Human Rights violations in Indian Occupied Kashmir

Baramulla Kashmir | PEOPLE CARRY THE BODY OF NINE-YEAR-OLD TARIQ AHMAD

By Dr Raja Muhammad Khan

According to a recent report on Human Rights violations in Indian Occupied Kashmir by Indian Army and its paramilitary forces, there have been deaths of 93,274 innocent Kashmiri from 1989 to June 30, 2010. Besides this alarming figure of open killings by its security forces, there have been 6,969 custodial killings, 117,345 arrests, destruction, and razing of 105,861 houses and other physical structures in the use of the community as a whole. The brutal security forces have orphaned over 107, 351 children, widowed 22,728 women and gang raped 9,920 women. In June 2010 only, there have been 33 deaths including four children besides, torturing and injuring 572 people. The brutal Indian security forces molested eight women during this one month. This brief account indeed, is the reality of Indian achievements on which they are trumpeting for their success in the Kashmir through counter insurgency operations.

It seems that non-condemnation of these Indian acts of massive human rights violations, by the so-called civilized international community has further encouraged India to step-up its brutalities on the armless Kashmiri masses. Indian authorities are not willing to talk with Kashmiri people on political grounds. India perhaps reached to a conclusion that only bullet is the right way of dealing with Kashmiris, demanding their right of self-determination. Surprisingly, Indian successive governments are trying to ignore the dynamics of the Kashmiris movement for the freedom from the Indian rule. This indeed is the continuation of their resistance against the Dogra Rule, started in early part of the 20th century. On July 13, 1931, the Dogra authorities ordered firing on a group of peaceful Kashmiri Protestants in Jammu, resultant killing of dozens of innocent Kashmiris. Thereafter, there has been no letup in the oppression of the Dogra rule until its end in October 1947. The end of the Dogrea rule was marked by the beginning of the Hindu rule, another repressive rule on the Kashmiris, which is continuing. People of Kashmir feels that, “The martyrs who sacrificed their precious lives for Kashmir cause teach us all not to bow before the forces even if one has to sacrifice his life.”

India misperceived that the temporary halt in the armed struggle of Kashmiris after 2002, is because of its counter-insurgency operation. Indeed, from 2003 onwards, there appeared a change in the Indian attitude, and it was thought that, as Pakistan, India is also sincere in the resolution of Kashmir dispute. In January 2004, during the historic 12th SAARC Summit, both countries pledged that, Kashmir issue would be resolved through an option acceptable to all three parties; the Kashmiri, Pakistan and India. That time, many options were debated to reach on a consensus solution. Unfortunately, India’s stubborn attitude and its misperception that Kashmiris are no more presenting a resistance, as if they have reconciled with the Indian rule has led her not to make further progress on the issue. In the meanwhile, through various compensatory measures, India tried to redress the Kashmiri grievances. However, there has been no policy change in the repressive activities of Indian security forces. Indian security forces continued human rights violations in Kashmir unabated.

Recent Clash in Old Srinagar With Indian Occupied Forces

Seeing no progress for the resolution of Kashmir issue, in 2008, Kashmiri once again renewed their peaceful protests. This time forceful grabbing of their land by the Indian authorities became the raison d’être for the protests. Through a deliberate attempt, Indian Government allotted 800 kanal of Kashmiri land to a Hindu shrine. The tactics was that, through a gradual process, a demographic change would be effected in the Vale of Kashmir, the way it was done in the Jammu, following the Indian rule there, from October 1947 onwards. It is worth mentioning that Muslim population constituted 62 percent of the Jammu province according to the last census held in the united Kashmir in 1941. Now it is in thirties. The Valley has over 95 % Muslim population; therefore, India is all out to reduce this by inhabiting Hindu population, through land allotments. To curb their uprisings, this time Indian state machinery decided to economically strangulate the Valley people. Making use of the security forces and Hindu extremists of Jammu, India blocked all the entrants and exist routes of the Kashmir Valley. The economic blockade was so ruthless that there took place severe shortage of the foodstuff in the Valley. The protestants were fired upon, resultant killing of hundreds of the innocent masses including the prominent leaders like Sheikh Abdul Aziz on 11 August 2008, once he was leading a peaceful march towards Muzaffarabad, demanding an end to economic blockade by Indian Army.

