Category: World

JKLF welcomed the new international protocol for investigating sexual violence in conflict zones.

London: We are in total support of the initiative taken by Ms Angelina Jolie (UN Special envoy) and supported by Her Majesty’s Government to stop rape and violence perpetrated through out the world against women.

Women of Kashmir since decades have also suffered immensely as a result of organized violence and rape perpetrated by the Indian military.

We are dismayed at the total disregard in your campaign of their suffering both as victims of rape well as mothers, wives and relatives of the thousands of innocent men who’ve been killed and hundreds of those who were arrested and have disappeared without trace.

Reports of rape by Indian security forces in Kashmir emerged soon after the government’s crackdown began in January 1990.18 Despite evidence that army and paramilitary forces were engaging in widespread rape, few of the incidents were ever investigated by the authorities. Those that were reported did not result in criminal
prosecutions of the security forces involved. Jammu Kashmir – Kashmir for short- is the most heavily militarized region of the world.

In Indian occupied part of Kashmir alone an estimated presence of 700,000 Indian military and paramilitary forces operate; often committing and perpetrating inhuman acts of violence against the most vulnerable in society.

Indian army whose actions are protected under the Special Powers Act- SPA and TADA , over past twenty six years in particular has resorted to rape as a weapon of  war. One such incident which shocked the Human rights agencies is the mass rape of  women took place on 23rd February 1991 in the village of Kunan Poshpura remains a
blot on the character of the conduct of Indian military in Kashmir. We urge you therefore to raise your voice against the rape of women in Kashmir too.

JKLF President in Britain Prof. Azmat Khan has welcomed the new international protocol with international standards for documenting and investigating sexual violence in conflict zones. In a statement issued from London, JKLF President hoped that  practical steps will be taken to reduce the dangers women face in conflict zones around the world and that Indian armed forces will no longer enjoy impunity against such heinous crimes. The UN backed initiative urges countries to strengthen domestic laws so that those responsible for these terrible crimes in conflict areas such asKashmir are brought to justice and that crimes of sexual violence are excluded from amnesty provisions.

JKLF officials visited this first ever “Global Summit to end sexual Violence in Conflict” held inLondon. The summit was being conducted by world renowned actress and UN special envoy Angelina Jolie and co-hosted by British Foreign Secretary William Hague. The summit has been attended by high profile delegates / Government representatives of over 100 countries.

JKLF delegates spoke to different media personnel at the event and highlighted the plight of Kashmiri women who have been subject to violence from last over 2 decades in the hands of Indian Government forces.

Delegation handed out specially prepared handouts on the rape and atrocities committed by Indian occupational forces. The delegation also gave briefing to several international TV / Media channels on the subject and stressed that the people of the world must speak out against sexual violence inKashmir too.

JKLF delegation also met dozens of NGO’s and briefed them. Many of the visitors were horrified and shocked and were unaware of these atrocities taking place in Kashmir.

JKLF delegation including Senior Vice President of JKLF in Britain Mahmood Hussain, Mahmood Faiz, Javaid Rashid and Tariq Sharif.

Washington: “The meeting between Narendra Modi, the Prime Minister of India and Mian Nawaz Sharif, the Prime Minister of Pakistan in New Delhi on May 27, 2014 offers hope for peace in South Asia if the course of justice is followed and both leaders undertake to abide by their international commitments.  The people of Kashmir want the people of India and Pakistan to live in peace and prosperity.  That is why they believe that Kashmir conflict has to be resolved not through military means but through peaceful tripartite negotiations between Governments of India and Pakistan & the people of Kashmir, stated Dr. Ghulam Nabi Fai, Secretary General, World Kashmir Awareness at Baltimore Convention Center.

Speaking on the topic of ‘Kashmir Dispute: Opportunities and Challenges “ to a large gathering during the 39th Annual Convention of ICNA-MAS, Fai said that this change in atmosphere will lead to the use of friendlier language in relations between the two governments.  The change reflects only partly the warm, spontaneous exchanges at the popular level which have blown away the perverse thesis, sometimes muttered even by foreign powers, that hostility between the two peoples is innate and can never be eradicated.

“It is a fact that peace, amity, and harmony between India and Pakistan will open vistas of opportunities to shift resources to domestic development.  It is also a fact that the nuclear capabilities of the South Asian nations heighten their responsibility to avoid conflict that could conclude with a gruesome mushroom cloud. The persistence of Kashmir problem has been a source of weakness for both India and Pakistan.  It has diminished both these neighboring countries. So long as Kashmir is in turmoil, India and Pakistan will be at loggerheads and economic investment and trade relations will be inconsequential.”

