Biden again describes past Armenian massacres as genocide


US President Joe Biden has described the massacre of Armenians beginning in 1915 as a genocide (AFP/MANDEL NGAN) (MANDEL NGAN)

Sun, April 24, 2022,

US President Joe Biden used Sunday's occasion of Armenian remembrance day to describe past mass atrocities by Ottomans as genocide, repeating his controversial description from a year ago when he ended decades of American equivocation.

The categorization infuriates Turkey, which refuses to recognise the 1915-16 killings of more than a million Armenians as genocide.

But Biden, who earlier this month said Russia's atrocities committed during its invasion of Ukraine amounted to genocide, again used the precise term to describe the massacres of Armenians during World War I.

"On April 24, 1915, Ottoman authorities arrested Armenian intellectuals and community leaders in Constantinople. Thus began the Armenian genocide -- one of the worst mass atrocities of the 20th century," the president said in a statement.

"Today, we remember the one and a half million Armenians who were deported, massacred, or marched to their deaths in a campaign of extermination, and mourn the tragic loss of so many lives."

Biden said people should remain "vigilant against the corrosive influence of hate in all forms," and urged Americans to "recommit ourselves to speaking out and stopping atrocities that leave lasting scars on the world."

As many as 1.5 million Armenians are estimated to have been killed from 1915 to 1917 during the waning days of the Ottoman Empire, which suspected the Christian minority of conspiring with adversary Russia in World War I.

Armenian populations were rounded up and deported into the desert of Syria on death marches in which many were shot, poisoned or fell victim to disease, according to accounts at the time by foreign diplomats.

Turkey, which emerged as a secular republic from the ashes of the Ottoman Empire, acknowledges that 300,000 Armenians may have died but strongly rejects that it was genocide.

Biden infuriated Ankara one year ago when he became the first sitting US president to describe the massacres as genocide. He had informed Turkish leader Recep Tayyip Erdogan of the decision the day before, in a move seeking to limit fury from the NATO ally.

Erdogan in the aftermath denounced the genocide recognition as "groundless" and "destructive," and warned Washington could lose a friend in a key region.

The strained relations gradually steadied, with the two leaders meeting last June and Erdogan hailing a "new era" of constructive ties with Washington.

They spoke last month about Turkey's mediation over the Russia-Ukraine war.

mlm/jv

Russia blocks chess website over Ukraine

AFP Moscow
Published: 24 Apr 2022

Two men play chess in a park, amid Russia's invasion of Ukraine, in Kyiv, Ukraine, April 7, 2022.

Reuters
The popular website Chess.com has been blocked in Russia after publishing two critical articles on the situation in Ukraine branded "false information" by the authorities.

The site, which boasts 50 million members worldwide, is now on a list of blocked sources drawn up by Russia's telecom watchdog Roskomnadzor.

The general prosecutor's office requested that access to just two pages of the Chess.com critical of Russia's "special operation" in Ukraine be restricted, domestic agencies and media reported.

But because Chess.com uses the HTTPS protocol, the whole site has become unavailable, the media said.

Chess.com could not be opened in Russia on Sunday afternoon.

The articles allegedly condemned the offensive Russia unleashed in Ukraine on February 24, according to Russian media reports.

Chess.com has already banned Russian grandmaster Sergey Karjakin, who has publicly supported the offensive, from playing games on the site.

Karjakin, who played Norway's Magnus Carlsen in 2016 for the world title, has also been suspended for six months by world chess governing body FIDE.

This month he called for Chess.com to be blocked, accusing it of "anti-Russian choices" and "insulting propaganda".

Karjakin took to the Telegram messaging service to praise the move against Chess.com by the Russian government.

"Is it really a great loss for Russian-speaking users?" he asked, adding, "Not in my opinion."

"Once again we are witness to a situation where Western platforms lose their Russian public because of their own phobia of Russia."

Social networks such as Twitter, Facebook and Instagram have already been blocked in Russia, as have dozens of media websites over Ukraine.

Since President Vladimir Putin sent troops to Ukraine, authorities have stepped up measures to silence critics of the military operation in Russia's pro-Western neighbour.

New legislation imposes prison terms of up to 15 years for spreading information about the Russian military deemed false by the government.

Shaken by war, Ukrainian artists 'fight with images'

Some of Ukrainian artist Vlodko Kaufman's soldier portraits

 (AFP/Yuriy Dyachyshyn)


Alice Hackman
Sun, April 24, 2022

Ukrainian artist Vlodko Kaufman hopes one day he will be able to stop scribbling portraits of troops killed by Russia on utility bills and old tram tickets.