Kashmir boils again

Kashmiris being beaten in Srinagar -Indian Occupied Kashmir

By Mohammad Jamil

The Indian Held Kashmir boils again. Last week, police killed three youth in IHK, and there were protests in the valley over the atrocities committed on Kashmiri youth. Curfew has been clamped in Srinagar to prevent people from holding protest demonstrations against the recent killing of protesters by Indian troops. Reports from Sopore, Baramulla, Kupwara, Handwara, Islamabad, Koimoh, Pulwama and Kakpora towns said that curfew was being strictly enforced and people are suffering because they are unable to buy food and items of daily use due to the curfew. According Kashmir Media Service 33 people have been killed by Indian paramilitary forces’ during the month of June 2010 including four children.

The APHC Chairman, Mirwaiz Umar Farooq in a statement in Srinagar said that no power on earth could stop the Kashmir people from continuing their liberation struggle. He urged the international community to send teams to the occupied territory for taking stock of the situation. Unfortunately, international community turns a blind eye to Indian brutalities highlighted by the Human Rights Watch and other human rights organizations. The ‘champions’ of human rights US and the West give overriding consideration to their commercial interests with plus-one billion market rather than human rights. For the last six decades, Kashmiris are facing death and destruction, and even today young Kashmiris are being killed in fake encounters; women are being raped. And repression and state terrorism have turned Kashmir into a hell that would stretch Dante’s imagination. After facing unprecedented repression for four decades from 1948 to 1988, valiant Kashmiris started armed struggle in 1989 and since then at least 90000 Kashmiris have laid down their lives. However, they are determined to take their struggle to the logical conclusion. There are some parallelism between Kashmir, Palestine and Bosnia so far as genocide of the Muslims is concerned, but the Kashmir dispute is different in a way that it was India that took the Kashmir issue to the UN under Chapter VI of the UN Charter, which deals with Pacific Settlement of Disputes. The Security Council then passed the resolution on January 5, 1949 stating: “The question of the accession of the State of Jammu and Kashmir to India or Pakistan would be decided through the democratic method of a free and impartial plebiscite”. But it was due to apathy of international community that it did not persuade India to implement the UNSC resolution. Nevertheless, the issue is alive in the UN records, and unless it is resolved there cannot be a durable peace in the region.

However, European countries sometimes do raise the issue of human rights violations in Indian Held Kashmir. In 2008, the European Parliament had debated on mass graves in Indian Held Kashmir during the plenary session of European Parliament in Strasbourg, France. And passed the resolution which reads: “Hundreds of unidentified graves have been discovered since 2006 in Jammu and Kashmir and human rights violations committed by the armed forces of India continue in an atmosphere of impunity”. It called upon the Indian government “to urgently ensure independent and impartial investigations into all suspected sites of mass graves in Jammu and Kashmir and as an immediate first step to secure the grave sites in order to preserve the evidence.” Hundreds of unnamed graves were already discovered by a human rights group in Kashmir recently. Most of those buried in the graves are believed to be victims of fake encounters by the Indian armed forces. In another development, the Norwegian government termed the new discoveries of unidentified graves in Indian-controlled Kashmir as alarming despite the fact that India was signatory to UN’s Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance.

Pakistan condemns HR violations in Indian Occupied Kashmir

Islamabad—Pakistan has strongly condemned human rights violations by Indian forces in Occupied Kashmir.

Commenting on recent events of torture of innocent Kashmiris in Sopore and other areas in Occupied Kashmir. Foreign Office Spokesman Abdul Basit on Monday said, “We are concerned over the human rights situation in Jammu and Kashmir.”

He said,”Pakistan has consistently underlined the importance of respecting the rights of Kashmiris and will continue extending its full moral and diplomatic support to their legitimate cause and struggle.”

The spokesman said the international community should also take notice of this human rights violations by Indian forces in Occupied Kashmir.

Pakistan is seeking resumption of composite dialogue with India to resolve all outstanding issues including the core issue of Kashmir. The solution of Kashmir issue will ensure a durable peace in the region.

History of massacres, illegal occupation, destruction of Hyderabad by India

Moin Ansari:
A revealing account surfaces of happenings in Hyderabad state in the wake of the Indian Army’s ‘Police Action’ there in 1948.

“AT times one has to close his (sic) eyes in national interest.” The “senior police officer” who made this confession to The Indian Express, in Srinagar on February 17, provided a truthful explanation for the compromises which sections of the medi a and academia tend to make in the “national interest”.

