Kashmir.Watch

Category: World

  • Worlds oldest man dies at 142 in Kashmir

    Srinagar: Feroz-Ud-Din, who claimed to be world’s oldest man last year, died in the intervening night of Thursday and Friday at about 2 in the morning.

    Feroz-ud-Din Mir son of Mattuli Mir of Bijhama village of Border tehsil Uri in Baramulla district of Jammu and Kashmir was Born on 10 March 1872 according to his date birth particulars.

    Reports said that Father of 10, Feroz had five wives, the fifth one 60 years younger than his age.

    Feroz was laid to rest at his native village Bejihama early Friday morning.Last year it was reported that Guinness World Records is investigating the claim and if it was true he would have been the world’s oldest surviving man.

    To substantiate his claim, Feroz had showed a government-issued birth certificate which shows his date of birth as March 10, 1872.

  • Gaza baby delivered from mother killed by Israeli airstrike

    Staff writer, Al Arabiya News, Saturday, 26 July 2014

    A baby girl has been rescued from her dead mother’s womb by caesarian after an Israeli airstrike in the Gaza strip, the BBC reported on Friday.

    The girl – who has not yet been given a name – is being cared for in hospital, where doctors say she has a 50 percent chance of survival.

    “I’m very angry, I’m very sad. I feel that this baby is mine,” said a Palestinian doctor interviewed by the BBC.

    The bombing which killed the baby’s mother took place on a small block of flats housing civilians, the news channel reported. The attack took place at around 2 o’clock in the morning.

    The 18-day conflict has so far killed more than 845 people, most of them Palestinian civilians, while world powers scramble to mediate a ceasefire.
     

  • Kashmiris And Palestinians Are One: Palestine Ambassador

    ISLAMABAD – Reacting to massive pro-Palestine protests in Kashmir, the Ambassador of Palestine to Pakistan, His Excellency Walid Abu Ali said that “Kashmiris and Palestinians are one” and expressed his gratitude for the tremendous support that Pakistanis and Kashmiris have shown for the people of Gaza.

    A delegation of Youth Forum For Kashmir (YFK) visited the Ambassador and presented to him a report and an album of pictures from various demonstrations in Srinagar and other parts of Kashmir against the massacres in Gaza.

    Conveying YFK’s message of solidarity, Executive Director Ahmed Quraishi said the youth organization condemned the deliberate and unjustified targeting of Palestinian civilians. He said the civilians and especially children should never be targeted in war and that the international community should take strong exception to this because this is what the Indian army is also doing in Kashmir.

    The young Kashmiri and Pakistani members of YFK are trained lobbyists working for bringing Kashmir to the top of the regional agenda.

    Shaista Safi, from Baramulla presented the album to the Ambassador. In return, he presented to each member of the delegation a pin with a joint Palestinian and Pakistani flags.

  • China Bans Ramadan Fast in Muslim Northwest

    BEIJING: Students and civil servants in China’s Muslim northwest, where Beijing is enforcing a security crackdown following deadly unrest, have been ordered to avoid taking part in traditional fasting during the Islamic holy month of Ramadan.

    Statements posted in the past several days on websites of schools, government agencies and local party organizations in the Xinjiang region said the ban was aimed at protecting students’ wellbeing and preventing use of schools and government offices to promote religion. Statements on the websites of local party organizations said members of the officially atheist ruling party also should avoid fasting.

    “No teacher can participate in religious activities, instill religious thoughts in students or coerce students into religious activities,” said a statement on the website of the No. 3 Grade School in Ruoqiang County in Xinjiang.

    Similar bans have been imposed in the past on fasting for Ramadan, which began at sundown Saturday. But this year is unusually sensitive because Xinjiang is under tight security following attacks that the government blames on Muslim extremists with foreign terrorist ties.

    Violence has escalated in recent years in Xinjiang. The ruling party blames violent extremists that it says want independence, while members of the region’s Uighur ethnic group complain that discrimination and restrictions on religion, such as a ban on taking children to mosques, are fueling anger at the ethnic Han Chinese majority.

