The Indian government revoked the special status accorded to Indian-administered Kashmir in its constitution, the most far-reaching political move on the disputed region in nearly 70 years.
A presidential decree issued on August 5 revoked Article 370 of India’s constitution that guaranteed special rights to the Muslim-majority state, including the right to its own constitution and autonomy to make laws on all matters except defence, communications and foreign affairs.
In the lead-up to the move, India sent thousands of additional troops to the disputed region, imposed a crippling curfew, shut down telecommunications and internet, and arrested political leaders.
The move has worsened the already-heightened tensions with neighbouring Pakistan, which said it would downgrade its diplomatic relations with India.
India and Pakistan claim Kashmir in full but rule it in part. The nuclear-armed neighbours have fought two of their three wars over the disputed territory. A rebellion in Indian-administered Kashmir has been ongoing for 30 years.
Here are the latest updates:
Friday, September 6
Landline phones back, but calls ‘don’t go through’
The government in Indian-administered Kashmir said landline telephone service has been restored. But people lined up at offices or homes that have landline telephones to try to contact family and friends after the long wait, but many were unable to get through after repeated attempts.
“Our landlines have been restored but we are still unable to talk to people. It is frustrating. I have been trying to call people since morning, but I am not getting through,” said Syed Musahid in Srinagar.
Many Kashmiris living outside the region also said they were having trouble getting in touch with their families in Kashmir. “I kept trying a hundred times to reach my family in Kashmir, and only then did my call go through,” said Bint-e-Ali, a Kashmiri in the Indian city of Bengaluru.
06 Sep, 2019
Statement on FIR against me filed by the Special Cell of Delhi Police
I have learnt from media reports that the Special Cell of the Delhi Police has filed an FIR against me for speaking out on the clampdown in Kashmir and the denial of basic rights to Kashmiris. pic.twitter.com/8GjJzCYo04
— Shehla Rashid شہلا رشید (@Shehla_Rashid) September 6, 2019
Chaos and crisis in Kashmir hospitals
For the past two weeks, Mohamad Shafi has been at the bedside of his 13-year-old son Rafi, who has been admitted to the nephrology ward of a state-run hospital in Indian-administered Kashmir’s main city of Srinagar.
Shafi is tired and has hardly had much sleep, but the 54-year-old is prepared to stay at the Sher-i-Kashmir Institute of Medical Science hospital for as long as it takes.
Read the full story here.
India throttling Kashmir media, report says
India’s government is muzzling Kashmir’s media as part of the lockdown it imposed on the disputed region a month ago, according to a new report by the Network of Women in Media, India and the Free Speech Collective.
The study said reporters were being subjected to surveillance, informal investigations and harassment for publishing reports considered adverse to the government or security forces.
Titled “News Behind The Barbed Wire”, its findings reveal “a grim and despairing picture of the media in Kashmir, fighting for survival against the most incredible of odds.”
Pakistan army accuses India of ‘state terrorism’
Pakistan’s army chief General Qamar Javed Bajwa has accused India of being responsible for “state terrorism” in Indian-administered Kashmir.
He said the Pakistani military is ready for “every sacrifice” and “will never abandon” the people of Kashmir in their struggle for self-determination in line with UN resolutions.
Bajwa spoke as Pakistanis marked the 54th anniversary of the start of the second of two wars that India and Pakistan have fought over Kashmir.
Thursday, September 5
Anger, defiance mark a month of Kashmir siege
Haleema had to begin her journey at dawn, travelling through deserted roads from her home in southern Kashmir’s Shopian district to wait at a park outside the central jail in Srinagar, the main city in the Muslim-majority region.
Two hours past noon, Haleema was still waiting and uncertain if she would be allowed to meet her husband, Bashir Ahmad. “He was picked 20 days ago,” she said, “like they pick everyone else.”
Read the full story here.
Kashmiri teen dies of pellet, tear gas shell wounds
When the body of 16-year-old Asrar Khan reached his home in Indian-administered Kashmir at about 2:30am on Wednesday (2100 GMT on Tuesday), wails of his grieving parents shattered the tense silence of the night.
Khan, a student of Class 11, was injured in the head by a tear gas shell and pellets on August 6 outside his home in the main city of Srinagar’s Ellahi Bagh area, according to his family and medical records.
Read the full story here.
Amnesty launches campaign to end Kashmir blackout
The draconian communications blackout in Kashmir is an outrageous protracted assault on the civil liberties of the people of Kashmir, Amnesty International India said, as it launched a global campaign today in a bid to highlight the human cost of the lockdown.
“The blackout has now been a month old and cannot be prolonged any further by the Indian Government as it has grossly impacted the daily lives of Kashmiri people, their emotional and mental wellbeing, medical care, as well as their access to basic necessities and emergency services. It is tearing families apart,” said Aakar Patel, head of Amnesty International India.
Wednesday, September 4
Victims of torture, arbitrary arrests recount ordeal
In a village in southern Kashmir, a 22-year-old man said he was picked up in a midnight raid and tortured for more than an hour along with a dozen other Kashmiris.
“I was beaten with sticks, rifle butts and they kept asking me why I went for a protest march. I kept telling them that I didn’t, but they didn’t stop. After I fainted, they used electric shocks to revive me,” he told Al Jazeera, on condition of anonymity.