The officer was speaking of the volte-face his chief, A.K. Suri, had performed with regard to the disclosure of the arrest by the police of a man from Military Intelligence, in plain clothes, for firing wantonly on a group of youngsters in Maisuma , in Srinagar. But, let alone matters of immediate occurrence or issues of current interest such as Kashmir and the border dispute with China, even on historical events one finds a practice of economising with truth.

That K.M. Munshi, India’s Agent-General in the erstwhile state of Hyderabad, did not mention in his memoirs The End of an Era (1957) the massacre of Muslims in many areas in the wake of the Indian Army’s “Police Action” in September 1948 – itself a compromise with the truth – was but to be expected in view of his outlook. Not so its omission in standard works by writers who aspired to scholarly values and who were not communal; only “patriotic” in a perverted but familiar manner. A rare exception was the book by Communist Party of India (Marxist) leader P. Sundarayya, Telengana People’s Struggle and its Lessons (1972). He wrote of the “untold miseries” that were inflicted on “the ordinary Muslim people” (pages 88-89).

Suppression of records is not only unethical but futile. More often than not, the foreign scholar will unearth it from archives in London or Washington, or in India itself. A German scholar has done just that. Margrit Pernau records in her book The Pa ssing of Patrimonalism that “while the occupation by the Indian army had been quick and had caused only relatively few casualties, the following communal carnage was all the more terrible. The Razakars had sown wind and reaped not only storm but a hu rricane which in a few days cost the lives of one-tenth to one-fifth of the male Muslim population primarily in the countryside and provincial towers”. (page 336, emphasis added, throughout. See review on page 75).

Professor Wilfred Cantwell Smith, a scholar on Islam and a critic of Jinnah’s politics, wrote a seminal article in the periodical The Middle East Journal in 1950 (Volume 4) titled Hyderabad: A Muslim Tragedy. He was Lecturer in Islamic Hist ory at the University of the Punjab and at the Forman Christian College, Lahore (1940-1946) and visited Hyderabad in 1949. In a critique of the Nizam’s policies and of Qasim Razvi, the leader of the Razakars, he also fairly described the aftermath.

“Off the battlefield, however, the Muslim community fell before a massive and brutal blow, the devastation of which left those who did survive reeling in bewildered fear. Thousands upon thousands were slaughtered; many hundreds of thousands uprooted . The instrument of their disaster was, of course, vengeance. Particularly in the Marathwara section of the state, and to a less but still terrible extent in most other areas, the story of the days after ‘police action’ is grim.

“The only careful report on what happened in this period was made a few months later by investigators – including a Congress Muslim and a sympathetic and admired Hindu – commissioned by the Indian Government to study the situation. The report was submitted but has not been published; presumably it makes unpleasant reading. It is widely held that the figure mentioned therein for the number of Muslims massacred is 50,000. Other estimates by responsible observers run as high as 200,000, and by some of the Muslims themselves still higher. The lowest estimates, even those offered privately by apologists of the military government, came to at least ten times the number of murders with which previously the Razakars were officially accused… In some areas, all the men were stood in a line, and done to death. Of the total Muslim community in Hyderabad, it would seem that somewhere between one in ten and one in five of the adult males may have lost their lives in those few days. In additio n to killing, there was widespread rape, arson, looting, and expropriation. A very large percentage of the entire Muslim population of the Districts fled in destitution to the capital or other cities; and later efforts to repatriate them met with scant s uccess.” He was referring to a report by Pandit Sundarlal (1886-1980) and Kazi Muhammad Abdul Ghaffar(1889-1956).

In 1988, Omar Khalidi, a devoted chronicler of Hyderabad, published what he claimed were extracts from their Report in his compilation of essays, Hyderabad: After the Fall (Hyderabad Historical Society; Wichita, Kansas; U.S.). His introduction to the extracts, though informative, is marred by inaccuracies and intemperate language. He had relied, somewhat uncritically, on an interview with Yunus Salim who claimed inaccurately, that he was a member of the team led by Sundarlal which toured Hyderaba d in November-December 1948. A 32-year-old State attorney then, he was dismissed from the post for having helped the team.

