Peace and Justice Post

Is anyone talking about people ?

MPRESSIONS BY UDAY SHANKER,

Greater Kashmir, August 3, 2010

Every one in New Delhi seems to be taking stock of Kashmir situation. Every one seems to be  concerned over the deteriorating situation in Kashmir. Every one is mourning the mounting loss of human lives. Every one  is  giving his own solution to the problem. But no one is talking about the people.
Why? One may ask.  There is an undying habit of looking at the situation from incident to incident basis, from one enclave to another basis, from individual to individual basis, as if people have already been rendered irrelevant. Experimenting is the art that Delhi has perfected so far, despite the fact that all  these hit and trial methods have not   shown any way forward  so far. It’s latest experiment  of trying a young man has failed, given the situation that has surfaced in the Valley.

Delhi doesn’t seemed to have learnt any lessons. It is still focused on  peripheral   issues, with an unshaken focus on fire fighting measures.  The tragedy is that if Delhi is  not getting a sense as  what to do in  this situation, much of the fault lies with the leadership of Kashmir, if at all it deserves to be called a leadership. The new  generation leader Omar Abdullah for months kept on  harping  that there was no  problem. He was asking where is the problem? He did not see any problem until the youth started dying on the streets of Kashmir, until the people  were out on streets in thousands, until the whole Valley seemed to be in flames.

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By Stephen Lendman, uruknet.info, August 1, 2010

On July 6, the Public Committee Against Torture in Israel (PACTI) and Adalah: The Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel released a report titled, “Exposed: The Treatment of Palestinian Detainees During Operation Cast Lead,” detailing their horrific treatment.Transferred to Israel for interrogation, detainees related grim details of their ordeal – grave human rights violations, showing Israel’s “contempt for the rule of law.” Their “fundamental due process rights were trampled on and the rule of law brutally disregarded during and after the fighting,” providing compelling evidence of collective punishment since Israel’s 2005 “disengagement,” followed by an embargo, a medieval siege, regular incursions, Cast Lead, and continued oppression of 1.5 million people – isolated, surrounded, attacked, brutalized, and slowly suffocated into submission, what hasn’t happened and won’t, but it doesn’t deter Israel from trying, or America from providing weapons and funding its lawlessness. Continues >>

By Arun Kumar, wsws.org, August 2, 2010

According to a new Oxford University study, 55 percent of India’s population of 1.1 billion, or 645 million people, are living in poverty. Using a newly-developed index, the study found that about one-third of the world’s poor live in India.

The Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI) has been developed by the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative and the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) as a more precise and comprehensive means of estimating poverty levels. It will replace the Human Poverty Index that has been used in the UNDP’s annual Human Development Report since 1997.

The MPI assesses a range of factors or “deprivations” at the household level as well as income and assets. These include: child mortality, nutrition, access to clean drinking water, sanitation, cooking fuel, electricity, and years of schooling and child enrolment. “A person is considered poor if they are deprived in at least 30 percent of the weighted indicators,” the study states.

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Three protesters, including a girl, were killed Sunday in Kashmir, taking to nine the number of young people shot dead by Indian security forces in three days of street protests, police said.

The latest casualties mark the deadliest phase in the Muslim-majority Himalayan territory since June 11, when turmoil erupted after a 17-year-old student was killed by a police tear-gas shell.

Sunday’s deaths took place in Pampore town, about 13 kilometres (eight miles) south of Srinagar, the summer capital of Indian Kashmir.

Witnesses said security forces again opened fire at a funeral procession of one of the two dead men near Pampore, killing a 17-year-old girl.

The two men were killed when security forces opened fire with rifles when thousands of residents in Pampore defied a strict curfew, blocked the region’s main highway and attacked security personnel.

Residents said they were holding a peaceful protest against Indian rule when security troops fired on them.

However, the shooting brought even more people out onto the streets.