Read the full story here.
A Kashmiri man tortured by security forces shows a photo of his injuries on his mobile phone [Akash Bisht/Al Jazeera]
Saudi, UAE diplomats in Pakistan to discuss Kashmir
Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) have sent their top diplomats to Pakistan to help Islamabad defuse tensions with India over the disputed Kashmir region. Gulf Arab countries have kept mostly silent on the issue, underpinned by more than $100bn in annual trade with India that makes it one of the Arabian Peninsula’s most prized economic partners.
In a rare move, a single aircraft carried the two Arab diplomats – Saudi Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Adel bin Ahmed Al-Jubeir and UAE Minister of Foreign Affairs Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nahyan – to Islamabad in what Pakistani authorities said was a symbolic show of unity. The two diplomats held talks with Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan and Minister of Foreign Affairs Shah Mehmood Qureshi.
India names leaders of Pakistan-based groups ‘terrorists’
India has officially declared Masood Azhar, chief of Jaish-e-Muhammad (JeM) and Hafiz Muhammad Saeed, founder of Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) as “terrorists” under the amended Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Amendment Act.
Azhar’s name has already been placed by the United Nations on a sanctions blacklist after his group claimed responsibility for a February suicide attack in Indian-administered Kashmir that killed 40 Indian soldiers and brought India and Pakistan close to war. The UN in May imposed a travel ban and freeze on Azhar’s assets as well as an arms embargo.
Saeed, an anti-India scholar, runs a charity in Pakistan known as Jamaat-ud-Dawa. The charity is widely believed to serve as a front for LeT, the group blamed for attacks in Mumbai in 2008 that killed 166 people.
India sowing seeds of war: Pakistan army
The Pakistani army has warned that India is sowing the seeds of war with its action in the Kashmir region.
“The situation in Kashmir has become a big danger in the region … The Indian action in Kashmir is sowing seeds of war,” Pakistani military spokesman Major General Asif Ghafoor told a news conference in Islamabad.
Kashmiris run for cover as Indian security forces (unseen) fire tear gas shells during clashes in Srinagar [Danish Ismail/Reuters]
Tuesday, September 3
PM Khan: Will not initiate military conflict with India
Pakistan’s Prime Minister Imran Khan has asserted that his country would not initiate a military conflict with India, warning of the risk to the world of nuclear war breaking out between the South Asian neighbours, as tensions over the disputed region of Kashmir remain high.
“We are two nuclear-armed countries, if tensions rise then there is a danger to the world from this,” Khan said at the International Sikh Convention in the eastern Pakistani city of Lahore on Monday.
Read the full story here.
A month since the lockdown, if the Indian govt is convinced that everything is NORMAL in Kashmir, why are non Indian, foreign journalists not allowed access to the valley. Why are they denied permit to report from Kashmir ?
— Rana Ayyub (@RanaAyyub) September 3, 2019
Sunday, September 1
Thousands take part in anti-India rally in Karachi
Thousands of Pakistani protesters took part in an anti-India rally for a fourth consecutive week following India’s move in downgrading Muslim-majority Kashmir’s autonomy. Protesters held signs, chanted slogans and displayed a large Kashmiri flag during the rally in Karachi, organised by the Jamaat-e-Islami party.
“We demand that the peace mission of the United Nations should visit Srinagar, like how they go to Uganda, East Timor, Djibouti and other countries of Africa,” said Siraj ul Haq, Jamaat-e-Islami party chief, calling on other nations to “take active measures to give Kashmiris the right to freedom”.
Reporting Kashmir amid lockdown, harassment
As the crippling lockdown in Indian-administered Kashmir nears a month, journalists in the region complain of harassment by authorities, with many accusing security forces of deleting their camera footage and a pressure to report “normalcy”.
“This is a unique situation. None of us had seen anything like this in the past. Even in the worst of times in Kashmir, we were able to file our stories,” said Muzaffar Raina as he waited to access his email at a media centre in the main city of Srinagar.
Read the full story here.
Saturday, August 31
Friday, August 30
Khan: ‘World can’t ignore Kashmir, we’re all in danger’
Prime Minister Imran Khan, in an opinion piece for The New York Times, said talks between India and Pakistan could only begin if New Delhi reversed its “illegal annexation of Kashmir, ends the curfew and lockdown, and withdraws its troops to the barracks”.
Khan’s piece was published as Pakistan came to a standstill on Friday as tens of thousands poured onto streets in a government-led demonstration of solidarity with the disputed region of Kashmir, after India revoked its autonomy this month.
“I wanted to normalise relations with India through trade and by settling the Kashmir dispute, the foremost impediment to the normalisation of relations between us,” Khan said.
Imran Khan leads Kashmir solidarity rallies in Pakistan
Pakistan’s prime minister promised to raise the issue of rights violations allegedly perpetrated by India in the disputed region of Kashmir at the United Nations next month, as tens of thousands held protests across the country expressing solidarity with the Kashmiris.
“The whole world should have stood with Kashmir,” Imran Khan told a rally of thousands outside his office in the capital Islamabad on Friday.
Read the full story here.
Thousands protest outside Pakistan’s parliament in Islamabad to express solidarity with Kashmir [Asad Hashim/Al Jazeera]
