Recent Appearances...

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Hello !
Recent Appearances...

Bangladesh

'Lips sewn without anesthetic,’ other shockers from Bangladesh report on Hasina-linked disappearances

2024-12-25

[BenarNews] Macabre killings, casual torture, misdirection and snooping were part of "the anatomy of enforced disappearances" linked to deposed Bangladesh Prime Minister ~~the loathesome~~ Sheikh Hasina
...Bangla dynastic politician and now exiled former Prime Minister of Bangladesh. She was President of the Bangla Awami League since the Lower Paleolithic. She is the eldest of five children of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, the founding father of Bangla. Her party defeated the BNP-led Four-Party Alliance in the 2008 parliamentary elections. She once before held the office, from 1996 to 2001, when she was defeated in a landslide. She and the head of the BNP, Khaleda Zia showed such blind animosity toward each other that they are known as the Battling Begums. That is probably because Khaleda's late husband was the Pak tool who had Mujib assassinated...
, an inquiry commission said in its first report.

The five-member commission learned about how forced disappearances were carried out based on accounts from surviving victims of such incidents — that is, those who resurfaced.

The commission, led by a retired Supreme Court judge, presented its report last weekend to Muhammad Yunus, the Nobel laureate who became Bangladesh’s interim leader days after Hasina fled to India on Aug. 5.

Officers from the military and various security forces including the Rapid Action Battalion

(RAB) were interviewed by commission members. The United States, which sanctioned RAB in December 2021, accused it of more than 600 forced disappearances over 12 years.

The commission has recommended RAB be disbanded.

A longtime human rights
...which are usually open to widely divergent definitions...
activist, Jyotirmoy Barua, said any claims by Hasina or her supporters that the commission’s members were politically motivated would not hold water.

"The members of the commission are not directly or visibly politically connected — none have a political background," he told BenarNews.

A Bangladeshi human rights lawyer, Sara Hossain, concurred.

The commission head was known for his impartiality, and the other four members had long investigated human rights violations under governments led by both major political parties, she told BenarNews.

Here are 10 shocking revelations from the commission’s report, which is based on its scrutiny of 758 forced disappearance cases:

1. The number of forced disappearance cases likely exceeds 3,500, the commission said. It received 1,678 registered complaints. Of the 758 people’s cases it has scrutinized so far, 204 people, or 27% of alleged victims, are still missing. "[T]he massive scale at which it was unleashed on the population during Sheikh Hasina’s regime is a novel phenomenon," its report said.

2. Forced disappearances were not carried out by a few bad apples, the commission reported. The finesse with which each of the steps involved in a disappearance were carried out and the responsibilities divided across agencies — all over a span of 15 years — did not happen by accident, the report said. "[T]hese systems reflect a deliberate design orchestrated by a central command structure," the report added.

3. With so many involved, how did the network remain undetected for a decade-and-a-half? That, too, was no accident, the commission found. "[S]security forces would ... falsely attribute their actions to other agencies. ... The forces would also exchange victims amongst themselves, with one force abducting, another incarcerating, the third one killing or releasing the victims," the commission learned.

4. Even as they stayed undetected, the perpetrators could be brazen. The report said one victim of forced disappearance who was returned was even told that Hasina was giving him "a second chance," but with conditions. "You must refrain from politics, leave the country, and return only when the situation improves," he was told, the commission’s report said.

5. Abducting people without anyone around them noticing — known as "silent pick-ups" — was a vital part of forced disappearance operatives staying undetected. That was entirely impossible without electronic surveillance, which was widespread, according to the commission’s interviews with RAB and military officers.

6. Victims were detained for varying periods, ranging from 48-60 hours to several weeks or months, and in some cases, up to eight years, the report said. Some of the kidnapped were mixed in with legal detainees and some were stashed in secret cells. The commission said it had identified more than eight secret detention facilities where victims were held across the country. Many other such centers had been destroyed, it said.

7. The remarkable consistency in forced disappearance practices across the country included congruence in torture rituals, which were also "profoundly brutal and disturbingly methodical," the commission report said. One victim described RAB sewing his lips shut without anesthetic — "akin to stitching cowhide." Another recounted, RAB again, electrocuting his ears and genitals.