Yunus Salim was a Deputy Minister for Railways in Indira Gandhi’s government (1969) and a Governor of Bihar in 1991. Garbled versions of the Report appeared in Pakistan. Khalidi writes: “In addition to the copy in the Union Home Ministry, Srinivas Lahoti , a Communist Party of India leader in Hyderabad, owned a copy. In an interview in February 1988 he claims to have deposited it with the National Archives of India, New Delhi upon his party’s instruction. The present writer obtained fragments of t he Report (which is partly in English and partly in Urdu) from owners who wish to remain anonymous. The portion in English is being reproduced without any alteration. The Urdu portion is translated into English.”

Khalidi was misled. The entire document is in English and the “fragments” he reproduces should have put him on notice that it is not safe to rely on them. The brief Introductory portion is intrinsically unreliable. The rest is a village-wise and d istrict-wise account.

Union Home Minister Vallabhbhai Patel reacted angrily to the Report in a letter to Abdul Ghaffar dated January 4, 1949:

“I notice that in your report you mentioned that you were asked by the Government of India to proceed to Hyderabad State on a goodwill mission. At least I am not aware of any such mission having been entrusted to you by the Government of India. As far as I know, you wanted to go there and it was arranged that you should go there at Government expense. There could have been no question of Government of India sending any goodwill mission to Hyderabad State.

“I notice that your report is and your activities were, restricted to making inquiries about what happened during and after the police action. There is nothing in it about the extent and consequences of Razakar atrocities. Probably that was out of the terms of reference which you had set for yourselves. At the same time, you have covered in your reports matters which could by no stretch of imagination, have formed the purview of your enquiry. I should also like to say at once that the detailed in quiries which have been made by the local administration over a fairly long period as opposed to the roving enquiries which you have made during such a short period show that your estimate and your appreciation of the position lack balance and proportion . Finally you have rushed into a sphere which might have been more appropriately left to be covered by experienced statesmanship and administrative ability.”

The assertions were simply untrue and the aspersions were unworthy of Sardar Patel. In those days nobody could have toured the State without official approval. That the team went there admittedly “at government expense” revealed a lot. And, as we know “e xperienced statesmanship and administrative ability” do not guarantee impartiality in inquiries. The report censured the Razakars and was balanced.

Kazi Abdul Ghaffar was a bitter critic of Razvi’s Majlis-e Ittihadul-Muslimin and was trusted by the State Congress. He was editor of Firangi Mahal’s Khilafatist paper Akhuwat (1919-20) and of Payam (1934-46) and was respected as a scholar- journalist. He visited Hyderabad in October along with Padmaja Naidu and alerted Maulana Abul Kalam Azad to the happenings there. Pandit Sundarlal was vice-president of the United Provinces Congress (1931-36) and as president of the All-India Peace Counc il (1959-63), urged rapprochement with China against the majority view of the times.

His magnum opus, The Gita and The Quran, is a neglected work. An English translation was published in 1957 by the Institute of Indo-Middle East Cultural Studies, Hyderabad. Neglected also is Volume 8 (second series) of Selected Works of Jawahar lal Nehru (1990) (pages 102-113).

In a Note to Sardar Patel’s Ministry of States, dated November 14, 1948, Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, while denying Pakistan’s propaganda, wrote: “I have recently had talks with Kazi Abdul Ghaffar and Miss Padmaja Naidu, who have just returned from H yderabad. They are both reliable observers… The impression I have gathered from these talks is that while our army is generally believed to have functioned well and to have protected the people, there is little doubt that a very large number of outbreaks took place in the small towns and villages resulting in the massacre of possibly some thousands of Muslims by Hindus, as well as a great deal of looting, etc… This information is contrary to what I had believed and I should like it to be verified through our military and civil authorities in Hyderabad. We must know the truth, or else we shall be caught saying things which are proved to be false later.” It is unlikely that those reports did not reach the ears of the Minister concerned, Vallabhbhai Patel.

Even men like Dr. Zakir Hussain’s brother, the academic Dr. Yusuf Husain Khan, and Dr. M. A. Ansari’s nephew, M.A. Ansari, a High Court Judge, were “removed from their post”, Nehru complained. He added: “One of the persistent charges made is that we inte nd to kill what is called Muslim culture. Hyderabad is known all over the Middle East as a city of Muslim culture. The Osmania University is well known and even better known is the publication department and the translation bureau of the State.”

With a letter to V.P. Menon, the secretary of the Ministry, dated November 26, 1946, Nehru enclosed a note on the situation in Hyderabad and remarked: “If possible, some good non-officials should go there to help the administration and to try to produce a better frame of mind both among the Muslims and the Hindus.”

