Quote:Moderate Hurriyat Conference chairman Mirwaiz Umar Farooq has decided to launch a state-wide signature campaign seeking the United States' (US) intervention in the Kashmir issue. “Both India and Pakistan have failed to resolve the Kashmir dispute in the last six decades. So Hurriyat constituents have decided to seek Washington’s intervention to prevail upon the two countries to resolve it,” the Mirwaiz told the Hindustan Times.



The Hurriyat Conference constituents on Sunday held executive and general body meetings where it was “unanimously decided to start a signature campaign seeking US attention and its role”.



The US president Barack Obama is scheduled to visit India in the first week of November and might stay for four days.

Quote:Jammu and Kashmir has been removed from the United Nations list of unresolved disputes, in a setback to Pakistan which has been asking the world body to intervene on the issue.



The omission of Jammu and Kashmir from the list of disputes under the observation of the Security Council was noticed by Pakistan, whose envoy has filed a protest.



“The Jammu and Kashmir dispute was not mentioned in the context of unresolved long-running situations,” Pakistan's acting envoy to the U.N. Amjad Hussain B Sial said.



“We understand this was an inadvertent omission, as Jammu and Kashmir is one of the oldest disputes on the agenda of the Security Council,” he said, speaking at the General Assembly session, which was discussing the functioning and reform of the Security Council.

Quote:Gulab Singh and the Creation of the Dogra State of Jammu, Kashmir, and Ladakh

Robert A. Huttenback



http://www.megaupload.com/?d=3GBQF8AX

Quote:We, not India, killed 'our own people': Hurriyat leader

PTI, Jan 3, 2011, 04.51pm IST

SRINAGAR: A senior Hurriyat leader has created a flutter by saying that two separatist leaders and [size="5"]his brother were killed by "our own people" and not security agencies,[/size] prompting J&K government to term it as a "late admission" and a call for a probe to fix responsibility.



"No police was involved (in the killings).... It was our own people who killed them," former Hurriyat Conference chairman Abdul Gani Bhat said.



He said time had come to speak the truth about the killers of Mirwaiz Muhammad Farooq and Abdul Gani Lone, who were shot dead in 2002, and his own brother Mohammad Sultan Bhat, who was murdered in 1995.



Asked to identify the killers, Bhat said, "What is the need to identify them.... they are already identified."



Farooq, father of the present chairman of moderate faction of Hurriyat Conference Mirwaiz Umar Farooq, was shot dead at his residence on May 21, 1990 while Lone, father of Hurriyat executive member Bilal Lone, was gunned down during a commemorative rally for the senior Mirwaiz on the same day in 2002.



The separatist leaders had earlier blamed the security forces for the killings.



Bhat said that his brother Mohammad Sultan Bhat also fell to the bullets of those espousing the separatist cause.



"I had said this then and I am saying it now. There is no ambiguity or confusion in my mind," he said.



Other moderate Hurriyat leaders chose to maintain a studied silence on Bhat's remarks.



The state government has held that then Hizbul Mujahideen commander Mohammad Abdullah Bangroo had killed Mirwaiz Mohammad Farooqwhile a commander of Al-Umar Mujahideen had shot dead senior Lone.



Hizbul Mujahideen is considered to be ideologically inclined towards hardline Hurriyat faction leader Syed Ali Shah Geelani while Al Umar is believed to be the militant-wing of Awami Action Committee headed by the Mirwaiz.



Geelani refused to comment on the statements made by the former Chairman of the undivided Hurriyat Conference.



"I have nothing to say about their remarks," Geelani said.



CPM state secretary M Y Tarigami said Bhat's statement was "revealing" and the incidents need credible investigation.



"A credible investigation should be carried out so that responsibility for the killings is fixed," Tarigami said.



Sajjad Gani Lone, the youngest son of the slain leader, had blamed Geelani for the killing but retracted his statement few years later.



Jammu and Kashmir's DGP Kuldeep Khoda said that "the person involved in the killing of Mirwaiz Farooq is also buried in the same 'martyrs' graveyard' where the senior Mirwaiz was laid to rest".



http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/We-not-India-killed-our-own-people-Hurriyat-leader/articleshow/7210759.cms

Quote:EDITS | Tuesday, January 18, 2011 | Email | Print | | Back





Is it bye-bye azadi at last?

January 18, 2011 2:07:23 AM



Sandhya Jain



Notwithstanding their bluster, separatists in Kashmir Valley are clearly a demoralised lot. Realisation of their folly seems to be sinking in



Even as serious differences emerge among Kashmiri separatists, there are disturbing signals that hitherto marginalised leaders and groups may be brewing a new confrontation with the Indian nation. Jammu & Kashmir Liberation Front chairman Yasin Malik has urged the people to converge at Srinagar’s Lal Chowk on January 26 to unfurl ‘another flag’ (read Islamic) to counter the Bharatiya Janata Yuva Morcha’s plans to hoist the Tricolour there.