8. A forced disappearance case ended in one of two ways, the commission learned. The victim was killed or turned loose into the criminal justice system. For those the operatives decided to kill, they wanted to ensure the body would be difficult to identify. But RAB and other forces couldn’t resist making a sport of it. One survivor said a police officer pushed him onto a highway in front of a vehicle, which swerved away from him. The officer didn’t try again.

9. A victim who was let go may have had his or her life spared, but the perpetrators made sure they, perversely, destroyed that life. The captors would file a slew of cases against the victim in an attempt to justify the forced disappearance. This perpetuates "the sufferings of victims, who are forced to navigate a deeply flawed and punitive legal system for years afterwards," the commission report said.

10. India’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government has since 2014, when it came to power, been Hasina’s steadfast supporter. Before that, India’s Congress government too favored a Hasina administration. Did this closeness also involve prisoner exchanges, including of Bangladeshi forced disappearance victims? The commission said it did, basing its assessment on two cases and interviews with soldiers deputed to RAB Intelligence.

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India-Pakistan

Pakistan decries IIOJK polls, demands action against Modi over human rights' violations

2024-09-19

[GEO.TV] President Asif Ali Ten Percent Zardari
Asif Ali <q>Ten Percent</q> Zardari

...former president of Pakistain, husband of the late Benazir Bhutto, who has been singularly lacking in curiosity about who done her in...
on Wednesday categorically rejected the elections for the legislative assembly of Indian Illegally Occupied Jammu and Kashmir
...a disputed territory lying between India and Pakistain. After partition, the Paks grabbed half of it and call it Azad (Free) Kashmir. The remainder they refer to as "Indian Occupied Kashmir". They have fought four wars with India over it, the score currently 4-0 in New Delhi's favor. After 72 years of this nonsense, India cut the Gordian knot in 2019, removing the area's special status, breaking off Ladakh as a separate state, and allowing people from other areas to settle (or in the case of the Pandits, to resettle) there....
(IIOJK), asserting that these polls were no substitute for the Kashmiri people's right to self-determination.

Provincial elections are being held in the occupied territory for the first time in a decade.

The occupied Moslem-majority region enjoyed a special status of partial autonomy until 2019 which was then revoked by the far-right Narendra Modi-led Bharatiya Janata Party's government.

IIOJK's special semi-autonomous status — constitutionally enshrined power to control its affairs — had meant that only those who descended from residents of the territory in 1934 could vote and own property.

The polls are being held after the Indian Supreme Court, last year, upheld the government's decision and set a deadline of September 30 this year for local polls.

President Zardari, talking to a delegation of ~~migrants~~ colonists from IIOJK — residing in Pakistain since 1989 — led by Uzair Ahmed Ghazali at Aiwan-e-Sadr, emphasised that such elections were unacceptable to the people of Kashmir and called upon the international community to hold the Modi government accountable for ongoing human rights
...which are usually entirely different from personal liberty...
violations in IIOJK.

He further urged the need to take concrete steps toward conducting a plebiscite in line with relevant United Nations
...where theory meets practice and practice loses...
Security Council Resolutions.

Welcoming the delegation, the president condemned the legislative assembly elections in IIOJK, terming them as part of India's broader strategy to consolidate its illegal occupation of the region.

Link

India-Pakistan

India police list ''cow vigilantes'' after Hindu teen murder

2024-09-06

Indian police on Thursday said they were compiling lists of right-wing Hindu "cow vigilantes" after a young man falsely accused of smuggling beef was rubbed out.

The killing last month of 19-year-old Aryan Mishra in northern Haryana state has sparked unusual outrage — much of it because the young man was a Hindu.

Cows are venerated as sacred by the country's Hindu majority, and their slaughter is illegal in many Indian states.

The authorities are often accused of failing to rein in Hindu hardliners, who form gangs of "cow vigilantes" to attack people accused of involvement in cattle slaughter — with several deaths reported each year.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has in the past condemned attacks on cattle traders and beef-eaters, but critics say that bully boyz have been emboldened by the Hindu nationalist rhetoric of his ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

Many of those accused of transporting or killing cows are from India's 220-million-strong Moslem community, with social media awash with videos boasting of vigilante attacks.