The editor to the volume recorded: “A four-man goodwill mission, consisting of Kazi Abdul Ghaffar, Pandit Sundarlal, Moulana Abdulla Misri and Furrukh Sayer Shakeri, was sent to Hyderabad at the personal instance of Nehru to study existing conditions and to help in the establishments of communal harmony. After a brief visit to Bidar and Osmanabad districts by Major-General Chaudhury, Pandit Sundarlal, Akbar Ali Khan and Fareed Mirza, two teams, one consisting of Pandit Sundarlal, Kazi Abdul Ghaffar, Mul la Abdul Basith and Mohammed Yunus Saleem had toured Bidar, Osmanabad and Nanded while the other consisting of Moulana Abdulla Misri, Furrukh Sayer and Fareed Mirza visited Aurangabad, Bhir and Gulbarga. They took stock of the information collected and s ent a report to Vallabhbhai Patel.”

All of which shows Sardar Patel’s repudiation of the officially sponsored team to be less than honest. Nehru’s note cited “additional reports from Hyderabad” about the killing and looting. It said: “If there is even a fraction of truth in these reports, then the situation in Hyderabad was much worse than we had been led to believe. It is important that the exact facts should be placed before us. We want no optimistic account and no suppression of unsavoury episodes. That would lead us to form incorrect judgments… A sense of fear seems to pervade the Muslims of Hyderabad. That is perhaps natural after all that has happened. But unless we can lessen this fear, the situation will become worse.”

Dr. Charan Sandhilya, Director of Pandit Sundarlal Institute of Asian Studies at Ghaziabad obtained for this writer a copy of the full text of the Sundarlal Report from the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library, New Delhi (excerpts on facing page). It record s official sponsorship and reflects their objectivity in denouncing the Razakars’ murderous attacks on Hindus, in praising officials where praise was due, yet never flinching from telling the terrible truth about the massacre of Muslims. This is a truth which hardly any Indian scholar has deigned to admit this day.

The Sundarlal Report is of more than historical importance; it is of current relevance, for the massacres, coupled with the national indifference to them, have left scars in the minds of Muslims in the State, Hyderabad city in particular. And some Muslim communal parties have not been slow to exploit these scars.
HYDERABAD:Of a massacre untold A. G. NOORANI

Hyderabad State had its own army, as well as its own airline, telecommunication system, railway network, postal system, currency and radio broadcasting service, with a GDP larger than that of Belgium.

India’s Hypocritical ‘Democracy’

Sylvia Villalobos (Philippines) | PKKH:

The “largest democracy in the world” does not have clean human rights records. Every year, thousands of people are imprisoned for political reasons, often without charges of trials. Torture and ill-treatment are common, and hundreds have died in custody. Hundreds more are victims of extra-judicial executions or forced “disappearances”. Armed groups commit grave human rights violations, including killings, tortures and rapes, with impunity.

Each day the survivors are denied their rights to knowledge, justice and reparation, their anguish are compounded, their nightmare prolonged, and their alienation deepened. Until India ends impunity for these genocidal killings,”, “it will continue to be a nation ruled by men, and not the law.”

Innumerable attacks on Indian Buddhists — shame on democracy There are 231 rapes and 51 murdered last year. The families are helpless, only hope is help from world community !

INDIA’S HUMAN RIGHTS VIOLATIONS

EXTRA JUDICIAL KILLINGS

“Thousands of mothers await their sons even though some may know that that the oppressor has not spared their sons’ lives on this earth. A mother’s heart is such that even if she sees her son’s dead body, she does not accept that her son has left her. And those mothers who have not even seen their children’s dead bodies, they were asking us: at least find out, is our son alive or not?”

In the typical scenario, police take into custody a suspected militant or militant supporter without filing an arrest report. If the detainee dies during interrogation or is executed, officials deny he was ever in custody and claim he died during an armed encounter with police or security forces. Alternatively, police may claim to have been ambushed by militants while escorting a suspect. Although the detainee invariably dies in “crossfire,” police casualties in these “incidents” are rare. The said practice is also known as “fake encounter killings“

In the majority of cases, the police abducted the victims of extrajudicial executions or “disappearances” in the presence of witnesses, often family members. Family members of the victims further experienced multiple forms of abuse. A recent study conducted by Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) and the Bellevue/NYU Medical Center Program for Survivors of Torture revealed that family members of the “disappeared” were also tortured in over half of the cases they investigated.

