Category: Union Territory

Kulgam: A day after government forces targeted the family members of a Hizbul Mujahideen militant Tawseef Ahmed in Rampura village of South Kashmir’s Kulgam district, suspected militants barged into the houses of at least seven cops, including two officers and ransacked their properties while one of the police officers ran for his life in the middle of the night on seeing the militants. The suspected militants also set the house of a government gunman on fire.

Reports said that suspected militant raided the houses of at least seven policemen in South Kashmir’s Kulgam district during the intervening night of Thursday and Friday. They not only threatened the family members but also warned them of dire consequences in case they (cops) target the family members of militants in future.

Witnesses told news agency CNS that the house of a Superintendent of Police was ransacked in Khudwani area. This is the fourth attack on the house of the said police officer.

In Nawbal Khudwani, the house of an Inspector was ransacked by unknown gunmen. Locals said that police officer managed to flee from the spot when militants entered into his house.

Reports from Desan village of the district said that militants barged into the house of one Sanaullah Wagay whose three sons are reportedly working in Jammu Kashmir Police Department. The unknown gunmen reportedly warned Wagay of dire consequences in case his sons take part in any anti-militancy operation.

At Marhama Kulgam, unknown gunmen attacked the house of cop. Reports said that gunmen ransacked the house, but didn’t touch any family members of the cop.

The house of a cop was also attacked at Sempora Behibagh in the same district.

Police sources said that a group of six militants led by Hizb district commander Saddam Paddar raided the houses of five policemen and a CRPF constable in Trichal, Naira and Tamlahal villages of South Kashmir’s Pulwama district.

Sources added that the house of a CRPF 182 Battalion constable was raided by militants; however, the constable (name withheld) was not present there. Militants also barged into the houses of 3 SPO’s in Trichal village forcing an SPO to announce his resignation before people at Jamia Masjid of the village.

Reports from Tral town of Pulwama district said that unknown persons pelted stones on the house of a Head Constable at Arigam. The cop is posted at police station Qazigund. Reports said that due to stone-hurling some window panes of the house were damaged. The unknown persons also set a fire cracker in air outside the house.

Director General of Police Dr SP Vaid said that such attacks depict the sheer frustration of the militants. “We have inflicted heavy losses on them. We have destroyed their infrastructure and to show their presence they are resorting to such tactics,” Dr Vaid said. (CNS)

Without explicitly saying so, the Chief Minister conveyed her difference with BJP on three key issues — on holding dialogue with people in Kashmir, on arrests of separatists, and on Kashmir’s special status.

New Delhi— Rift between the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) and BJP became starkly visible Friday when Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti launched a veiled attack on her alliance partner in the state on host of key issues.

Without explicitly saying so, the Chief Minister conveyed her difference with BJP on three key issues — on holding dialogue with Pakistan, on arrests of Hurriyat leaders, and on Kashmir’s special status.

Speaking at an event, Understanding Kashmir, in the capital organised by the Bureau of Research on Industry and Economic Fundamentals, Mehbooba Mufti warned that, “If special rights and privileges to the people of Jammu and Kashmir are tinkered with, then there would be no one in the state to hold the (Indian) tricolour”.  

She said, on the one hand, “we talk about resolving the Kashmir issue under the framework of the Constitution and on the other hand we flog it”.    

“Who is doing it? Why are they doing it? (challenging the Article 35A). Let me tell you that my party and other parties who carry the national flag there (in Jammu and Kashmir) despite all risks… I have no doubt in saying that there will be no one to hold it.   

“Any tinkering with the article won`t be acceptable. I won`t hesitate in saying that nobody will even carry the corpse of the National Flag in Kashmir (if the article is scrapped). Let me make it very clear,” she said at an event here on Kashmir.

The Chief Minister said that by employing such tactics, “you are not targeting separatists

Mehbooba went on to add, “Let me be very clear. By doing all this (challenging Article 35A), you are not targeting the separatists who have an agenda to secede but you are weakening the forces who have accepted India, participated in elections. They make efforts to integrate Jammu and Kashmir with India with respect and dignity. You are weakening them.”

The Article 35(A) is being challenged in the Supreme Court by NGO `We The Citizens` on its legal basis because the article was never presented before the Parliament and executed on the orders of President of India.