Mishra was killed on a highway on August 24 after an armed mob chased his car for 50 kilometres (31 miles), believing he was transporting beef.

Five people have been arrested in connection with the killing, and senior Haryana police officer Aman Yadav said the force was preparing a "list of cow vigilantes" to track their movements.

Link

India-Pakistan

India's Modi set to win historic third term but BJP loses outright majority

2024-06-05

[GEO.TV] Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi looked set on Tuesday to retain power at the head of a ruling coalition but his Hindu nationalist party lost its outright majority for the first time in a decade as voters defied predictions of another landslide.

The outcome unnerved investors, with stocks falling steeply as emerging results showed that Modi would, for the first time since sweeping to power in 2014, depend on at least three disparate regional parties whose political loyalties have wavered over the years.

This, analysts say, could introduce some uncertainty into policymaking in the world's most populous democracy after a decade in which Modi has ruled with a strong hand.

Modi's Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) won a majority on its own in 2014, ending India's era of unstable coalition governments, and repeated the feat in 2019.

Modi said people had placed their faith in the BJP-led coalition for a third time and it was historic, in his first comments since counting of votes began.

"The blessings of the people for the third time after 10 years boosts our morale, gives new strength," Modi told cheering BJP members at party headquarters in New Delhi.

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India-Pakistan

Narendra Modi's Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led alliance is projected to win a big majority in the general election

2024-06-04

[X]

#Indian Prime Minister Narendra #Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led alliance is projected to win a big majority in the general election, TV exit polls say, suggesting it would do better than expected by most analysts.https://t.co/a2TMFWCoKy
— Al Arabiya English (@AlArabiya_Eng) June 3, 2024

Link

India-Pakistan

Modi-led alliance to win big in India election, exit polls project

2024-06-02

[GEO.TV] Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led alliance is projected to win a big majority in the general election that concluded on Saturday, TV exit polls said, suggesting it would do better than expected by most analysts.

Most exit polls projected the ruling National Democratic Alliance (NDA) could win a two-thirds majority in the 543-member lower house of parliament, where 272 is needed for a simple majority. A two-thirds majority will allow the government to usher in far-reaching amendments in the constitution.

A summary of six exit polls projected the NDA could win between 355 and 380 seats, a number that is likely to boost financial markets when they reopen on Monday. The NDA won 353 seats in the 2019 general election, of which BJP accounted for 303.

Link

India-Pakistan

Indian railway security official shoots dead senior officer, 3 Muslim passengers in ‘hate crime’

2023-08-02

India is an interesting place.

[Dawn] A security official of the Indian railway rubbed out his senior and three Moslem passengers in an apparent "hate crime", reported local media outlet The Wire.

"A Railway Protection Force (RPF) jawan (officer) on Monday morning (July 31) rubbed out four people who were on a train near the Palghar railway station in Maharashtra. Among those killed was an assistant sub-inspector (ASI) and three passengers — all Moslem men with beards — across nine carriages," the report stated, adding that the culprit was arrested.

It said the culprit was identified as RPF Constable Chetan Singh. Quoting other Indian media outlets, the report added that he first shot his senior officer before moving on to the passengers.

The Hindustan Times reported that after killing the fourth victim, he "began a short hate-filled rant against Moslems that he asked the bystanders to record for the media’s consumption".

The Wire added that according to a purported video of the culprit speaking after killing the fourth victim, he could be heard saying: "They (Moslems) operate from Pakistain, this is what the media of the country is showing, they have found out, they know everything, their leaders are there ... If you want to vote, if you want to live in India, then I say, Modi and Yogi, these are the two, and your Thackeray."

According to the report, the incident was allegedly triggered by an argument between the suspect and his senior officer.

The RPF, the report stated, would compensate the heirs and families of the victims.

Conspiracy theories that allege a Moslem plot to secure the faith’s numerical supremacy in India have been a staple of Hindu nationalist ideologues for years. Similar theories of im~~migrants~~ colonists and minorities "replacing" majority populations have also been embraced by the far-right in other countries.