The idea, Mr Malik taunts, is to “convey an appropriate message to appropriate quarters”. He is backed by Hurriyat leader Mirwaiz Umer Farooq. The BJP youth began marching from Kolkata on January 12; a nervous Chief Minister Omar Abdullah accused the party of using the Tricolour for vote-bank purposes and opposed the march. Sources say the administration may block the entry of BJP workers into the State to foil the ceremony.



The new brinkmanship comes in the wake of a seminar in Srinagar on January 3 on the ‘Role of Intellectuals in the Freedom Struggle’ (read secessionist movement), where former All-Party Hurriyat Conference chairman Abdul Gani Bhat created a stir by declaring that separatist leaders Mirwaiz Mohammed Farooq (father of Mirwaiz Umer Farooq) and People’s Conference leader Abdul Gani Lone (father of Sajjad and Bilal Lone) were murdered by “our own people” and not by the Army or police, as hitherto alleged.



Mr Bhat added that his own brother, Mohammed Sultan Bhat, was murdered by the same killers in 1995. Mirwaiz Farooq was shot dead at his residence on May 21, 1990; Abdul Gani Lone was gunned down at a memorial for the senior Mirwaiz on May 21, 2002.



The ruling National Conference has termed it a “late admission” and demanded a probe to fix responsibility for the killings. At the time of the murders the State Government had claimed that Hizb-ul Mujahideen commander Mohammed Abdullah Bangroo had killed Mirwaiz Mohammed Farooq; Hizb-ul is ideologically close to the hardline Hurriyat faction leader Syed Ali Shah Geelani. Abdul Gani Lone was reportedly shot by Al-Umar Mujahideen, the militant wing of the Awami Action Committee headed by the Mirwaiz.



After thus lifting the lid off fierce intra-militant rivalries, Mr Bhat declined to name names, “What is the need to identify them ... They are already identified.” Caught unawares by the dramatic revelations, Mr Geelani, former chairman of the undivided APHC, opted for silence. It is pertinent that Mr Sajjad Gani Lone, the younger son of AG Lone, had blamed Mr Geelani for his father’s murder, but soon retracted the allegations.



That the killers’ identities were publicly known was virtually confirmed by Jammu & Kashmir Director-General of Police Kuldeep Khoda: “The person involved in the killing of Mirwaiz Farooq is also buried in the same ‘martyrs graveyard’ where the senior Mirwaiz was laid to rest.” Thus, the “killer and the killed are both declared as martyrs by them,” Mr Khoda mused. Actually, Mr Bhat had made the same speech in the Assembly of Pakistan-occupied Kashmir five years ago, but this was the first time he spoke this language in Srinagar.



The public squabbling signals dismay among the militants at the failure of Mr Geelani to achieve any results despite spearheading the protests in the Kashmir Valley throughout the summer of 2010, particularly the tactics of strikes and stone-pelting, in the run-up to the visit of the US President last November. But when Mr Barack Obama failed to utter a word on Jammu & Kashmir, thanks to the deft handling by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, the separatists fell into disarray. Other world leaders visiting New Delhi also took care not to needle India on any score.



Thus, at the same seminar, Mr Bhat charged that Kashmiri politicians started the separatist movement by killing Kashmiri intellectuals. Challenging Mr Geelani’s leadership, he asked, how many hartals will Kashmiris observe; was there a thought process behind the recent uprising? The separatist struggle will never get recognition and support at the international level, he said, and the only option left was for world powers like China and the US to mediate. Significantly, he did not mention Pakistan as a deciding force.



Mirwaiz Umer Farooq lamented that the separatists could not capitalise on the Amarnath land row in 2008, or even the five months of agitation last year, while India had successfully changed the discourse and projected the movement as the activity of a handful. The United Nations, the Mirwaiz said, was a failure and should be disbanded, and even the ‘Musharraf Formula’ fell short of ‘Kashmiri aspirations’. Mr Yasin Malik agreed that the Kashmiri leaders had failed to project the legitimacy of their cause nationally or internationally; even Sheikh Mohammed Abdullah had failed in this respect.



The APHC split in September 2003 after Mr Geelani accused Mr Bhat and other moderates of not running the anti-election campaign before the 2002 Assembly polls effectively when he was in jail. He also accused the People’s Conference headed by Mr Bilal Lone and Mr Sajjad Lone of participating in the election through proxy candidates.