"Every day I keep track of what is happening at the front, how many are killed, wounded, missing or captured," the 65-year-old said.

He matches each grim report with a quick biro headshot of the same brooding soldier on whatever paper is lying around.

On a table in his gallery in western Ukraine, Kaufman spread out hundreds of identical images of the combatant in a helmet. The most recent stretched out in rows on furniture assembly instructions, a photocopy of his passport, or a plane ticket.

"This work is a requiem that will be performed as long as the war lasts," he said.

"I will only stop drawing when the conflict is over, so who knows how many more there will be."

The artist started his project in 2014, when fighting first flared between Ukraine and Russia-backed separatists in the country's east.

But since Moscow launched a full-scale invasion of his country on February 24, he has been drawing with increasing regularity, he says.

Kaufman is only one of many Ukrainian artists in the relatively sheltered western city of Lviv employing their talent to record the horrors of war, call for the world's attention, or simply support those affected.

- 'We have to win' -

A short walk away, at the top of a winding wooden staircase, 49-year-old Serhiy Savchenko stood in his paint-splotched studio next to one of the few paintings he has managed to create in recent weeks.

"It's called 'Green'," he said, after the military shade that has pervaded daily life.

Dozens of tiny abstract figures representing the civilians who have signed up to fight parade across the canvas.

Savchenko said he needed to paint so he could "breathe", but these days art had taken a backseat. Requests for paintings and exhibitions would have to wait.

"We are at the top of Western interest, but we have to use it to get more aid," he said.

The established artist has transformed his gallery in Poland into a logistics centre to ship in supplies.

He spends much of his day on the phone, and his new profession sometimes involves stuffing tactical boots with medical supplies and chocolate.

"I try to invest all my artistic knowledge, all my contacts, all my time, all my health into the situation," said Savchenko, one of many improvised go-betweens hooking up donors with Ukrainians in need.

"We have to win."

As he spoke, he awaited the wife of a musician friend deployed to Mykolaiv in the embattled south of the country. She was going to pick up two sleeping bags that someone brave would drive down to him.

If nothing is done, "everybody will die," Savchenko said, eyes glistening as he recalled the thousands of lives already lost.

"We have to build the future -- a future where there will be art."

- For the children -

In another part of the city, 28-year-old Mikhailo Skop also hopes for a new dawn in which Ukraine will emerge victorious.

At the bustling Lviv Art Centre, he held up a poster from a series of war-inspired Tarot card images he has created to voice the country's woes abroad.

In "The Sun", a child on a horse waves a Ukrainian flag above a field of sunflowers. Skulls, one marked with the letter "Z" associated with the invading Russian forces, lie at their feet.

"All of us are fighting but in different ways," said Skop, who also goes by the street artist name neivanmade.

"I'm fighting with my images."

For "Temperance", he had drawn an angel distributing food to forlorn characters who appear to be some of the millions the fighting has displaced.

In "Strength", a woman twists a Russian tank's gun out of action -- a jab at the Russian state's "toxic masculinity", he said.

His Tarot cards are selling online as posters and t-shirts in Europe and the United States, and all proceeds will go towards helping Ukrainian children overcome the trauma of conflict.

"They will grow up and become this country," he said.

ah/oc

FREE PEASANTS

Ukraine's Poorest Sow Seeds Under The Bombs

By Joris FIORITI and Antoine DEMAISON
04/24/22 AT 1:15 PM

Standing in front of the home of his boss recently hit by a bomb in southern Ukraine, Vassili Kushch never wavers in his commitment to the land, picking up his shovel and getting to work.

"I must work. I don't have anywhere else to go," labourer Kushch, 63, says in the village of Mala Tokmachka, 70 kilometres (43 miles) southeast of Zaporizhzhia.

The village, only a few kilometres from the invisible line separating Moscow's troops from Kyiv's forces, wakes up every night to Russian rockets splitting the sky and discovers the disastrous consequences every morning.

Russian strikes mangled the metal fence belonging to Kushch's boss. Several windows in his old tractors, parked in the garden, have shattered.

Rubble litters the ground. The small bomb responsible for the damage has gouged a hole in the ground, right in front of the home.

