independence or Plebiscite. India is a secular country where we have Christian dominated, Sikh dominated as well as Muslim dominate other states also. Kashmir is an integral part of India and it will. Let Hurriyats, Pakistans, Chinas, USs or whoever A$$ say millions of words on Kashmir, care Two Hoots to them.