MASS CREMATION

-Jaswant Singh Khalra, human rights activist, killed October 1995 see reporthttp://www.panthkhalsa.org/panth/khalra.php

http://www.ensaaf.org/programs/legal/khalra/

In early 1995, human rights activists Jaswant Singh Khalra and Jaspal Singh Dhillon, of the Akali Dal political party, used government crematoria records to expose over 6,000 secret cremations by the police in just one of then 13 districts in Punjab. They focused their investigations on illegal cremations, putting aside other possible ends of the victims’ bodies, such as dismemberment or dumping in canals. Jaswant Singh Khalra described how the hesitation of family members to report “disappearances” led him and Dhillon to the cremation grounds: “countless mothers, countless sisters weren’t ready to say that their loved one has “disappeared”]. They said, “[I]f you take this issue further, and our son is still alive, they [the police] will kill him.” Thus, Khalra and Dhillon went to the cremation grounds:

“We went and asked the employees: ‘During this time, how many dead bodies did the police give you?’ Some said we burned eight to 10 everyday. Some said there was no way to keep account; sometimes a truck full of bodies came, and sometimes two to four dead bodies came [T]hey told us we could get the account from one place: ‘The police gave us the dead bodies, and the municipal committee gave us the firewood.’”

As Khalra began collecting information from the municipal records which gave the number of dead bodies brought by specific police officers and the amount of firewood purchased to burn the bodies, he also began to receive threats from the security forces. Eventually, the Punjab police abducted Jaswant Singh Khalra on September 6, 1995, secretly detained and tortured him for almost two months, and murdered him in late October 1995. His body was dumped in a canal.

Photo essays

http://www.hrw.org/legacy/photos/2007/india1007/index.htm

Punjab Mass cremation http://www.hrw.org/en/reports/2007/10/17/protecting-killers

Custodial Violence and Rape Cases

While rape may take the form of individual violence of men against women, often, as disturbingly, rape occurs as an instrument of repression, and is used as a political weapon. It then becomes a potent instrument for the intimidation of whole sections of people in which women are specifically the victims of a peculiarly brutal and dehumanizing form of violence. Violence by individual men on individual women is itself a serious violation of women’s rights but in the context of civil liberties it is important to highlight the growing incidence of custodial rape by agencies of the State such as forest officials, army personnel, and especially by policemen.

Custody deaths, torture in custody and custodial rape have been subjects of much concern. of state violence, and the defence of the state has been that they were hardened militants.

Custodial rape has found an expanded definition – in terms of power rape – in the Penal Code, 1860. However, these provisions have hardly been invoked. In the meantime, most often, judicial perceptions of the victim of custodial rape have in significant measure, discredited the victim’s version, and blamed the victim resulting in reduction of sentence for policemen convicted of rape to less than the minimum prescribed in law.

Crackdown against youth in Indian Occupied Kashmir, dozens arrested

ISLAMABAD : Indian police and paramilitary personnel have arrested dozens of youth from occupied Srinagar, Pattan, Sopore and other areas during the house raids in the past several days in Indian occupied Kashmir (IoK).

According to Kashmir Media Service, the residents of Nowhatta, Hawal and Gojwara in Srinagar staged protest demonstrations against the arrests. They demanded removal of the bunkers of the paramilitary CRPF troopers from the areas.

Residents of Srinagar, Palhalan, Sopore and other areas said that police and paramilitary CRPF troopers during peaceful demonstrations barge into residential houses, beat up inmates and smash their windowpanes without any rhyme and reasons.

“The troopers and police want to crush the voice of the people by atrocities and harassments, which made the life of people unsafe and insecure,” they said.

The residents demanding removal of the bunkers said, “This is not the case in isolation. Every time there are protests in the areas, CRPF personnel from the nearby camps and bunkers damage houses and beat up locals.” APP

Report: Israeli Hasbara (propaganda) is failing

Rehmat’s World

The Tel Aviv-based security and socioeconomic think tank Reut Institute’s report Eroding Israel\’s Legitimacy in the International Arena, submitted to the Zionist government on Thursday, has warned that Israel is “facing a draumatic assault on the very legitimacy of its existence as a Jewish and democratic state (another Zionist myth). The groups promoting this delegitimacy aim to isolate Israel and ultimately turn it into a pariah state“.

