GILGIT: Curfew has been imposed in Gilgit where five persons were killed and thirty injured in clashes following a hand grenade attack Tuesday, Geo News reported. According to sources, Ahle Sunnat Wal Jamaat was observing a shutter down strike today when unknown men hurled hand grenades at Ittehad Chowk that injured two policemen and a passerby. The grenade attack initiated clashes that later killed five persons and injured 30 others. The injured were shifted to…
Posts published in April 2012
The author is a journalist working for Deccan Chronicle newspaper in Delhi Media commentator Aakar Patel, who also co-owns a publishing and content outsource company in Mumbai, recently wrote for The Express Tribune about the Kashmir freedom struggle and how India gets away despite its reign of oppression and coercion in the valley. For a change, Aakar is one of the voices from the Indian mainstream who infuses fresh life into the waning secular Indianess.…
By Shabbir Mir in The Express Tribune, April 2 GILGIT: The Pakistan Tehreek Insaaf’s (PTI) “tsunami” seems to have washed away the party chief’s memories of Gilgit-Baltistan (G-B), where people await his visit in the hope that it will help restore calm in the region, periodically inflamed by sectarian strife. “Where is Imran Khan and why can’t his tsunami come and wash away the curse of sectarianism?” said Tufail Ahmed, a resident of Gilgit, the…
By Shabbir Mir in The Express Tribune, April 2 GILGIT: The city saw yet another tense day as rival sects exchanged heavy gunfire on Sunday evening, leaving two persons critically injured. The clashes erupted after Shia protesters ended a strike launched against a ban on a sect-based transport service by government. On the call given by Anjuman Imamia the protesters blocked roads at various locations in the city disrupting traffic. They demanded that the permission…
The writer is a former Pakistan ambassador to the UN. IN a TV interview, Pakistan’s foreign minister “categorically” denied that Pakistan was going to “freeze” the Kashmir dispute, asserting “we have changed the road that leads to resolution of [the] Kashmir issue and other issues that exist with India”. Foreign Minister Khar has done much to counter the portrayal of Pakistan by the western and Indian media as the ‘epicentre’ of terrorism and nuclear proliferation.…
EVEN though he was breaking no new ground, the UN envoy on human rights chose New Delhi as the venue to tell India that democracy and special powers for armed forces for tackling popular causes did not go together. Talking to journalists on Friday after visiting India-held Kashmir and other insurgency-hit areas, Christof Heyns, the world body’s special rapporteur on extrajudicial and summary executions, said the Armed Forces Special Powers Act was “hated” and the…