Fai proposed that now is an opportune moment for both India and Pakistan  to defuse the present situation and promote stability throughout the region.  Both prime Ministers should understand that any attempt to strike a deal between two without the association of the third, will fail to yield a credible settlement.  The contemporary history of South Asia is abundantly clear that bilateral efforts have never met with success. Both leaders should take an active role in finding a lasting settlement on Kashmir.  It is obvious that no settlement can last if it is not based on justice to the people of Kashmir and recognition of their inherent rights.  Only then can the crisis in South Asia and the possible disastrous consequences be averted.

The essential guiding principles of the negotiating process must be not to answer what is the correct or best solution of the Kashmir problem but how that solution can be arrived at.  In other words, it should by itself neither promote nor preclude any rational settlement of the dispute, be it accession to India or Pakistan or independence.  Rather than seek to impose a settlement on Kashmir, it should engage the peoples of each region of the former State of Jammu and Kashmir to work out a settlement themselves without any external constraint.

“We do not need to invoke principles because principles will not help us launch a peace process.  Principles can be easily twisted and the principles can lend themselves to different interpretations.  But the principles that are involved in the Kashmir dispute should remain the guiding force in any final settlement. What are these principles?  There are two: It is the inherent right of the people of all zones of the State of Jammu & Kashmir to decide their future according to their own free will and second principle is that it is impossible to ascertain that will except through a vote under impartial supervision in conditions which are free from external coercion, intimidation and compulsion.”

Fearing Indian prime Minister Narendra Modi,Mumbai attacks plotter and Jamat ud Dawa (JuD) chief Hafiz Saeed has asked his followers to wage final jihad against India to free Kashmir from Indian occupation.He called for revenge on India and vouched for the liberation of Kashmir.

Continuing his campaign against India, Saeed delivered a fiery speech at the famous Aabpara Chowk very close to ISI headquarters  and asked terrorists to get ready as the ” time has come to perform the final jihad against India to free Kashmir from Indian occupation”. ” Are you ready to help Kashmiri brothers and sisters? Would you join me for this noble cause?”.

Saeed was addressing a huge gathering in Karachi titled ‘Takbeer Convention’

To which terrorists responded  by assuring  their full support him that they were ready to fight India. “Kadam badhao Hafiz Saeed, hum tumhare sath hain (Lead the way Hafiz Saeed, we are with you.”

He was followed by former ISI director general Hamid Gul, Senator Talha Mehmood and former head of right wing political party Jamat-e-Islami.

Hafiz Saeed was against Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s India visit  and he  criticised  Nawaz  for attending Indian PM Narendra Modi’s swearing- in and said he (Sharif) betrayed the Kashmiris.” Prime Minister, you have stabbed the Kashmiris at their back by shaking hand with Narendra Modi. Kashmiris would never forgive you,” Saeed said.
Even with a $10-million American bounty on his head, he moves freely in Pakistan and addresses anti-India rallies.

“Jihad is never waged against Muslims. It is against infidels. The infighting among Muslims is not jihad from any one group,” Saeed said.

Jamaat-ud-Dawa is the parent body of banned terror group Lashkar-e-Taiba that carried out the 2008 Mumbai attacks in which 166 people were killed.

There is no formal ban on the JuD and its chief Saeed, who lives freely in Lahore despite a 10-million-dollar bounty offered for him by the US.

Melbourne: Astronomers have identified the point where the Universe moved from heating to cooling – 11 billion years ago, when the temperature was an astonishing 13,000 degrees Celsius, hotter than the surface of the Sun.

An international team, led by researchers from Swinburne University of Technology, found evidence that the Universe broke its rising ‘fever’ about 11 billion years ago.

They measured the temperature of the Universe when it was 3 to 4 billion years old by studying the gas in between galaxies – the intergalactic medium.

During these early years of the Universe’s development, many extremely active galaxies were ‘switching on’ for the first time and heating their surroundings.

“However, 11 billion years ago, this fever seems to have broken and the Universe began cooling down again,” lead researcher Elisa Boera, a PhD student from Swinburne’s Centre for Astrophysics and Supercomputing, said.

“The intergalactic medium is an excellent recorder of the Universe’s history. It retains memory of the big events that affected its properties, such as temperature and composition, during its different phases of evolution,” said Boera.

In the study, Boera collected the bluest light that Earth’s atmosphere transmits – harsh ultraviolet (UV) light from 60 quasars.

This UV light comes from slightly later in the Universe’s development, allowing the new temperature measurement.

“The quasar light suggests that the Universe had cooled by about 1000 degrees C within 1 billion years after reaching its maximum of 13,000 degrees,” Boera said.