At times the theories have been indulged by Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which has come to dominate national politics partly through its muscular appeals to the country’s Hindu majority.

Raqib Hameed Naik, the founder of Hindutva Watch, a group that monitors reports of attacks on Indian minorities, had said during Modi’s visit to the United States in June that "Modi’s comments [that there is no religious discrimination by his government] is a complete lie. India has become a black hole for religious minorities."

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India-Pakistan

Manipur Viral Video Case: 4 Accused Sent to 11-Day Police Custody

2023-07-22

Follow up to this horrifying story from yesterday.

[OneIndia] All four accused individuals allegedly involved in a heinous incident where three women were stripped, paraded, and assaulted by a mob on May 4, were remanded to 11-day police custody, as reported by ANI, citing Manipur police. The arrests were made after a viral video of the shocking event surfaced on social media.

According to coppers, the investigation team has identified at least eight more men who were also part of the incident, and they are likely to be arrested soon.

This action comes 77 days after the horrifying incident took place, which sparked nationwide outrage. The police had reportedly refrained from taking any action earlier due to a perceived lack of evidence, as mentioned in the Indian Express report.

Additionally, on Thursday, a mob took matters into their own hands and set fire to the house of one of the accused individuals, who was prominently seen in the viral video of the women being paraded naked in Manipur. The house belonged to the main accused, Huirem Herodas Meitei. Various videos circulating online showed protestors, primarily women, setting fire to the accused's residence as an act of retribution.

Manipur chief minister N Biren Singh on Friday condemned the incident and said that the "Manipur society is against crime against women."

"...They consider women as their mothers. We have launched statewide condemnation protests, both in the valley and hills, over the video that went viral and tarnished the state's image. People are protesting across the state regarding the incident and demanding the strictest punishment for the accused. This protest is to support the government to punish the accused," he said.

Dawn adds:

Manipur’s state government, led by the ruling Hindu-nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), said police took action when the video surfaced on social media more than two months after the incident.

A "thorough investigation" was under way, the state’s chief minister N. Biren Singh tweeted.

"We will ensure strict action is taken against all the perpetrators, including considering the possibility of capital punishment," he added.

The incident came at the start of the violence in Manipur, which was sparked by a dispute over access to government jobs and other perks.

Homes and churches were torched, with tens of thousands of people fleeing to government-run camps.

The festivities between vigilante gangs from rival communities have continued intermittently, pitting the majority Meitei, who are mostly Hindus and live in and around Imphal, against the mainly Christian Kuki in the surrounding hills.

In a detailed report to the court in June, civil society group Manipur Tribal Forum said many gruesome acts of violence including rape and beheading had not been investigated by state authorities.

One such incident appeared on Twitter on Thursday — reportedly showing an aide to a BJP politician in the state holding a victim’s severed head — and disappeared from the platform within hours.

The Kuki community had protested Meitei demands for reserved public job quotas and college admissions as a form of affirmative action, stoking long-held fears that they might also be allowed to acquire land in areas currently reserved for tribal groups.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who has faced criticism from opposition politicians, said on Thursday in his first public remarks on the violence that the country was "shamed" by the incident.

India’s Supreme Court also warned Modi’s government that, if it does not act, "we will".

Link

India-Pakistan

Delhi High Court issues notice to Yasin Malik in NIA's death penalty plea

2023-05-31

[The Nation (Pak)] The Delhi High Court has issued a notice to Chairman Jammu and Kashmir
...a disputed territory lying between India and Pakistain. After partition, the Paks grabbed half of it and call it Azad (Free) Kashmir. The remainder they refer to as "Indian Occupied Kashmir". They have fought four wars with India over it, the score currently 4-0 in New Delhi's favor. After 72 years of this nonsense, India cut the Gordian knot in 2019, removing the area's special status, breaking off Ladakh as a separate state, and allowing people from other areas to settle (or in the case of the Pandits, to resettle) there....
Liberation Front, Muhammad Yasin Malik

...chairman of one of the two factions of Jammu Kashmir Liberation Front. JKLF is a Kashmiri nationalist organization founded in Birmingham, UK in 1977. Branches weren't actually established in Kashmir for another ten years. It has the usual demands for separation of J&K from secular India so it can become an independent Islamic rathole. It seems to have no interest in Pak Kashmir breaking away to join it. In 1994 Malik renounced violence after he was released from jail and from that point he and his organization pursued peaceful means to impose their will on the region...
, on the application of the notorious National Investigation Agency demanding that his life sentence be converted into a death penalty

.