Vassili Kushch is one of hundreds of residents who decided to stay in the Ukrainian village of Mala Tokmachka 

Photo: AFP / Ed JONES

Kushch doesn't hold his words back for the "Russian bastards" who destroy his village but soon lifts his shovel once more.

On the other side of the road, another bomb destroyed a red-brick building.

"The neighbour was in the kitchen. She left to hide in the fields," Kushch says, before adding: "Thank God, the cow is still alive."

Kushch is one of hundreds of residents who decided to stay in the village, though many others fled after two months of war.

The last ones to remain are the poorest and most vulnerable, often the oldest, and those whose only riches come from the earth.

Kushch doesn't have much. The army jacket he wears was "given by a prison guard", his loose trousers "date back to the Soviet era" and he lives in a small room, which "shakes" every time Russians strike.

Olga Tus wants to believe that the war 'will end soon'

 Photo: AFP / Ed JONES

"It's like I'm naked," sighs the former driver, who has been doing odd jobs for 30 years. "I don't have money to buy anything."

Kushch, a divorced father of five who is not in contact with his children, would like to "bury alive" the "katsap", a pejorative term used to refer to Russians.

But he knows he doesn't have any chance against Moscow's forces with just his shovel and so he remains in Mala Tokmachka.

"If we don't sow the potatoes, we will have none to harvest. Same for onions. And so the cows will die of hunger," he says with evident fear, rolling a cigarette with tobacco he has grown himself.

Vera Dounda wishes to die in the village where she was born 

Photo: AFP / Ed JONES

It would be a similar tragedy for a man whose parents, born in 1927, experienced the great famine of 1932-33, and another in 1946-47.

Kyiv has vigorously campaigned for the Stalin-era famines on its territory in the 1930s -- known as the Holodomor -- to be recognised as genocide.

These tragedies taught him one thing: "You can't just live on water, but you can survive with milk."

Olga Tus, who hosts Kushch, accuses him of being "a drunkard", adding: "When he drinks, we don't approach him. Otherwise, it's OK."

But the 60-something hardy woman, who ties her hair under a magenta scarf, shares two cardinal values in rural Ukraine with Kushch.

The first is a hatred of Russians -- Tus worked in Moscow for 20 years and described Russians as "swines".

The second is the commitment to the land and to sow seeds because, as the local saying goes, "when the flowers start to bloom, everything ends".

Tus wants to believe that the war "will end soon" and doesn't "even consider for a second" that Russian troops can take Mala Tokmachka, despite the sounds of rockets rumbling above.

A bet that the "rich" clearly did not believe in, having fled the village, in contrast with the "poor" who stayed, according to Tus.

For several days, AFP observed many convoys of combine harvesters and other gleaming tractors on the secondary roads leading to Zaporizhzhia, a large city still under Kyiv's control.

Yuri, head of the territorial defence of Mala Tokmachka, says "it's to prevent these machines being looted by Russians".

Natalia Bouinitskaia and her husband, Guennady, have other concerns.

The couple cannot leave because of Natalia's mother, Vera Dounda, who wishes to die in the village where she was born.

"I'm scared when it shakes too strongly. So, I lie down and I look at the window," the 84-year-old says, who can no longer walk "not because of an illness but because of age".

Dounda thinks of a future without war, or of her glorious past, when she could "run, run, run", without any bombs to flee.

Egypt releases 41 political prisoners, says negotiator

Those released were all being held on political charges and charges related to freedom of thought and expression

a policeman opening the gate to al-Qanatir women's prison, at the tip of the Nile delta in Qalyoubiya province, about 30 kilometres north of Egypt's capital on 27 December 2020

By MEE and agencies
Published date: 24 April 2022 

Egypt on Sunday released 41 political prisoners from pre-trial detention, according to a politician-turned-negotiator.

"Forty-one of those held on remand detention on political charges and (charges related to) freedom of thought and expression" have been released, Mohamed al-Sadat said.

Long a fixture of Egypt's political scene, Sadat is a nephew of former president Anwar al-Sadat and has recently emerged as an unofficial negotiator for political prisoners.

Egypt: Rights groups demand whereabouts of journalist arrested by security services   Read More »

Rights groups estimate that tens of thousands of such prisoners are being held in Egypt.

Among those freed Sunday, prominent lawyer Khaled Ali told AFP, were journalist Mohamed Salah, researcher Abdo Fayed and activists Walid Shawky, Haitham al-Banna and Hassan al-Barbary.