    An attack on May 22 in the regional capital of Urumqi by four people who threw bombs in a vegetable market killed 43 people, including the attackers. On June 22, police in Kashgar in the far west said they killed 13 assailants who drove into a police building and set off explosives, injuring three officers. Authorities have blamed two other attacks at train stations in Urumqi and in China’s southwest on Muslim extremists.

    The government responded with a crackdown that resulted in more than 380 arrests in one month and public rallies to announce sentences.

    The ruling party is wary of religious activities it worries might serve as a rallying point for opposition to one-party rule. Controls on worship are especially sensitive in Xinjiang and in neighboring Tibet, where religious faith plays a large role in local cultures.

    On Tuesday, authorities in some communities in Xinjiang held celebrations of the anniversary of the founding of the Communist Party and served food to test whether Muslim guests were fasting, according to Dilxat Raxit, spokesman in Germany for the rights group World Uyghur Congress.

    “This will lead to more conflicts if China uses coercive measures to rule and to challenge Uighur beliefs,” said Dilxat Raxit in an email.

    The ruling party says religion and education should be kept separate and students should not be subject to religious influences. That rule is rarely enforced for children of Han Chinese, who, if they have a religion, are mostly Buddhist, Daoist or Christian.

    “Students shall not participate in religious activities; they shall not study scripts or read poems at script and choir classes; they shall not wear any religious emblems; and no parent or others can force students to have religious beliefs or partake in religious activities,” said the statement on the website of the grade school in Ruoqiang County.

    A news portal run by the government of Yili in the northern reaches of Xinjiang said fasting is detrimental to the physical wellbeing of young students, who should eat regularly.

    In the city of Bole, retired teachers from the Wutubulage Middle School were called in to stand guard at mosques and prevent students from entering, according to a statement on the municipal party committee website.

    Also in Bole, the Bozhou University of Radio and Television said on its website it held a meeting with working and retired minority teachers on the first day of the Ramadan to remind them of the fasting ban.

    The forestry bureau in Xinjiang’s Zhaosu county held an event the day before Ramadan at which party cadres signed a pledge they and their relatives would “firmly resist fasting,” according to a statement on the website of the local party committee.

    The Moyu Weather Bureau in the Hotan area said on its website that Muslim employees, both active and retired, were required to sign a letter promising not to fast.

    The commercial bureau for Turpan, an oasis town in the Taklamakan Desert, said in a statement that civil servants are “strictly forbidden” to fast or perform the Salat prayer ritual in a mosque.

  • ISIS reaches Saudi borders

    Iraq/Syria: According to reports the Sunni rebels ISIS have reached the border of Saudi Arabia. ISIS the most extreme faction is mobilizing its forces to face Assad’s regime and recently, Maliki’s government. ISIS has built an army of thousands of different nationalities.
    Reports said thatTurkey, which was at first confused between Syrian nationalists and Islamist rebels, has finally decided to close its borders to Islamic rebel groups, declaring that they are now threatening its security and not the Assad regime. Jordan and Saudi Arabia had from the beginning distinguished the moderate national Free Syrian Army from the rebels ISIS and al-Nusra Front, despite the fact that all three of them are against the Assad’s regime.

  • Judge who ordered Saddam’s death executed by ISIS

    Iraq: Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) fighters have reportedly captured and executed the judge who sentenced Saddam Hussein to death, a Facebook post attributed to Ibrahim al-Douri, who was a top aide of the fallen Iraqi leader, said.

    A Jordanian MP made a similar claim on his Facebook page. The Iraqi government hasn’t confirmed the killing, but issued no denial.

    The International Business Times, reporting Judge Raouf Abdul Rahman’s capture, sourced it to a Facebook post by al-Douri. New York Times recently called al-Douri the force behind the dramatic ISIS offensive. He was deputy chairman of the Iraqi Command Council until the 2003 US-led invasion. In 2007, he was named leader of the banned Iraqi Ba’ath Party.

    Quoting MP Khalil Attieh’s Facebook entry, Daily Mail, New York Post and some news websites said judge Rahman, who signed the death-by-hanging verdict against Saddam in 2006, was seized as he left Baghdad on June 16 and executed two days later. The Macedonian International News Agency too put out the news quoting Egyptian daily Al-Mesyroon. Attieh’s post claimed Rahman tried to escape Baghdad disguised in a dancer’s costume, but was nabbed.