The provision was implemented in 1954 when then President Rajendra Prasad used the powers conferred on him by Article 370 to introduce the “Constitution (Application to Jammu and Kashmir) Order 1954”.

Under the article, citizens from other parts of the country cannot acquire immovable property in Jammu and Kashmir or take up employment with the state government.

The Supreme Court has now referred the case to a three-judge bench for a larger debate over it.

“There have been special provisions in the Constitution of India for the state of Jammu and Kashmir. Unfortunately, with the passage of time something happened somewhere that both sides started doing dishonesty,” Mehbooba said.    

Both the sides, she said while indicating towards the Centre and the state, may be became more greedy and the state had to suffer for the last 70 years.    

On Arrest Of Hurriyat Leaders

“Rather than addressing the problem, we took administrative measures like dismissal of government or making charges of conspiracy, sedition…we had all these things against separatists which at times led to their hangings, weapons exclusive to Kashmir and more security measures and increasing number of security people.    

“These administrative measures have not helped us to address the idea of Kashmir…,” Mufti said.

Replacing Azadi

“We need to find what exactly is going on in the mind of a teenager, what is compelling him to do it (throw stones). We need to replace the idea of Azadi with another idea, a better idea, but are we ready to do that? We may be able to contain the present situation but there still is so much distrust,”

She then drew attention to the 2005 working groups constituted to address the internal dimensions of the Kashmir issue.

“The working group reports (on Kashmir) have been thrown in the waste basket. We are not doing anything about that,” she said.

On Talks With Pakistan

“The PDP-BJP alliance has been on the belief and hope that we will be able to revive the magic of (former Prime Minister Atal Bihari) Vajpayee ji’s time… Vajpayee ji did it,” she said.

Citing the Lahore declaration in which Pakistan had assured that it will not allow its land to be used against anti-India activities, Mehbooba said, “We have to revive that… in spite of Kargil and attack on the Parliament house… We have had some setbacks but we need to revive it, if we want that the closed roads in Jammu and Kashmir open, then Pakistan’s positive contribution is very necessary,” she said.

On National Media    

The chief minister was critical of some television news channel anchors saying that they were trying to project Kashmir in a bad light. “I am sorry to say that this India, that the anchors are trying to project, is not what India is about and that is not the India I know,” she said as she stated that few channels were showing Kashmiris in a “bad light.”

She said when she sees the retired ‘beard-wallahs’ from the other side (Pakistan) and ‘mooch-wallahs’ from this side screaming at the top of their lungs on television news channels, she feels they are taking out their “frustrations” about so many wars that the two countries saw.

“I see that their eyes are bulging out, so much anger and some time they sweat too. I don’t want to be associated with this type of India or Pakistan…,” she said.

Mehbooba said she wants to see an India which feels the pain of Kashmir. “I want to see that India which accepted us on our conditions.

To understand the mind behind this maverick politician Kashmir Observer correspondent Nidhi Suresh met Engineer Rasheed for a conversation.

Srinagar: Engineer Sheikh Abdul Rasheed, aka Er Rasheed, a firebrand politician and an independent legislator, is hogging headlines these days.

A little known political figure from frontier Langate constituency in North Kashmir not long time back, is now a star attraction on almost every other news channel debating Kashmir. He is a must watch politician, unlike his peers in the mainstream politics.

His admirers call him ‘brutally honest’ person who calls spade a spade. He is watched as he gives vent to the Kashmiri peoples’ frustrations on national media, where partisan anchors often mute his voice. His detractors call him a hypocrite who has taken oath of allegiance to India in the Assembly but terms same country as an occupier. 

How does it feel to be on a national television where you’re constantly shut down? 

Humiliated. It makes me feel like I’m a citizen of a colonial power called India, where even journalists have lost their ethics and morality. The main problem is that information is not allowed to flow from this part of the earth to India. My aim is to put some iota of truth on record and hope that somebody will listen to it. 

How do you think national media is narrativizing Kashmir? 

If I answer this question, it will only help India. I think, every Kashmiri should be thankful to the so called ‘National Media’ because it gives us a reason to hate India. It strengthens our commitment and exposes the dirty ultra-nationalistic ideologies of India. Such media should in fact be a great cause of concern for the real patriots of India because national media is doing what ISI can’t do to India. 