Activist Radwa Mohamed, who was arrested in 2019 for criticising the regime amid rare protests calling for Sisi's removal from office, was another of those released, according to her lawyer Nabeeh al-Ganadi.

All six were charged with "belonging to a terrorist organisation and spreading false news" – an accusation frequently levelled against dissidents in Egypt.

Shawky had begun a hunger strike in February. Both he and Salah had previously been ordered released before new charges were levied against them - a common tactic used to circumvent Egypt's two-year maximum pretrial detention period, according to rights groups.

More detainees will be released, Sadat hinted, as "legal and humanitarian reviews" will very likely leave some eligible for "presidential pardons" that are conventionally handed down around Eid, set for the first week of May.

In an interview with AFP, Egyptian-Palestinian activist Ramy Shaath, who was released in January, detailed brutal conditions and treatment in prison, describing inmates as "rotting in hell".

This week, four social media comedians were arrested on charges of terrorism and spreading false news for a song posted online that satirised the authorities' failure to rein in rampant inflation.

In November, Human Rights Watch accused the international community of "rewarding repressive rule" by selecting the North African country to host the next climate summit - the COP27, scheduled for November.

Rio's flamboyant Carnival parade returns after pandemic hiatus

01:43  A performer from the Beija Flor samba school parades during Carnival celebrations at the Sambadrome in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil on April 23, 2022. 

© Silvia Izquierdo, AP

Issued on: 24/04/2022

Video by: Solange MOUGIN

Colorful floats and flamboyant dancers are delighting tens of thousands jammed into Rio de Janeiro's iconic Sambadrome, putting on a delayed Carnival celebration after the pandemic halted the dazzling displays.

FRENCH ELECTION: WHERE IS THE LEFT?

French presidential election: Abstention rate estimated to be the highest in 50 years


Issued on: 24/04/2022

01:41 Video by: Selina SYKES

The final rate of abstention is set to reach 28%, up 2.5% from 2017, according to our partners Ipsos-Sopra Steria. That would be the highest level for a presidential run-off since 1969, when two centre-right candidates faced off in a somewhat inconsequential clash. FRANCE 24's Selina Sykes reports from a polling station.

Mid-day turnout in French presidential run-off at 26.41 percent

Shirli SITBON

Turnout for the French presidential run-off stood at 26.4 percent at noon on Sunday. FRANCE 24's Shirli Sitbon reports from a polling station in the 19th arrondissement of Paris.

CRIMINAL CAPITALISM; NEO- COLONIALISM

Iraq exhibits restored art pillaged after 2003 invasion
AFP

Published April 24, 2022 - 

A wooden sculpture of a gazelle with undulating curves is on display at Iraq’s Ministry of Culture.—AFP


BAGHDAD: Verdant landscapes, stylised portraits of peasant women, curved sculptures — an exhibition in Baghdad is allowing art aficionados to rediscover the pioneers of contemporary Iraqi art.

Around one hundred items are on display in the capital, returned and restored nearly two decades after they were looted.

Many of the works, including pieces by renowned artists Jawad Selim and Fayiq Hassan, disappeared in 2003 when museums and other institutions were pillaged in the chaos that followed the US-led invasion to topple dictator Saddam Hussein.

Thousands of pieces were stolen, and organised criminal networks often sold them outside Iraq.

Tracked down in Switzerland, the US, Qatar and neighbouring Jordan, sculptures and paintings dating between the 1940s and 1960s have been on display since late March at the Ministry of Culture, in a vast room that used to serve as a restaurant.

“These works are part of the history of contemporary art in Iraq,” ministry official Fakher Mohamed said. Pictures and sculptures were in 2003 spirited away from the Saddam Arts Centre, one of Baghdad’s most prestigious cultural venues at the time.

While he crushed all political dissent, Saddam cultivated the image of a patron of the arts. The invasion and years of violence that followed ended a flourishing arts scene, particularly in Baghdad.

Now, relative stability has led to a fledgling artistic renaissance, including book fairs and concerts, of which the exhibition organised by the ministry is an example.

Published in Dawn, April 24th, 2022

Ilhan Omar regrets Kashmir not getting US attention it merits

Tariq Naqash

Published April 22, 2022 

Ilhan Omar attends the press conference in Muzaffarabad.—AFP

MUZAFFARABAD: US Congre­ss­woman Ilhan Abdullahi Omar on Thursday acknowledged that Kash­mir dispute was not being talked about in the power centres of the United States of America at the required level, but expressed the hope that the situation would change.