    Judge Rahman was a Kurd and condemned for ordering Saddam’s hanging. He was accused of being biased, for he comes from Halabja, scene of the 1988 poison attack, allegedly under the erstwhile Iraqi leader’s orders. Many of Rahman’s kin were said to be victims of that horrific attack. The judge himself was reportedly detained and tortured by Saddam’s security agents.

    Rahman took over the Saddam trial in January 2006 after previous incumbent Razgar Amin was criticized for being lenient. A father of three, Rahman was a graduate of Baghdad University’s school of law.

    The Daily Mail claimed that in March 2007, Rahman sought asylum in Britain. He had travelled to UK with his family on a tourist visa. He had apparently feared for his life. But there was no official confirmation of such an asylum appeal.

  • KAC Supports Yasin Malik’s Call as a Symbol of Unity

    Washington, D.C: In conjunction with all diaspora Kashmiris around the world, the Kashmiri American Council (KAC), extends its full support to the call given by Mohammad Yasin Malik, Chairman, Jammu Kashmir Liberation Front to celebrate June 23rd, as a symbol of their unity to resist India’s illegal and inhuman occupation.  We, at the KAC are enthusiastically responding to that bold and lofty directive.

    According to a statement issued to KNS, KAC strongly condemned the ‘move by RSS and BJP to observe June 23, 2014 (which happens to be death anniversary of Mr. Shyama Prasad Mukherjee, the founder of Jan Sangh) as a day for integration of Jammu and Kashmir with India’. It must be noted that since the current government came to power they are planning to execute their sinister design to accommodate “refugees” as the “state subjects” so that demographics can be changed and Muslim majority status compromised. This is flagrant violation of international law and United Nation Security Council resolutions that can have serious repercussions in highly unstable region of South Asia.

    “Jammu and Kashmir has lot of forestland, settling of refugees would alter the population dynamics in the region, which has been already compromised by the presence of hundreds of thousands of Indian armed forces in the area. Overpopulation in the forestland will spell ecological disaster in the State.  The maintenance of low population density is strictly followed in states like Arunachal Pradesh, which has large swathes of forestland but is violated with impunity in Jammu and Kashmir. Government India is not only responsible for killing fields in Kashmir but is also culpable of offences related to ecological disaster. It is high time that international agencies clamoring for environmental protection take a serious note of the situation.’

    KAC has said it believes that there should not be any condition from any party except the commitment to peaceful negotiations. Mr. Arun Jaitly, the Defense Minister of India’s statement was unfortunate when he said that Kashmir issue has to be resolved within the Indian constitution. KAC suggests that Mr. Jaitly needs to listen to his mentor, Atal Behari Vajpayee, former Prime Minister of India  who wanted the Kashmir issue to be resolved within the ambit of humanity ‘Insaniyat Kay Dairay Mai’ and not within the parameters of the Indian constitution’.

    “KAC’s stand is that ‘Autonomy’ and ‘Article 370’ are non-issues for the people of Kashmir. Here one relies on a provision of the Indian Constitution. All Constitutions of the world are subject to amendments and Indian Constitution is no exception.  If not now, in the foreseeable future, this provision can be deleted in the Constitution and the move will not even need a debate in the Indian Parliament. Moreover, it has been emphasized at various times that article is a temporary provision which will lose its relevance when promise to hold plebiscite is fulfilled: which till now India has reneged upon.”

    The statement said that secondly, Kashmiris have had the experience of a limited autonomy, which was first practiced under a personal understanding between Nehru and Abdullah and later provided for by Section 370 of the Indian Constitution.  It was eroded and eventually whittled away by the forces of circumstances.

    “KAC believes that Kashmir is a political problem and needs a political solution. The talks must be tripartite because the dispute primarily involves three parties – India, Pakistan and the people of Kashmir. But the primary party is the people of the State of Jammu & Kashmir. The talks must also be accompanied with practical measures to restore an atmosphere of nonviolence. India cannot talk peace with Pakistan while India is at war with Kashmiris.”