Reacting to Mr Bhat’s exposé, Abdul Gani Lone’s sons dropped broad hints about the identity of the killers. Mr Sajjad Lone, who unsuccessfully contested the 2008 Assembly polls, said: “I gave enough indications (about the killer) but stopped short of saying it openly. My problem is with the white collar men who order killings. If they are not stopped, there will be more such killings.” Prior to his murder in May 2002, Abdul Gani Lone had wanted to oust foreign militants from the Valley while Mr Geelani favoured them.



The bickering among the separatists suggests that men like Mirwaiz Umer Farooq, the Lone brothers and Mr Yasin Malik have virtually accepted the fizzling out of militancy and may be privately keen to sue for peace with New Delhi. Given India’s rising status, they do not expect the UN to deliver an East Timor-type verdict in their favour. They concede Islamabad has no stature to deliver anything either, hence the dismissal of the ‘Musharraf Formula’ — demilitarisation, joint mechanism, shared sovereignty, irrelevant Line of Control — as an ‘interim arrangement’. Above all, they recognise that intifada is no solution; it has only left over 100 Kashmiris dead and hundreds injured with no objective achieved.



Strangely, Mr Geelani has suddenly turned dovish, telling a bemused nation on January 10 that he is holding the Kashmiri youth back from picking up the gun. Perhaps this indicates an ebbing of ground support for militancy in the Valley. In the circumstances, the Union Government would do well to wind up any half-baked roadmap for azadi.

Quote:India and Pakistan held secret talks for more than three years, reached an accord on the thorny Kashmir issue and had almost unveiled it in 2007 before domestic turmoil in Pakistan derailed it, former Pakistani foreign minister Khursheed Mehmood Kasuri has revealed.



A Border Security Force(BSF) soldier stands guard next to the national flags of India (L) and Pakistan near the Pakistan border in Chamliyal, 45 km west of Jammu, June 25, 2009. REUTERS/Amit GuptaKasuri says the two nuclear-armed rivals, who rule the Himalayan region in parts, had agreed to full demilitarisation of both the Indian and Pakistani parts of Kashmir with a package of loose autonomy on both sides of the Line of Control, a military control line that divides the region between two nations.



“We agreed on a point between complete independence and autonomy,” Kasuri told Times of India.



Almost all Kashmir leaders except hardliner Syed Ali Shah Geelani came on board and agreed on the accord that was to be signed during a visit by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to Islamabad scheduled for February-March 2007.



It never happened. The then Pakistan president, Pervez Musharraf, lost power and the country plunged into turmoil.

..

Quote:Senior BJP leaders along with hundreds of party activists will try and enter Jammu again today after a failed attempt on Monday. Meanwhile, senior BJP leader Ananth Kumar said the party called for Jammu bandh on Tuesday to protest the detention and arrests of party activists proceeding to Lal Chowk in Srinagar to hoist the national tricolour on January 26.

The J&K government pulled out all plugs to halt the rally and prevent BJP from hoisting the tricolour in Srinagar on Republic Day.



Senior BJP leaders Sushma Swaraj and Arun Jaitley were pushed back to the Punjab border after they arrived at Jammu airport on Monday night. The two leaders are now in Madhopur.



Former Bharatiya Janata Party chief Rajnath Singh has gone on hunger strike to protest the government's decision to prevent the flag hoisting in Srinagar.



Speaking over phone from Jammu airport, where he along with other senior leaders Arun Jaitley and Sushma Swaraj were on a dharna after being stopped, Kumar said the party had called for a Jammu bandh tomorrow in protest against this "illegal move, taken at the behest of the Manmohan Singh led UPA government".

Quote:[size="5"]Not all Sonia's thugs not all Sonia's goons could deter young Mohan Reddy from getting within 50 yards of the clock tower in Lal Chowk with flag in his hand shouting Bharat mata ki jai and Vande Mataram.[/size]



For me, this young man is hero. He breached the jihadi fortress with the flag and demonstrated to all spineless and shameless hIndus in the Congress and all political parties, to shameless and spineless Hindus in the print and electronic media, to the spineless and shameless Hindus in the bar and the judiciary that nationalism is a raging fire still burning in some hearts.



The flag he carried was snatched away, the young man was thrashed and hauled away by the jihadi J&K police.



Ashok Malik who writes columns for the Pioneer and for Hindusthan Times who squeals carthga delenda est privately but writes the yatra is a tired idea should be shamed first. Then the judges of thr SC who amended the judgment because they couldnt reisst thr pressure of White, Brown and other Christians and evengelists; then Nitish Kumar, then sharad Yadav, then Dilip Padgaonkar and laslty every shameless Hindu in the INC who lies down obligingly for their imported European president to rub her shoes on,



Mohan Reddy is my hero. I would gladly go to jail for him or with him.



Shame on the nation!!