Posts Tagged ‘Nagar’

Unresolved Dispute: Dr Fai vows to continue struggle

According to Kashmir Media Service, Dr Fai, in a statement released to media in Srinagar, maintained that the experience of six decades had shown that the Kashmir dispute would not go away. He said that it was the bedrock of our determination to continue unrelentingly to seek justice and truth for the people of Kashmir.

Published in The Express Tribune, April 5^th, 2012.

Twitter Alert: Justice for Qudoos

A strong call by the Ahmadi community and its supporters for justice in the case of a well known Ahmadi schoolteacher alleged death by torture while in police custody was a top Twitter trend in Pakistan today.

Master Abdul Qudoos Ahmad, 43, was detained by the police in the first week of February and was brutally tortured during interrogations, causing severe internal injuries, Ahmad’s family alleged.

The trend #JusticeforQudoos was established by local Twitter users calling for accountability and justice in the case.

Top tweets

Naeem Sabir ? @cybegeek

to all active Ahmadi Community members on twitter demand justice for Master Abdul Qadoos in your circles #justiceforqadoos

Balal Haider ? @balalhaider

#justiceforqadoos is what we all want. Police involved in murdered must be held responsible.

Sabahat Ahmad ? @SabahatAhmad

may i ask the liberal and ‘free’ media why won’t they dare to give airtime to #JusticeForQadoos instead of airing their funny shows.

Munir Khan ? @munir104

Death by torture at the hands of Chenabnagar police should not go unpunished! #justiceforqadoos let this not be another statistic

rafi ? @morafi

What’s the fuss with #justiceforqadoos Pakistan media don’t think it’s important enough to report he was tortured to death by Punjab police

Man in search of ‘power’ meets death

LAHORE/FAISALABAD – One person was killed as a security guard opened fire on angry protesters who attacked a petrol pump in the Daroghawala area of Lahore on Monday, as people came out on streets against unending power crisis which has paralysed life across Punjab.
Violent protests were also reported from Faisalabad, Bahawalnagar, Gujranwala, Kamalia, Rawalpindi, Multan and other towns and cities …

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Five killed, 30 wounded in road accident in Held Kashmir

Five persons were killed while 31 others wounded in a road accident on Jammu-Srinagar National Highway in Ramban, Jammu & Kashmir district. Reports reached to Agence India Press that, the accident occurred when a passenger bus on its way from Jammu to Srinagar rolled down into a 300 feet deep gorge at Nashari near Batote. Four persons were killed on the spot while other succumbed to injuries …

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Memogate: Yasin Malik to visit Pakistan Saturday

srinagar (TheNation Monitoring) JKLF Chairman Mohammad Yasin Malik will travel to Pakistan on Saturday to depose before the Memo Commission. “Malik will be leaving for Pakistan on Saturday after he was asked by the Commission to submit his application in person,” a JKLF spokesman said here on Saturday, reported Zee News.
Malik had written to Supreme Court Chief Justice Iftkhar M …

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15 killed in train collision in India

Fifteen people were killed Tuesday in a train accident in north India, an official said, amid a political row over a plan to raise fares to pay for a safety upgrade on the network. A train travelling across Uttar Pradesh state crashed into an overloaded jeep carrying 19 people as it tried to pass an unmanned crossing in Mahamaya Nagar district, 296 kilometres (185 miles) from state capital …

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Atleast 15 killed in train collision in India: local official

A train travelling across Uttar Pradesh state crashed into an overloaded jeep carrying 19 people as it tried to pass an unmanned crossing in Mahamaya Nagar district, 296 kilometres from state capital Lucknow.

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Via DAWN.com

PTI to hold US-style primaries

LAHORE: As Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) gears itself for the upcoming general elections, the party is holding intra party elections to elect election candidates.

In a US-style candidate nomination and ticket-awarding process, PTI aims to introduce local caucuses on district levels throughout the country. Aspiring candidates would undertake debates and undergo primaries to win a party ticket for contesting on Provincial Assembly or National Assembly seats.