  • ISIL seeking “sex slaves” in Mosul under the pretext of a holy war

    Iraq: ISIL militants in Iraq have called on the residents of the country’s major northern city of Mosul to offer their women to the “Takfiri” militants for sex, agencies reported. In a statement released nearly a week ago, well-armed militants have also threatened Iraqis in the northern city, with consequences if they fail to comply with the order. The idea of offering sex to militants under the pretext of a holy war, referred to in Arabic as “Jihad-ul-Nikka,” first surfaced back in 2013. At the time, a Saudi-based Wahhabi cleric issued a fatwa (religious edict) calling on women to offer themselves to the armed militants fighting against the government of Syrian President Bashar Assad. ISIL (Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant) is an al-Qaeda splinter  group that is fighting the government of Syria and Iraq. On June 10, the ISIL militants took control of Mosul, the capital of Nineveh Province, which was followed by the fall of Tikrit, located 140 kilometers (87 miles) northwest of the capital Baghdad. Hundreds of thousands of Iraqi people have been forced out of their homes since the attacks. Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has vowed that the country’s security forces would confront the foreign-sponsored terrorists, describing the seizure of Mosul as a “conspiracy.” Maliki has also said Saudi Arabia and Qatar are responsible for the security crisis and growing terrorism in his country, denouncing the Al Saud regime as a major supporter of global terrorists. Meanwhile Iraqi military authorities have announced that the nation’s armed forces are gearing up to enter the city of Mosul after reestablishing control over Baiji oil refinery in the strategic Salahuddin Province. Iraq’s Army Spokesman General Qassim Atta stated on Wednesday that preparations were underway to move in against ISIL militants in Mosul after Iraqi Special Forces regained full control over the nation’s largest petroleum refinery complex in Baiji, taking out at least 40 terrorists in the process. Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) attacked the refinery from several directions earlier by firing rockets and starting a fire at the key facility. According to the Iraqi general, one of ISIL leaders in Iraq was among those killed by government forces. General Atta further reiterated that Iraqi armed forces were also in full control of the cities of Tal Afar and Samarra, which also came under attack by foreign-backed ISIL militants. Earlier, Iraqi troops took full control of Saqlawiyah district in Anbar Province after heavy clashes with the Takfiri militants. Nearlyl 250 terrorists were reportedly killed in the clashes. On June 10, the ISIL militants took control of the Nineveh provincial capital Mosul, which was followed by the fall of Tikrit, located 140 kilometers (87 miles) northwest of the capital Baghdad. Hundreds of thousands of Iraqi people have been forced out of their homes since the attacks. Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has vowed that the country’s security forces would confront the foreign-sponsored terrorists, describing the seizure of Mosul as a “conspiracy”. (Press Tv)

  • India Says 40 Indians Kidnapped in Iraq

    NEW DELHI: Forty Indian construction workers have been kidnapped from the militant-controlled city of Mosul in northern Iraq, India’s foreign ministry said Wednesday.

    Ministry spokesman Syed Akbaruddin said it remains unclear who is behind the kidnappings or where the hostages are being held. India is dispatching its former ambassador to Iraq, Suresh Reddy, to the strife-torn nation, the foreign ministry said, and has set up a control room in Delhi to monitor the situation.

    Within Iraq, Sunni militants have taken over large swaths of the nation, beating back the country’s military in a violent insurgency that threatens to destabilize the region.

    Families of several of the kidnapped men say they received phone calls in recent days before the kidnapping. Devender Singh, a 33-year-old laborer who hails from India’s northern state of Punjab, phoned his wife this past Sunday and told her “the situation there was scary,” a cousin of his said in an interview late Wednesday. The family’s two children, five and seven years old, “haven’t been informed that their father is in trouble,” according to the cousin, Arvinder Singh.

    Details remain sketchy and it is too early to draw conclusions about the hostage-taking, said Leela Ponappa, a former deputy national security adviser under the Congress party-led government from 2007 to 2009. So far, she said, there are few suggestions that “Indian nationals are being targeted per se” by kidnappers. She considered it more likely that the workers were “just caught in a serious conflict zone.”