You have taken an oath of allegiance to India, yet you speak against it. In that regard, is it not hypocritical that you constantly accuse India to be an occupying force? 

This is a very simple question. Unfortunately, the narrative behind this question has been created by the Hurriyat who boycotted elections and named everybody else standing for election as traitor. Also, I have not taken oath under Indian constitution; I have taken oath under constitution of Jammu and Kashmir. UN resolutions categorically have identified that by no means, any law passed, can supersede UN resolutions. So, is GoI a bigger institution than UN? I wonder, Hindustani’s dhoka kisko derehe hai (who are Hindustani’s actually cheating?). 

Also, where in the constitution does it say that I must lie? The oath is all about speaking the truth. If the constitution allows me to fight for our fundamental rights, then the UN charter clearly states that self-determination is my right. 

India passed a resolution which calls J&K an integral part of India. The real question is, has the Indian State been able to honestly implement this resolution? If so, then why has it not stopped the construction of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor in Gilgit, which is a part of disputed territory of your ‘integral part’? Clearly, Indians are the biggest hypocrites, befooling their own people and eroding their own credibility. 

So you call Indian government a hypocrite? 

If Pakistan says something, India rushes into a surgical strike. I am not advocating Pakistan’s ideologies but when Chinese do something worst, India doesn’t dare open its mouth. Why are you not having a surgical strike on China? That says enough, doesn’t it? 

So where do Kashmiris stand in all this? 

British were such nice people but they gave freedom to two fools – India and Pakistan. Two fools, who are not able to hold their countries together. We, Kashmiris were free long before India. But India’s struggle for freedom, took away ours. So now we are left with a very harsh, radical, unrealistic, illogical enemy called India. 

How seriously are you taken by the mainstream politicians? 

It is quite interesting; when they talk in assembly I am labelled as an IB agent. They also know that without Pakistani sentiment, they cannot survive here. So these politicians try to plant an impression that I have been planted here. And when people like Mehbooba Mufti visit New Delhi, they say “Oh this bloody Engineer Rasheed is a Pakistani. He will destroy all of us.” I have decided that I am doing all of this for myself, for my conscience. 

Many people think you are an agent of the Indian army because you speak so harshly, yet you remain untouched. 

Why are you putting my life at risk by asking this? You know that we’re living in a conflict zone. 

Am I not the man who is fighting 22 cases against the army in the State Human Rights Commission? Army has used me as forced labour for 15 long years. One night when an encounter took place, they dragged my wife by her hair from my house for about 50 feet. My father has been tortured, and I have lost 6 people from my family. 

If you speak for your people, your enemies will also respect you. 

Yet not many people follow you?

I don’t care. I am speaking for myself. I am not in a politician by conviction. I casted my first vote for myself. I never dreamt of winning elections but when it happened I decided to use it for the best. I am not India’s enemy or Pakistan’s puppet. Some people link me to Hurriyat but that is not the case. I respect them even though we have many differences that I can’t talk about, as it will harm our movement. Right now, I am only giving back to the dirty system which forced me to sell my land in 2006. I am still not sure if I should have made a party or not because it needs money, it needs muscle power and it needs you to be a liar. But I have not given up hope. I’m going to continue trying. People may reject me, they may hate me but you can’t ignore me. I will call a spade a spade. 

What solution do you have in mind for Kashmir problem? 

There are only five ways to solve the issue of J&K:

1) Good sense should prevail with the Government of India and they should move forward and declare that they don’t care about Kashmir. 

2) Pakistan should be strong enough to force India but that is not a possibility. 

3) Militancy should be strong enough to drive out the seven lakh Indian soldiers. 

4) International community should recognise and register the sufferings of Kashmiris and compel India and Pakistan to solve the issue 

5) Hurriyat or main stream politicians should have the guts, the credibility and the vision to carry out a movement in a direction that India and Pakistan would feel compelled to sit and resolve it. 

Unfortunately, all these five options have been exhausted. I do hope that Hurriyat can convince MLA’s within assemblies because the world only listens to them. Or if Hurriyat contests elections they will surely win and then they can make their stand clearer. 