The court has sought the appearance of Muhammad Yasin Malik on 9th August this year. The JKLF chairman is already facing a life sentence in New Delhi’s infamous Tihar jail.

Meanwhile,
...back at the shootout, Butch clutched at his shoulder. Ow! he exclaimed, with feeling......
pro-freedom leaders and organizations in their statements in Srinagar have cautioned that the Hindutva-inspired Bharatiya Janata Party regime is conspiring to hang Muhammad Yasin Malik to regain the losing popularity in elections next year.

Jammu and Kashmir Democratic Freedom Party and APHC leaders Khadim Hussain and Syed Sibte Shabbir Qummi said the National Investigation Agency filed the plea in the Delhi High Court for conversion of life sentence into death penalty for Yasin Malik at the behest of the Modi-led Indian regime.

Link

India-Pakistan

Pakistan lacks coherent policy towards TTP, says journalist Ahmed Rashid

2023-02-19

For those who prefer listening to reading, this article can be listened to at the link.

[Dawn] Acclaimed author and veteran journalist Ahmed Rashid on Saturday said Pakistain lacked a coherent policy to tackle the resurgence of the banned Death Eater group Tehrik-e-Taliban
...mindless ferocity in a turban...
Pakistain (TTP).

After the TTP called off its ceasefire on November 28, Pakistain has been hit by a wave of terrorism, mostly in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, but also in Balochistan
...the Pak province bordering Kandahar and Uruzgun provinces in Afghanistan and Sistan Baluchistan in Iran. Its native Baloch propulation is being displaced by Pashtuns and Punjabis and they aren't happy about it...
and the Punjab
1.) Little Orphan Annie's bodyguard
2.) A province of Pakistain ruled by one of the Sharif brothers
3.) A province of India. It is majority (60 percent) Sikh and Hindoo (37 percent), which means it has relatively few Moslem riots....
town of Mianwali, which borders KP. Terror attacks have also reached as far as Islamabad and Bloody Karachi
...formerly the capital of Pakistain, now merely its most important port and financial center. It is among the largest cities in the world, with a population of 18 million, most of whom hate each other and many of whom are armed and dangerous...
Rashid addressed the issue of rising terrorism in a panel discussion held on day two of the Karachi Literature Festival. The panel was moderated by Amber Rahim Shamsi, director of the Centre of Excellence in Journalism, and also included South Asian scholar Michael Kugelman.

The session was convened in the backdrop of a book by Shahid Javed Burki, ’*Pakistain: Statecraft and Geopolitics in Today’s World*’, but Friday’s Karachi Police Office siege by the TTP overtook the discourse.

Addressing the Karachi attack, Rashid said repelling terrorism was the army and special forces’ job and not the police’s. He also pointed out that the state was without a "coherent policy" on the matter.

"We’re using the wrong forces to combat terrorism and we are not really explaining what our policy is — are we talking to the Taliban or are we attacking and bombing them?"

He blamed former army chief and president Gen Pervez Perv Musharraf
Pervez <q>Perv</q> Musharraf

...former dictator of Pakistain, who was less dictatorial and corrupt than any Pak civilian government to date. They'll hang him if they can catch him...
for the "chronic situation" of simultaneously talking with and attacking the Taliban.

"We still don’t have a counter-terrorism policy or what it entails. We are not prepared to mobilise the public in support of a policy because there is none," he said, adding that Pakistain needed to go a long way for the struggle against terrorism to turn out in its favour.

"What has happened to the hundred coppers killed in Beautiful Downtown Peshawar
...capital of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, administrative and economic hub for the Federally Administered Tribal Areas of Pakistan. Peshawar is situated near the eastern end of the Khyber Pass, convenient to the Pak-Afghan border. Peshawar has evolved into one of Pakistain's most ethnically and linguistically diverse cities, which means lots of gunfire...
attack?" Rashid asked, recalling the attack in a mosque in the city’s Police Lines area. "They have gotten lost in newspaper pages."