At an interaction with local media at the President House, Rep. Omar said, “On the question of Kashmir, we held a committee hearing on the foreign affairs committee to look at the reports of human rights violations and to talk about the bigger issue with the [Narendra] Modi administration’s anti-Muslim rhetoric and how that’s leading to human rights violations as well.”

On the occasion, Azad Jammu & Kashmir (AJK) President Barrister Sultan Mahmood was present.

In the same breath, she added: “I don’t believe that it [Kashmir] is being talked about to the extent it needs to be, not only in Congress but also with the [US] administration.”

India reacts strongly to US Congresswoman’s visit to AJK

She, however, expressed the hope that her visit would pave the way for “many more conversations” on the Kashmir issue.

“And that the condemnations and concerns of those who fight for human rights and the question of the Kashmir issue will be included in those [hearings],” she said.

Local reporters had asked questions about anti-minorities legislation and state-sponsored assaults on religious minorities, mainly Muslims, in India, as well as the worsening human rights situation in occupied Jammu and Kashmir, particularly after it was stripped of its special status in August 2019.

One of them also asked if former prime minister and PTI chief Imran Khan, who blames the US for regime change in Pakistan, had also complained about it during their meeting the other day and if yes, what was her reply? However, Ms Omar avoided replying to it.

She thanked journalists for their “very spirited questions” and said she would address a formal press conference at the end of her trip and “probably answer some of the questions you all asked [here].”

Earlier, during her meeting with President Mahmood, she said she had voiced serious concern over the human rights violations in India and Kashmir and would [again] take up the issue with the US Congress as well as the Biden administration.

“We are deeply worried about India’s August 5, 2019 move,” she told the AJK president, according to a press release by the latter’s office.

She said she was delighted to be given this opportunity to be in meetings [with officials in Pakistan and AJK] and looked forward to seeing different parts of it and learning more first-hand.

“For me, human rights have been the priority of my work, and you can’t fight for the rights of others if you are not doing it in partnership with them,” she said.

On his part, Mr Mahmood said India’s traditional intransigence was the stumbling block in the way of resolving the longstanding Kashmir issue that had now assumed dangerous proportions.

Due to India’s obduracy, no progress whatsoever has been made on the issue since 1947. Instead of resolving the dispute peacefully, India has deployed over 900,000 troops in the disputed territory, who are engaged in the systematic genocide of Kashmiris. “

The AJK president also drew her attention to demographic engineering in occupied Kashmir and said India had issued fake domiciles to 4.2 million Indian Hindus to change the proportion of the population in occupied Kashmir.

“Under the prevailing circumstances, there is a dire need for the international community, particularly the US, to come forward and help resolve this dispute between the two nuclear powers.”

He expressed gratitude to Ms Omar for taking a strong stance on human rights violations and underscoring the importance of dialogue.

“The manner in which you have condemned the human rights violations in occupied Kashmir by India is a source of strength for us,” he said.

According to official sources, the Congresswoman was also flown to the Line of Control (LoC) in the Chakothi sector, where she was briefed on the situation before and after the fresh understanding between the Pakistani and Indian armies to respect the 2003 ceasefire agreement.

Some residents, who had been affected by Indian shelling prior to the ceasefire, had also gathered there and shared their tales of horror with the visitors.

The Chakothi sector was home to one of the three active crossing points along the LoC, which had been opened in 2005 as a Kashmir specific confidence-building measure (CBM). Three years later, barter trade between the divided parts of Kashmir was also started as another CBM to increase people-to-people contact.

However, India unilaterally discontinued both travel and trade on flimsy grounds in April 2019 – just four months after scrapping the special status of occupied Jammu and Kashmir in a blatant disregard of the UN Security Council resolutions.

It’s not the first time that Ms Omar, a Somali-American who belongs to President Joe Biden’s Democratic Party, has drawn attention to India’s poor human rights record.

In early April, she questioned the alleged reluctance of the US government to criticise Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government on human rights.

Days later, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said that Washington was monitoring the rise in human rights abuses in India by some government, police, and prison officials.

On Thursday, while Rep Omar was still in AJK, India issued a strongly-worded reaction to condemn her visit.

According to Indian media reports, Arindam Bagchi, spokesperson for India’s ministry of external affairs, said: “Let me just say that if such a politician wishes to practice her narrow-minded politics at home, that’s her business.