While the Hurriyat asks for negotiated settlement, JKLF demands independence, what is Engineer Rasheed’s roadmap for Kashmir? 

Mine is a one point agenda: Plebiscite 

India claims to be a so called ‘largest democracy’ and UN promised us a plebiscite. Now, there is no other way out. 

But realistically do you think the Plebiscite will ever happen?

When India started asking for freedom from British did anybody ever think it will actually ever happen? 

What stops you from joining Hurriyat? 

I am doing what I can do in my own way. Both, Mirwaiz and Geelani have declared that we are all sailing in the same boat. We all have the same ideology but we work differently.

Do you want to be Chief Minister? 

Who would not want to be a Chief Minister? But I know my worth; I will not get enough support. Kashmir has become a place of conspiracies. People tell me that today I speak against India just like what Mehbooba Mufti or Sheikh Abdullah used to when they were out of power. This is an unfair judgement. I always tell such people, “just because they betrayed you, doesn’t mean that I am not speaking the truth.”

Courtesy: Kashmir Observer

SRINAGAR: J&K government’s assertion that not a single case of child labour has been detected in Kashmir in 2016-17 has more to do with the lack of proper policy than the absence of such cases.
Experts say that thousands of child labour cases are found in Kashmir, but the existing anti-child labour laws are full of loopholes. For instance, the Department of Labour considers only those cases as child labour where a child below the 18 years of age is working under an employer.
In cases where children are working in unorganized sectors like carpet weaving, pashmina shawl making, and traditional family business, or work independently to support their families, are not included in child labour category.
A huge percentage of child labour cases, experts say, have been reported from unorganized sectors like handicrafts, where children continue to work without receiving any help from government or from any of its agencies.
“All the children (below 18) who aren’t enrolled at any educational institution amount to child labour because it is the age in which they should have been studying at schools. Though no one wishes to work as labourers at such age, but it is the bleak financial conditions that forces children and parents to do so,” says Sharif Bhat, Programme Manager, Save the Children.
Sharif said that when the government says that a child working on their own will does not amount to child labour, then the claims of “no child labour” were no surprise.
Moreover, as per the anti-child labour law, officials say, they can only act against employers where children below 14 are employed. There are no regulations for those who work on their own, or on the insistence of their families. Traditional families work is not covered under the law either.
Insiders at the department say that if at all any case of child labour is traced, the department doesn’t follow the cases itself but leaves it up to the courts.
To a request for information from labour department about the cases where trial was completed and prosecution was done in the court, officials said they had no details.
The dearth of staff to monitor child labour is another challenge faced by the department. The department has 12 labour inspectors for all the ten districts of the valley which, officials say, is very little for “such tiresome work”.
A labour inspector, wishing anonymity, said that he has been assigned to overlook an entire district. “It is not possible for me to inspect each and every place in a district with other official engagements on my schedule as well. There is probability that we may miss child labour cases somewhere,” the inspector said.
Experts say, majority of children working as labourers are in sectors like handicrafts, carpet weaving, shawl weaving, agricultural activities, brick kilns and other traditional works of families.
“Rather than turning blind eye towards the existing and growing menace, government should come up with policies where root cause of the menace of child labour is addressed. Challenging employers or asking children not to work when they struggle to even manage two meals a day is not a solution. There should be a policy where these children would get handsome economic benefits besides training and basic education,” says Bhat of Save the Children.
In inspections carried out at 90 different locations across the Kashmir in 2016-17, the labour department has said that they have found not a single case of child labour.
An independent survey ‘Child labour in Jammu and Kashmir-Social, Economical and Ethical dimension’ conducted by a Prof Fayaz Ahmed Nikka, puts the figures of children in labour at a staggering 2.50 lakh in Jammu and Kashmir. The 2001 census report also points out that as many as 1,75,000 children were working as labourers in Jammu and Kashmir.
Back in 1996, a Government of India (GoI) sponsored scheme – National Child Labour Project (NCLP) – was launched with an aim to control and curb the menace of growing child labour in Jammu & Kashmir.
Under this scheme, the Labour Department was supposed to provide a monthly stipend of Rs 150 to the children besides giving them basic education and vocational training. Around 11 Child Labour special schools in areas like Parimpora, Foreshore road, Kursoo Rajbagh and Habak of Srinagar were established. Scores of children, who were earlier recovered from different workplaces, are studying in these schools.
However, the willingness of children to work as labourers limits the impact of the scheme.
“They don’t work to support their own needs but that of family. They need stipends to get rid of burden of supporting family,” said a department insider.
How serious are the efforts put in by the labour department to eradicate the menace can be gauged by the fact that not a single holistic survey has been conducted so far to ascertain the quantum of child labour in Kashmir. Moreover, there is no proper data management of cases detected during the inspection or the cases in which the department filed challans in courts.
Admitting there was a lack of comprehensive anti-child labour policy, assistant labour commissioner Srinagar, Malik Tanveer told Kashmir Reader that there are family compulsions and bleak financial conditions of families that force parents to send their children to work as labourers.
“In that context, rehabilitating the children from very poor background holds no rational arguments because, they (children) are willingly working at establishments to support their family. Ideally there should have been a mechanism where these special cases could have been identified and a handsome stipend besides education and training would be provided to them. Only then, we could succeed in our objective,” Tanveer said.
“We don’t consider that as a child labour if someone (below the fourteen years of age) works independently to earn few pennies,” he said. Asked if these cases form a huge percentage in Srinagar and elsewhere in valley, he says there are no provisions for the case like them.
“There is need to have some provisions where we could address these cases as well but then it lies with policy makers to ponder over it,” he said.
On many occasions, he says, inspectors of labour department received backlash from the employers as well as from those who employ the children because there are no laid down guidelines that gives us powers to a strong action.
“Whenever our inspection team visits any establishment where they believe child labourers are employed, to escape government action, the children deny they are working there or if at all, they are caught red handed then they show manipulated birth certificates or manage to bring birth certificates documents signed from doctors to our inspectors. That leaves our inspection teams helpless,” he says.