The report cites the increasing anti-Israel demonstrations on campuses, protests when Israeli atheletes compete abroad, moves in Europe to boycott of Israeli products and threats of arrest warrants for Israeli leaders visiting London (UK).

The report has highlighted the major hubs independent bloggers in London (UK), Toronto (Canada), Brussels, Madrid (Spain), San Francisco (US) and Univesity of California (US) – using internet to challenge Israeli point of views and project the Zionist entity as worse than the Nazi regime. The report also admit that the anti-Israel groups and individuals with the exception of a small minority – are not Muslims or Arabs or Palestinians but mostly liberal Christians and Jews. The later believe that the actions of Israel in occupied Palestine and Lebanon are fuelling anti-Semitism in the West.

According to the report these “delegitimizers” co-operate with organizations engaging in legitimate criticism of Israel’s policy in the occupied territories such as, Amnesty International and Human Right Watch, “blurring the line between legitimate censure and delegitimization. They also promote pro-Palestinian activities in Europe as ‘trendy’.”

Israel’s ambassador in London (UK), Ron Prosor, adds his ‘Islamophobe sause” into Hasbara curry by saying: “The combination of a large Muslim community, a radical left, influential English-language media and an international university center makes London fertile ground for Israel’s delegitimization”. In simple language, the con-man wants the world to believe that BBC, the Bank of England, Oxford and the British government – are all owned by Muslims and not by the Jews or the pro-Israel Zionists. On would wonder, why France which has Europe’s largest Muslim population (between 6-8 million), has a former Mossad agent, Sarkozy, as country’s President while both its foreign minister and defense ministers are Zionist Jews?

VIDEO: The Real Story Behind Israel’s Invasion of Gaza: Deliberate Attacks against the Civilian Population

Factual Findings narrated by Ross Vachon
Factual and Legal findings narrated by Noam Chomsky

Live Testimonies relevant to the Goldstone Report’s Findings

Highlighting Kashmir

A conference at London, organised jointly by the Nawa-i-Waqt group and the all-parties group of the House of Lords on Wednesday, on the eve of the Kashmir Solidarity Day, stressed the urgent need to settle the festering dispute of Kashmir in line with the people’s wishes, as outlined in UN resolutions.

Participants – British parliamentarians, including Lord Nazir, political and diplomatic figures from Pakistan, Kashmiris and others – passed a unanimous resolution that spelled out both the issue and its only solution that could put an end to the Kashmiris’ suffering and ensure peace in the region. New Delhi has to concede that the real issue is its persistent denial of the right of self-determination to the people of the state, which Prime Minister Nehru had committed to grant. Palliatives like the Amn ki Aasha movement launched by some peaceniks cannot hoodwink those who daily suffer death and humiliation at the hands of the Indian armed forces. Lord Nazir, who played a key role in organising the “Kashmir – Peace and Justice” conference, spoke on the occasion and pointed to the futility of an exercise like Amn ki Aasha without its focus on Kashmir. PML-N’s Ahsan Iqbal rightly felt that solving the dispute was a UN obligation because it threatened global peace. High Commissioner Wajid Shamsul Hassan stressed that no government could compromise on the issue and the present one was committed to solving it in accordance with Kashmiris’ aspirations. British MPs, John Hemmings, Rob Fielo, Gerald Coffman and Dr Brian, all dilated on the urgency to tackle the problem, pointing to the dangers inherent in sleeping over it.

Kashmir, Palestine, Iraq and Afghanistan

S.m. Hali

February 5th is being observed as Kashmir Solidarity Day, which is a yearly practice since 1990 as a day of protest against the unjust occupation of Kashmir. The day is marked with renewed firm resolve to continue the struggle for the achievement of the birthright of Kashmiris to self-determination through getting the valley liberated from the Indian yoke of tyranny. Kashmiris observe the solidarity day every year not only to renew their deep-rooted love and affection with Pakistan, but also to reiterate their commitment and dedication to their liberty from the Indian occupation. Kashmiris have been struggling since 1947 to secure their freedom, which was assured by the UN Resolutions; however, subsequent Indian governments have not only remained oblivious to the UN Resolutions, but also continued to subject the Kashmiris to their reign of terror. Pakistan’s endeavours to resolve the issue through dialogue have also been spurned by India.