“Call for OIC, UN”

Senior detained Kashmiri Hurriyet leader, Syed Ali Gilani, has condemned the killing of peaceful protestors in indiscriminate firing of Indian police, terming it as “the worst kind of Indian state terrorism”.

Syed Ali Gilani in a statement issued in Srinagar said, he” appealed to the Organization of Islamic Conference to call an urgent meeting to address worsening situation in the occupied territory and take steps to stop genocide of Kashmiris by Indian forces.”

The veteran Hurriyet leader also “urged the United Nations to implement its resolutions on Kashmir,” Kashmiri Media Service reported.

A total of 26 civilians, mostly young men in their teens or early 20s, have died in protests with Indian fire in the Muslim-majority Kashmir since June.

In 1948, the United Nations adopted a resolution calling for a referendum for Kashmir to determine whether the Himalayan region should be part of India and Pakistan. Kashmiris say fight against India since it rejected to hold referendum in Kashmiri territory.

India maintains a massive troop presence in Kashmir.

Agencies

GK NEWS NETWORK

Srinagar, Aug 1: The killing spree across the Valley including those who were shot dead in Pampore and Khrew on Sunday has evoked strong condemnation.

TROOPERS GIVEN LICENCE TO KILL: MIRWAIZ
The chairman of Hurriyat (M) Mirwaiz Umar Farooq has castigated the police and paramilitary CRPF troopers for what he said killing innocent protesters across Kashmir.
“The government has handed over the state to trigger happy forces. There is no accountability and complete lawlessness,” Mirwaiz said.  He urged the international community to come forward and impress upon India to stop killings of civilians here.
“The people at Pampore and other places were staging peaceful protests to achieve the right to self-determination. However, the troopers killed them with impunity,” he said.

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By Gareth Porter, Consortiumnews.com, July 31, 2010

Editor’s Note: Despite guiding the United States into the bloody quagmires of Afghanistan and Iraq, Washington’s neoconservatives remain extremely influential, still dominating the op-ed pages, the key think tanks and the TV talk shows.

And, the neocons have not given up their dream of extending the reach of the U.S. war machine into Iran on behalf of Israel’s right-wing Likud government, as investigative historian Gareth Porter notes in this guest essay:

Reuel Marc Gerecht’s screed justifying a prospective Israeli bombing attack on Iran coincides with the opening of the new Israel lobby campaign marked by the introduction of House Resolution 1553 expressing full support for such an Israeli attack.

What is important to understand about this campaign is that the aim of Gerecht and of the right-wing government of Benjamin Netanyahu is to support an attack by Israel so that the United States can be drawn into direct, full-scale war with Iran.

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by Nat Hentoff, Cato.org, July 29, 2010

News of our pilotless killer drones hurling more Hellfire missiles abroad has largely vanished from our press, despite President Obama’s fixation on this questionable aspect of our war on terrorism.

An impressive exception to the media inattention is investigative reporter Adam Entous of Reuters.

He reports that, contrary to the administration’s claim that only high-level terrorists researched are targeted, “the CIA has killed around 12 times more low-level fighters than mid-to-high-level al-Qaida and Taliban leaders since the drone strikes intensified in the summer of 2008.”

Another of his sources, who was involved in our robotic warfare and has since left the service, told him that the CIA’s targeting of low-level foot soldiers worries him because “it degrades the notion we’re going after serious threats to the United States.”

Middle East Online, July 30, 2010

Israeli soldiers detain foreign peace activists

Israel urged to halt targeted killings, torture, army impunity, blockade of Gaza Strip.

GENEVA – A UN panel of experts called Friday on Israel to fall in line with international norms on civil rights and to take action against targeted killings, torture and impunity for security forces.

The UN Human Rights Committee also called for an end to the blockade of Gaza and questioned the independence of Israel’s own inquiry into a naval raid on a Gaza-bound relief supply ship in which nine Turkish nationals dead.

In conclusions on its review of Israel’s application of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the committee also urged a halt to restrictions on Palestinians and raised concerns about discrimination.

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