Courtesy: Kashmir Reader

 

Barkha Dutt 

“The United States does not recognize our countries as great powers.” Chairman Mao Zedong, the Communist revolutionary and the founding father of the People’s Republic of China, said this to Jawaharlal Nehru, India’s first prime minister, in 1954. The two leaders met in Beijing and bonded over a shared sentiment of anti-imperialism. “The ruler that the United States uses to measure other countries will no longer be useful in the future,” Nehru agreed with Mao, according to archives now declassified and released by the Wilson Center. “In addition to money there are other factors, the human factor is the most important,” he said idealistically; “ … our two countries should play more important roles in Asia. In any case, the population of our two countries reaches one billion. This will lead to immense influence.”

More than six decades later, between them, China and India make up 36 percent of the world’s population and are the globe’s fastest-growing economies, with a recent report placing India ahead. Nehru was prescient about the influence they would wield — he coined the phrase “Hindi-Chini bhai bhai” (the Indians and Chinese are brothers) — but absolutely misjudged their imagined partnership. His naiveté about China resulted in a war in 1962 that caught India off guard. This year, as Chinese and Indian soldiers stand eyeball to eyeball in the Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan in a month-long standoff, the state-run Chinese media has threatened India that “it will suffer greater losses than in 1962.”

But, as Indian Defense Minister Arun Jaitley said, “India of 2017 is very different” from the India of 1962. India has refused to kowtow to China’s entitled assumptions about a hegemonic control of Asia.

At the epicenter of the growing crisis is the Doklam plateau, which sits at the tri-junction of India, China and Bhutan, near the northeastern Indian state of Sikkim. In June, the Bhutanese army objected to the Chinese constructing a road in territory that it says is within its sovereignty. It asked the Indian military for help to resist the Chinese aggression, and Indian troops moved into the construction area in Bhutan. India says China has violated an agreed-upon status quo and is in violation of a 2012 boundary agreement. Beijing has referenced a much earlier colonial treaty signed between Great Britain and China. The Indian military maintains a permanent training presence in Bhutan; its current king was a graduate of the National Defense College in Delhi. China, for its part, has for years wanted full diplomatic ties with Bhutan.

But still, Bhutan may simply be a decoy for a bigger play: Who will lead Asia?