“This cooling trend has probably continued to the present day,” said Boera.

“We think the answer is helium,” co-author of the study, Swinburne Associate Professor Michael Murphy said.

“Fourteen per cent of the intergalactic gas is helium and, 12 billion years ago, it was absorbing the intense radiation from active galaxies, losing electrons in the process,” Murphy said.

“The electrons whizz around, heating up the gas. It’s similar to the greenhouse effect on Earth: Carbon dioxide gas absorbs infrared radiation and heats our atmosphere.

“Once all the helium was ionised, the radiation would simply pass through the gas without heating it. Then, as the Universe expands the gas cools down, just like the cold gas sprayed from an aerosol can – it quickly cools as it expands out of the can,” said Murphy.

The study has been published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

Jerusalem – Foreign Minister Avigdor Liberman said on Wednesday during a speech at Ariel University that he rejects the international community’s requests to investigate the killing of two Palestinian teenagers – allegedly by the IDF – during the May 15 Nakba Day riots by Ofer Prison near Ramallah.

“We don’t need an American demand to investigate what happened. The IDF is the most moral army in the world. I am sorry that such demands don’t come for other situations. In Syria, close to 170 thousand people have been killed and I haven’t seen any active response from the international community to investigate those deaths. Hamas kills Gazans without trials. I haven’t seen any requests from the international community regarding that,” the foreign minister said.

“On Friday, I spoke with the Prime Minister-elect of India. There too there is a clear expression of the desire to deepen and develop economic ties with the State of Israel,” Netanyahu told his cabinet at its weekly meeting. Netanyahu, who is looking to strengthen economic ties with Asia which is likely to overtake the Jewish state’s close ally United States as the largest export destination, has recently put a lot of emphasis on promoting bilateral trade with India, China, Japan and other Asian countries.

Netanyahu did not lose time in reaching out to Modi – all set to be India’s next prime minister after BJP secured a landslide victory in the Lok Sabha polls – as part of his goal to benefit from untapped potential in the huge market there. Israel may have a “staunch new ally” in South Asia with India’s election of Modi to the position of Prime Minister, New York-based International Business Times reported yesterday amid speculation here that ascendance of BJP would also bring back the hype around India-Israel ties.

The two countries have been negotiating a Free Trade Agreement for the last several years. While relations between India and Israel have deepened and diversified ever since diplomatic relations were established in 1992, the five years of BJP rule in the past gave a major impetus to the ties.

Israel’s Prime Minister Ariel Sharon visited India in 2003 and prominent BJP leaders – L K Advani and Jaswant Singh – had come to Israel to discuss cooperation in wide ranging fields. Israel’s support to India during the Kargil war had helped build a relationship of trust which saw defence cooperation between the two countries registering a significant high. (PTI)

Amritsar: Pakistan is eagerly awaiting a new government in India for a “new beginning” in the bilateral dialogue process, its High Commissioner in New Delhi Abdul Basit Khan said today.

“We are eagerly awaiting new Government in India so that dialogue process could start meaningfully and compressively once again on a fast pace.
“With the new government setting up in Delhi, we hope that the two countries would engage with each other for a comprehensive and strategic boost to bilateral trade relations,” he said.
Basit was speaking to reporters after inaugurating a 5-day mega maiden ‘Pakistan Show 2014′, jointly organised by Lahore Chamber of Commerce and Industry in collaboration with the PHD Chamber of Commerce and Industry here today.
“The governments on both sides are committed to boost bilateral trade so that peaceful development can be realised on both sides of the border sooner than later,” he said.
He lauded the traders and businessmen of both nations of having strong potential. “These shows happening over a number of years are testimony to the fact that the business communities on both sides of the border are keen and eager to see peace ushering on both the countries,” Basit said.
On the issue of Jammu and Kashmir, the Pakistani High Commissioner said, “Both the nations admit the issue of Jammu and Kashmir exists and it should be resolved. Moreover, it requires a dialogue process. So, here, we should also think to resolve this issue.”
When asked about the presence of fugitive underworld don Dawood Ibrahim in Pakistan, Basit said, “Dawood is an Indian citizen and how could anyone claim that he is in Pakistan and we have no information about him”.
On being asked about the drug smuggling menace, Basit said both India and Pakistan are victims of this problem.
“Presently, drug is being smuggled from Afghanistan and its basic ingredients also cultivated there. Hence, Indian and Pakistan have many common problems that required joint efforts,” Basit said.
When asked what would be Pakistan’s stand if Narendra Modi becomes the Prime Minister, he said, “Whichever political outfit comes to power in India, Pakistan would always expect smooth trade, visa and cultural relations between the two countries”.