KUGELMAN SAYS TTP RESURGENCE NOT A RECENT PHENOMENON
Meanwhile,
...back at the abandoned silver mine, a triangular dorsal fin appeared in the water. Then another...
Kugelman said the TTP’s resurgence in Pakistain was not a recent phenomenon, even as he agreed that the group gained momentum in August 2021 after the Afghan Taliban took over Afghanistan post-US withdrawal.

"It’s true the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan has ensured Pak terror group strength, but they have been actively operating as various factions and splinter cells," he said.

Speaking on Pakistain-US relations, he said that the former needed to understand that it was not as strategically important for the latter "as people in Islamabad think it is".

"Often the country also feels left out but that’s because it places itself with China," he said, adding that the US was not going to say it publicly, "but that’s what’s going on in Washington at the moment."

"Pakistain has not been at the foremost in the US mind after we pulled out of Afghanistan," said Kugelman in response to a question posed by Rashid. "However,
there is a theory which states that if ever anybody discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable. There is another theory which states that this has already happened...
the floods have made Pakistain relevant again globally," he added.

LIKENING IMRAN’S PTI TO MODI’S BJP AN ’OVERSTATEMENT’
The panel also discussed the parallels drawn in Burki’s book between former prime minister Imran Khan
...aka The Great Khan, who is the lightweight's lightweight...
’s PTI and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party. However,
there is a theory which states that if ever anybody discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable. There is another theory which states that this has already happened...
both Kugelman and Rashid termed it an overstatement.

There were a few similarities between their ways of leading their supporters and "cashing in on popular support", Kugelman said, but he added that to liken the two is a bit of an "overstatement".

"Is Imran Khan the new Bhutto?" Shamsi asked Rashid, drawing from the book where Burki writes he was with Imran when, during a power show, the latter claimed he would "sweep the polls like Bhutto did with his support".

Rashid said Imran was "famous for his u-turns", adding that even if he enjoys popular support, "nothing is there for the people".

Responding to another question, he said Pakistain had "narcissistic leaders" in place who feel the masses owe them favours, but "really they don’t do anything for the people in terms of peace restoration or economically".

"Nobody even wants to talk to the next person while the country suffers," he rued.

Link

India-Pakistan

India cracks down on Muslim group for ‘anti-national activities’

2022-09-28

[Dawn] Indian authorities detained scores of members of a Moslem organization on Tuesday, accusing them of violence and anti-national activities.

The arrests follow a crackdown earlier this month on the Popular Front of India (PFI)

…the latest identity of Pakistan sock puppet National Development Front (NDF) and the banned Students Islamic Movement of India (SIMI). They’re fond of IEDs, swords, Al Qaeda and Taliban propaganda, the perverse pleasures of Love Jihad, and have surprisingly well-trained connections with jihadis in Bangladesh and Pakistan...

in which about 100 people were detained.

The PFI has condemned the detentions and related raids as harassment and held street protests.

"This is nothing but prevention of the right to democratic protests against the central government’s witch-hunt targeting PFI and is quite natural and expected under this autocratic system," PFI said on Twitter on Tuesday after what it called "massive arrests".

Police in India’s most populous state of Uttar Pradesh said they detained 57 persons linked to the PFI on Tuesday because of "~~violent~~ mostly peaceful acts conducted by them and their rising anti-national activities across the country".

Similar detentions were made in the northeastern state of Assam, its chief minister told news hounds, days after he asked for a ban on the PFI.

Earlier this month, the federal National Investigation Agency raided locations in the states of Bihar, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Telangana and Andhra Pradesh and detained some PFI members, accusing them of organising training camps to "commit terrorist acts" or being involved in "anti-national activities".

The PFI has supported causes like street protests against a 2019 citizenship law that many Moslems see as discriminatory.

Moslems account for 13 per cent of India’s 1.4 billion people and many have complained of marginalisation under the rule of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party.