    The kidnappings present a challenge to India’s new administration, led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who took office just weeks ago and who has promised to be tough on security and is seen by his supporters as a problem-solver capable of making quick decisions. One of the most dramatic hostage-takings took place about 15 years ago—during the last time Mr. Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party was in power—when Indian Airlines flight 814 from Nepal to India was hijacked and diverted to Afghanistan, leading to a dayslong standoff. To resolve that crisis, India agreed to release three militants in its custody.

    On Wednesday, the foreign ministry said India is working with the construction company that employed the workers as well as international humanitarian agencies to obtain more information. Mr. Akbaruddin said the Indian government hasn’t received requests for ransom.

    Many of the kidnapped Indian workers come from Punjab, the foreign ministry said. In the Punjab town of Jalandhar, a relative of another of the kidnapped workers described speaking to his uncle on this past weekend by phone.

    “The area was captured by terrorists,” he said his uncle, Roop Lal, told him. “We are OK,’ were the words when I last spoke to him,” said the relative, who gave his name as Jaspal.

    He said his uncle has been working as an iron-rod fixer in Iraq for two years. After the area was captured by militants, his employer had shut down operations and the workers had been moved “to an old thread-weaving factory,” Mr. Jaspal said his uncle told him.

    India’s Ministry of External Affairs has opened a call center for relatives of Indian citizens currently in Iraq. By Wednesday evening, it had received more than 200 calls, a ministry official said.

    Gurpinder Kaur of Majitha in Punjab said her brother, Manjinder Singh, is also among the kidnap victims in Iraq. She said she spoke to him Tuesday afternoon and he said there were five others with him in Mosul. “There was sound of gunfire at the time,” Ms. Kaur said. She quoted him as saying, “So far, we have been safe.”

    India’s foreign ministry estimates that there are about 10,000 Indian nationals living and working across Iraq. A majority, Mr. Akbaruddin said, are in areas not directly affected by the violence. Nearly 100 are in places “where the security situation is tenuous,” he said, including 46 Indians stranded in another militant-controlled city, Tikrit, with whom the government is in contact.

    Analysts said dispatching Mr. Reddy, the former Indian ambassador to Iraq, was a promising move since he would be in a position to call on his relationships with officials within the Iraqi government, whose assistance might be crucial as India tries to garner more information and resolve the crisis.

  • Iran will do everything to protect Iraq shrines: President

    TEHRAN: President Hassan Rouhani said on Wednesday that Iran would do whatever it takes to protect revered Shiite Muslim holy sites in Iraq against Sunni militants fighting the Baghdad government. 

    “Dear Karbala, Dear Najaf, Dear Kadhimiyah and Dear Samarra, we warn the great powers and their lackeys and the terrorists, the great Iranian people will do everything to protect them,” he said, naming the sites of the shrines in an emotive speech in Khoram-abad, near the Iraq border. 

    Rouhani on Saturday pledged to help the Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki’s government if it asked for assistance, though at that time no such request had been forthcoming. 

    In his speech on Tuesday, Rouhani mentioned petitions signed by Iranians who said they were willing to fight in Iraq “to destroy the terrorists and protect the holy sites”, which are visited by hundreds of thousands of Iranian pilgrims annually. 

    “Thank God there are enough volunteers Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds in Iraq to fight the terrorists,” he added. 

    The Iranian pledges follow a call by top Shiite cleric Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani for Iraqis to volunteer to resist the onslaught spearheaded by the jihadist Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), who hold the major cities of Mosul and Tikrit and are fighting north of the capital. 

    Iran is 90 per cent Shiite. Maliki, a Shiite, spent years in exile in Iran when Sunni Arab dictator Saddam Hussein was in power in Baghdad. 

    ISIL considers Shiites to be apostates. The major Shiite shrines in Iraq are in Najaf and Karbala, south of the capital, in the district of Kadhimiyah in Baghdad and in Samarra to the north, which the militants have made repeated, but so far unsuccessful, efforts to enter. 

    At least 5,000 Iranians have pledged online to defend Iraq’s Shiite shrines against the Sunni extremists, a conservative news website in Iran reported on Tuesday.