“The larger battle is essentially about strategic competition for geopolitical space and influence in Asia between India and China,” said Nirupama Rao, who served as India’s ambassador to China and retired as the government’s top-ranking diplomatic official. “The gauntlet thrown is not directed against Bhutan, but against India,” she told me in an interview.  The entire Indo-Pacific region is now the gladiatorial ring where a global joust is unfolding, pulling in countries well beyond Bhutan. The United States, India and Japan just completed trilateral naval exercises amid reports of Chinese submarine presence in the Indian Ocean region.

Tibet — and India’s support for the Dalai Lama — has been another flashpoint; as China sulked, India allowed the Buddhist leader, who has championed independence for Tibet, to visit Tawang in the eastern Indian state of Arunachal Pradesh, which China claims to have rights over.

Regional provocation is also spinning along the Sino-Pakistan axis. China has regularly blocked action at the United Nations against Pakistan-based terrorist groups. China’s ambitious “one belt, one road” initiative passes through territory that India regards as sovereign, angering New Delhi. Beijing has used the Sikkim-Bhutan standoff to threaten India on possible interference in the Kashmir Valley, in support of Pakistan.

Many Indians believe that infrastructure, power projects, highways in Pakistan are the instruments of Chinese neo-colonialism. Beijing’s protectorate over Pakistan, Islamabad, is now seen as a virtual colony of China, locked into inescapable dependence.

Yet, despite the Indian military chief asserting his readiness for a “two-and-a-half-front war” (a reference to Pakistan, China and internal threats), some believe that Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s observation that India and China have not fired a single bullet in 40 years will remain true. India is China’s largest trading partner; a sixth of India’s imports are now Chinese. “China is no monolith,” said Alok Bansal with the India Foundation, a think tank linked to the government. “We have to look at the subterranean currents; Chinese society today is extremely driven by commercial interests. I don’t think the people there want conflict with India. Indian soft power has also made its own ingress.” Bansal said that what really bothers the Chinese is India’s growing proximity to the United States and points out that any maleficent aggression will achieve precisely that.

There are also murmurs in strategic circles about overdependence on Washington. “If ever there was a war with China, America would never come to our rescue,” one government official said. India’s road to equality with China may eventually route itself not through Washington or the West, but through the East; Modi has invested energy in building relationships with Japan, Vietnam and South Korea, all of whom are suspicious of China.

Amid current fears of a second Sino-Indian battle between two nuclear-armed giants of Asia, the only denouement can be a mutual withdrawal of soldiers from the contested Bhutan region. Anything else could be cataclysmic.

 

Courtesy: Washington Post

Jammu: The government has rejected any likelihood of talks with separatists or other fundamental groups in the Valley unless the level of terrorism and violence comes down substantially.“Already some attempts were made to reach out to separatists and other fundamental groups but they shut their doors to the delegations from the Centre. Besides, there is a clear message from the Centre that unless the Valley returns to normal, the government will not take any initiative for talks,” said Deputy Chief Minister Nirmal Singh talking to The Tribune.He said the time was not opportune as well as atmosphere not conducive to take any step for dialogue. Admitting that the scenario in the Valley was steadily changing, Nirmal Singh said people were trying to come out of the “false consciousnesses” created over the years by the forces inimical to peace and stability in the region.On the frequent killing of soldiers on the border as well as while battling insurgency in the Valley, the Deputy Chief Minister expressed anguish.“The unfortunate killings like those of Lt Ummar Fayaz, Naik Mudasser Ahmed, Lance Naik Mohammad Naseer and DSP Mohammed Ayub Pandith are highly condemnable. But these have also started alienating people of Kashmir from the separatist propaganda and radicalisation supported by the Hurriyat and its mentor,” said Nirmal Singh.When asked why the BJP had not given a serious thought to scrapping Article 370, which has been the greatest impediment for the state’s total integration with India, the Deputy Chief Minister said the issue was under consideration and needed a constitutional amendment.“Since it would be a constitutional amendment, the Bill would have to be passed by both Houses of Parliament with two-thirds majority and has to be signed by the President,” said Nirmal Singh, adding that first it would have to be passed by the “constituent Assembly” of J&K before it is sent to Parliament.