“But violating our territorial integrity and sovereignty... makes this ours, and we think the visit is condemnable.”

Published in Dawn, April 22nd, 2022

#KASHMIR IS #INDIA'S #GAZA

Demonstrations in AJK as Indian PM Modi’s visit to IoK observed as 'black day'

APP | AFP | Tariq Naqqash

Published April 24, 2022 - Updated about 3 hours ago

Protesters take part in a demonstration in Muzaffarabad against the visit of Prime Minister Narendra Modi to the disputed Jammu and Kashmir region, April 24. — AFP

A "black day" was observed and anti-India demonstrations were held in Azad Jammu and Kashmir on Sunday as Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi visited occupied Jammu and Kashmir in what was his first visit to the disputed territory since New Delhi revoked special status nearly three years ago.

New Delhi nullified the area's special status in August 2019, when authorities arrested thousands and imposed the world's longest internet shutdown, seeking to forestall local opposition to the move.

Tight security was in place for Modi's appearance at Palli village in Jammu, the Hindu-majority southern part of the territory, which celebrated New Delhi's introduction of direct rule as a defence against Kashmir's freedom movement.

Sunday's event marked Panchayati Raj, a day that commemorates grassroots democracy — although occupied Kashmir has been without an elected regional government since 2018.

There was a complete shutdown in occupied Kashmir, the official Pakistani press agency APP reported. The call for the strike was given by the All-Parties Hurriyat Conference.

In Azad Kashmir, demonstrations were held on the call of AJK Prime Minister Sardar Tanveer Ilyas yesterday.

Today, a large "black day" protest rally was held in the capital Muzaffarabad and led by AJK minister Khawaja Farooq Ahmed and representatives of other political parties. The rally started from Burhan Wani Chowk and ended at Ghari Pin Chowk. Apart from banners with anti-India and pro-independence slogans, the participants also held black flags and chanted slogans against Modi.

Addressing the participants on the occasion, Khawaja Farooq Ahmed said the protesters wanted to convince the international community through demonstrations that Kashmiris never recognised the Indian occupation and the arrival of a person like Modi — whose "hands are stained with the blood of innocent Kashmiris" — in any part of the territory was a "highly undesirable" thing for them.

He called on the international community, especially the United States and the United Kingdom, to sever their relations with India, as they had done with Russia over the war in Ukraine. He lamented the "double standards" of the international community in the case of Kashmiris.

Ahmed said that the UN and the international community should press India to give Kashmiris their right to self-determination. He said that India-occupied Kashmir was under a continuous curfew in which people's livelihoods were being destroyed under a "premeditated plan" so that they could not raise voices against India.

He also expressed gratitude to the institutions and people of Pakistan for always supporting Kashmiris.

Ahmed said that the day was not far when Kashmiris would become independent and a part of Pakistan.

Mushaal Hussein Malik, the wife of Jammu Kashmir Liberation Front chairman Yasin Malik, said that Modi's visit was "nothing but a cruel joke with the Kashmiri people", according to APP.

She vowed that the brave people of Kashmir would observe a complete shutdown on Modi's visit to give a clear message to him as well as to the world that Kashmiris would not accept brutal subjugation anymore.

At the end of the rally, prayers were offered for the independence of the occupied territory.
Tight security in Jammu

Indian authorities deployed troops and police personnel across the occupied territory, particularly in the Jammu region, as security measures ahead of Modi’s visit.

According to state-run APP, Indian personnel conducted random checking of vehicles and frisked passengers at checkpoints which mushroomed on the roads of all major cities and towns as well as the Srinagar-Jammu highway.

Indian police and troops used CCTV cameras to keep a watch on the movement of people. Sharpshooters were also deployed at high rise buildings while drone cameras and sniffer dogs were included in service. Indian police seized scores of bikes from different areas of Srinagar.

Black day to be observed on Modi’s visit to occupied Kashmir: AJK PM

Iftikhar A. Khan

Published April 24, 2022

Azad Kashmir Prime Minister Sardar Tanveer Ilyas addresses a press conference at the Kashmir House in Islamabad on Saturday. — APP

ISLAMABAD: Kashmiris on both sides of the Line of Control (LoC) will observe black day today (Sunday) when Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi undertakes his first visit to occupied Kashmir.

This was announced by Azad Kashmir (AJK) Prime Minister Sardar Tanveer Ilyas while speaking at a crowded press conference at the Kashmir House.