The party denies the charges and points to data that all Indians irrespective of religion are benefiting from Modi’s focus on economic development and social welfare.

Link

India-Pakistan

Pakistan castigates India over ‘arbitrary arrests’ of Islamic scholars in occupied Kashmir

2022-09-19

[Dawn] Pakistain has strongly condemned the "arbitrary arrests and illegal detention" of prominent Islamic scholars and five members of the disputed territory’s Jamaat-e-Islami
...The Islamic Society, founded in 1941 in Lahore by Maulana Sayyid Abul Ala Maududi, aka The Great Apostosizer. The Jamaat opposed the independence of Bangladesh but has operated an independent branch there since 1975. It maintains close ties with international Mohammedan groups such as the Moslem Brotherhood. the Taliban, and al-Qaeda. The Jamaat's objectives are the establishment of a pure Islamic state, governed by Sharia law. It is distinguished by its xenophobia, and its opposition to Westernization, capitalism, socialism, secularism, and liberalist social mores...
party in Indian-occupied Kashmir
Kashmir

...a disputed territory lying between India and Pakistain. After partition, the Paks grabbed half of it and call it Azad (Free) Kashmir. The remainder they refer to as "Indian Occupied Kashmir". They have fought four wars with India over it, the score currently 4-0 in New Delhi's favor. After 72 years of this nonsense, India cut the Gordian knot in 2019, removing the area's special status, breaking off Ladakh as a separate state, and allowing people from other areas to settle (or in the case of the Pandits, to resettle) there....
, according to a blurb issued by the Foreign Office (FO) on Sunday.

State-run APP reported that since Thursday, India has arrested several prominent Islamic scholars, including Maulana Sarjan Barkati, Maulana Abdul Rasheed Dawoodi, Maulana Mushtaq Ahmed Veeri and Abdul Majeed Dar Almadni, and booked them under the Public Safety Act (PSA) in Kot Bhalwal Jail in Jammu.

The draconian PSA allows detention without charges for up to two years.

"This all is aimed to force Kashmiris to forsake their demand for freedom," APP quoted Mahmood Ahmad Sagar, convener of the All Parties Hurriyat Conference Azad Kashmir chapter, as saying.

The FO said that such "deplorable actions" only days ahead of the United Nations
...the Oyster Bay money pit...
General Assembly sessions were a manifestation of "India’s growing intransigence and utter disregard of human rights
...which are usually entirely different from personal liberty...
and fundamental freedoms".

"These arrests have marked a new low in the Indian occupation forces’ blatant and continued onslaught on the human rights of the innocent Kashmiris. The illegal detention of the Kashmiri Islamic scholars ... is yet another Indian attempt to rob the Kashmiri people of their distinct religious and cultural identity," the FO said in its statement.

It said that arrests under the draconian PSA were a "deplorable preemptive step" by Indian authorities planning to "illegally occupy" religiously significant waqf board properties.

"Apprehensive of widespread protests and unrest in the face of such a malicious move, these scholars have not only been unjustifiably arrested but shifted from [Indian-occupied] Kashmir to a prison in the Hindu-majority Jammu.

"These politically motivated arrests are clearly meant to stifle the voice of the Moslems of IoK and further marginalise them," the FO said.

It added that Pakistain called for the immediate release of the scholars and other illegally detained Kashmiri prisoners.

"We also urge the international community to take note of the dangerously growing trajectory of Islamophobia
...the irrational fear that Moslems will act the way they usually do...
in India, instigated at the behest of the BJP-RSS (Bharatiya Janata Party-Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh) nexus, that is aimed at suppressing the Moslems of India, denying them space to freely practice their faith and attacking their places of worship," the FO further said.

Earlier this month, ~~Amnesia~~ Amnesty International had expressed grave concern over the intensified repression of rights in IoK in the last three years.

In a report titled, "’We are being punished by the law’: Three years since of abrogation of Article 370 in Jammu & Kashmir", the human rights watchdog observed that in recent years, civil society members, journalists, lawyers and human rights defenders in the region had faced relentless interrogations, arbitrary travel bans, revolving door detentions, and repressive media policies.

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