The Palestinians too continue to suffer atrocities inflicted upon them by Israel, which was created unjustly after evicting the Palestinians from their territory in 1948. Since then the Palestinians have struggled to regain their homeland but have failed despite extreme sacrifice and war against Israel by its Arab neighbours to liberate Palestine.

Two other Muslim countries, Afghanistan and Iraq, which were occupied by the US/NATO forces during the 21st century, are close to being liberated from the tyranny of their invaders. Afghanistan was conquered by USA and its allies, following the 9/11 debacle. The US declared Osama bin Laden and his Al-Qaeda group responsible for the attacks on the Twin Towers and Pentagon and demanded the then Taliban regime in Afghanistan to hand over purported culprits for trial. Mullah Omar, the Taliban leader demanded proof of Osama’s complicity to the 9/11 attack. The Taliban query was interpreted as refusal and Afghanistan was subjected to one of the most ferocious attacks in history and occupied by US and its allies.

Iraq was attacked in 2003 by a US-led coalition force under the plea that Saddam Hussain’s regime possessed Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD), which would pose a threat to the rest of the world. That is another aspect that the WMDs were never found during the seven years of occupation.

A number of conspiracy theories were floated to the rationale behind occupying Afghanistan and Iraq. In the case of Iraq, control of its oil reserves is the apparent reason for subjugating Iraq and installing a pliable and malleable regime there. The case of Afghanistan is slightly different. Michael Klare, author of the book Resource Wars, which has a major focus on the Caspian region, and Ahmad Rashid, Pakistani journalist and author of Taliban: Militant Islam, Oil and Fundamentalism in Central Asia, opine that in the 10 years, since the collapse of the Soviet Union, there has been a new great game between Russia, the United States, China, Iran, the European companies, for control of the new oil and gas resources that have been discovered in the Caspian Sea and in the Caucuses and Central Asia. They deduce that “because Central Asia is totally landlocked, distances are huge, and the US strategy has been essentially to keep, new oil pipelines not to be built through Russia or through Iran or China.”

They quote US government Energy Information fact sheet on Afghanistan dated December 2000, which reveals: “Afghanistan’s significance from an energy standpoint stems from its geographic position as a potential transit route for oil and natural gas exports from Central Asia to the Arabian Sea. This potential includes proposed multi-billion dollar oil and gas export pipelines through Afghanistan” which is the shortest route to the Pakistani coastline on the Indian Ocean. To achieve this Afghanistan had to be conquered and a pliant regime installed there.

After tremendous bloodshed and financial losses, the US administration is now considering ways and means of exiting both Iraq and Afghanistan. President Obama, in his maiden State of the Union Address on January 27, presented strategies for reviving the sick economy of USA. What he failed to mention, but has been disclosed by the Information Clearing House Newsletter of January 31, 2010 that a number of Iraqis slaughtered since the US invaded Iraq so far is “1,366,350”, while the number of US military personnel sacrificed (officially acknowledged) In America’s War on Iraq is: 4,692. On the other hand, the number of International Occupation Force Troops sacrificed in Afghanistan is 1,611, while the civilian casualties in Afghanistan since 9/11 range between 11,760 and 31,357. To top it all, the cost of war in Iraq and Afghanistan is a whopping $955,465,013,902. No wonder plans for the egress of the US and other international forces from Afghanistan and Iraq are underway.

General Viktor Yermakov, the Commander of Soviet forces in Afghanistan in the 1980s, while talking to CNN after the proposed troop surge in Afghanistan, commented that the “US is repeating the Soviet blunder of adding more troops in Afghanistan.” He stated that at the height of the Soviet-Afghan War, there were 300,000 Soviet troops deployed in Afghanistan, out of which 15,000 Soviets were killed, 469,685 got wounded while 500 are still missing. What he did not say was that the invasion contributed to the demise of USSR.

It is ironical that during the London Conference, General Stanley McChrystal’s despite being a fighting general, pronouncement that “there’s been enough fighting,” and Robert Gates, the US secretary of defence, proclamation: “The Taliban…are part of the political fabric of Afghanistan,” are being used to bolster Hamid Karzai’s plea that negotiations must be opened with the Taliban. The London Conference went a step ahead and approved a multi-million integration fund to lure the Taliban fighters to join the political mainstream.

We hope and pray that peace returns to Iraq and Afghanistan, but what a pity that Kashmir and Palestine continue to bleed since they neither have oil nor are situated on the oil-gas trade route. May their predicament be over and the simmering trauma gets resolved at an early date.