This was Tanveer Ilyas’ first press conference in the capital after assuming the office of the Azad Jammu and Kashmir prime minister.

Convener All Parties Hurriyat Conference-Azad Kashmir chapter (APHC) Farooq Rehmani and members of the AJK legislative assembly were also present on the occasion.

Mr Ilyas said protest demonstrations would be held and rallies taken out in Azad Kashmir as well as India-held Kashmir.

Protests, rallies to be taken out in Azad Kashmir, India-held Kashmir

He said Modi could not hoodwink the world by visiting occupied Kashmir in the presence of 800,000 Indian troops.

Terming Modi the ‘biggest terrorist’ and ‘killer of Kashmiris’, the AJK premier said his Hindutva ideology posed a serious threat to peace in the region and beyond, urging the United Nations to play its due role in resolving the lingering Kashmir dispute peacefully.

He said it was high time that the international community, particularly the UN, came forward in a big way to resolve the Kashmir dispute which was the main cause of unrest in the region.

The dire situation in occupied Kashmir merits immediate attention of the United Nations, Mr Ilyas said, adding that Kashmiris wanted the right to self-determination and did not want to be with India.

Referring to the enforced disappearances and killings of youth in fake encounters, the AJK premier said thousands of unmarked mass graves spread all across the territory spoke volumes about the systematic genocide of Kashmiris at the hands of India’s occupation machinery.

“At a time when Kashmiris stand deprived even of the inconsequential rights of governance due to stripping of the special status of their state, when the Indian occupation forces have stepped up the worst ever atrocities, Modi’s visit amounts to rubbing salt into the wounds of Kashmiris,” he said.

In fact, he said, the visit was part of the BJP government’s ploy to hoodwink the international community and create a false impression that “all is well in Kashmir”.

Paying rich tributes to veteran Hurriyat leader Syed Ali Gilani, PM Ilyas said Gilani was the voice of Pakistan.

Speaking on the occasion, Hurriyat leader Mohammad Farooq Rahmani said: “Indian army is killing Kashmiris the way Hitler committed mass killings in Germany and Israel massacred the Palestinians.”

Published in Dawn, April 24th, 2022

Violence erupts ahead of Modi visit to contested Jammu and Kashmir


Indian paramilitary soldiers walk near site of gunfight at a village near Srinagar, the summer capital of Indian Kashmir, on Friday. 

Photo by Farooq Khan/EPA-EFE

April 23 (UPI) -- Violence has erupted near an Indian army base in Jammu ahead of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's scheduled visit to the disputed Kashmir region on Sunday, reports said.

Modi is expected to hold his first public rally in Kashmir since 2019, when the government revoked the disputed region's special autonomous status, according to the Spanish news agency EFE.

Jammu and Kashmir, administered by India as a union territory, is a bifurcated subregion of the larger Kashmir region contested by Pakistan and India since 1947.

The Muslim-majority territory is separated from the Pakistani-administered territories of Azad Kashmir and Gilgit-Baltistan by the Line of Control, which serves as an unofficial border along the ceasefire lines from the end of the India-Pakistan War of 1971.

Sardar Tanveer Ilyas, prime minister of the Kashmir region controlled by Pakistan, said during a press conference in Islamabad Saturday Kashmiris on both sides of Line of Control would observe "Black Day" during Modi's visit to Jammu, Pakistan Today reported.

India and Pakistan each typically commemorate an annual "Black Day" in October to remember the start of the conflict over Kashmir in 1947.

Ilyas accused Indian security forces of the "extrajudicial executions" of thousands of Kashmiris and claimed India was settling Hindus in Kashmir to "disturb the ratio of population."

Dilbag Singh, the police chief in the India-controlled Jammu and Kashmir territory, said Friday that a "suicide squad" from the Kashmir-focused Jaish-e-Mohammed militant group had killed at least one security personnel and injured nine others, the Times of India reported.

Jaish-e-Mohammed has been described as a terrorist organization by the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point, which said such groups "that aspire to be active in Indian-controlled Kashmir remain a concern."

Singh said the group had "planned a major attack" in Jammu ahead of Modi's visit to "sabotage" the event, which was thwarted.

In a separate gunfight, Indian security forces killed four militants in the northern Baramulla district of the Kashmir Valley, police said. Five security personnel were killed during the incident.

Pakistan has accused India of "the worst form of state terrorism" and a "disregard for international human rights and humanitarian laws" during previous "Black Day" commemorations.