PTI will also launch a massive membership drive with the target being four million registered members for their electoral college.

The members of the caucus in turn will send a candidate for national and provincial assembly elections.

The new party constitution, which is still on the drawing board, envisages the details of the local caucuses and Electoral College. At the moment PTI has almost 800,000 basic members.

“No matter, how high-profile a politician is, a ticket is not guaranteed unless the local caucus awards him the nomination,” said Andleeb Abbas, PTI information secretary.

The members of this Electoral College will be picked during the membership drive from every union council of the country.

Meanwhile the much-awaited constitution of the party is being debated by the central executive committee of the party and will be released in two weeks.

The party is also going to launch an Insaf Professional Forum on March 19 in Lahore that would include top professionals from Punjab and it would serve as an advisory board on the technical matters. Moreover, PTI Chairman Imran Khan is going to launch a public contact drive in the south Punjab which would span across three days during which Khan would address public rallies in Mailsi, Muzzaffargarh, Khanewal and Bahawalnagar. On March 23, Khan would address a public rally in Sialkot.

On April 8, the party has planned a big public rally in Abbottabad for which preparations are under way. During the rally Khan is expected to take a position on the formation of Hazara province. The PTI bandwagon is going to Quetta on April 20 for what is billed to be the biggest public gathering thus far.

Details of the rally are being worked out by the committee headed by PTI Balochistan President Qasim Suri.

PTI expects to attract dissident Baloch nationalist leaders to the rally. The party wants to turn this event in Quetta as a major step towards unifying Baloch leaders back into the national fold. To achieve this objective Khan had been in touch with the Baloch leaders and that is why the party has kept postponing its Quetta show.

Yasin Malik arrested in Indian-held Kashmir

Islamabad – The Indian police on Sunday arrested Chairman of Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front in Indian-occupied Kashmir Yasin Malik,while he was going towards Islamabad town to express solidarity with the family of a young boy who was killed after being deliberately hit by a speedy Indian army vehicle on Saturday.
The JKLF spokesman in a statement issued in Srinagar said that Yasin Malik was …

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Kohistan tragedy victims laid to rest

The victims of Kohistan tragedy were laid to rest after offering funeral prayers here in Gilgit on Wednesday.
Tension continued to grip parts of Gilgit and Hunza Nagar on Wednesday after brutal killing of 18 Shiite pilgrims by unknown assailants amid curfew was imposed in both cities.
The funeral prayers of 11 identified victims were offered at 1 pm.The funeral prayers were held at Imamia Jama …

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World did not value our peaceful movement, Laments Malik

The Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front Chairman, Muhammad Yasin Malik has expressed hope that the Kashmiris can defeat India morally, politically and spiritually through a disciplined peaceful movement.
Muhammad Yasin Malik, in a media interview in Srinagar, however complained that the international community, Indian government and its society did not value the Kashmiris’ transitionto the …

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India blocked Kashmir troops’ trial over abuses: documents

SRINAGAR, Feb 28: India has rejected every request over two decades to prosecute its soldiers in civilian courts in Indian-held Kashmir for alleged rights abuses, including murder and rape, according to documents

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Via DAWN.com

Syed Ali Geelani: Khar invites Hurriyet leader to visit Pakistan

According to Kashmir Media Service, the spokesperson of Geelani’s forum, Ayaz Akbar, in a statement issued in Srinagar said that the Pakistani High Commissioner in New Delhi, Shahid Malik, along with his associates visited the veteran leader at his Malviya Nagar residence in New Delhi. Malik had come up to formally invite Geelani to visit Pakistan.

The spokesperson added that the decision on accepting the invitation of Pakistan would be taken in Majlis-e-Shoora of the forum. He said that during the meeting, Geelani appealed to Pakistan to step up diplomatic efforts to apprise the world about human rights violations being perpetrated by Indian forces in the occupied Kashmir and to build pressure on India for resolving the issue.

“Pakistan has always supported Kashmiris at political, moral and diplomatic level,” Geelani said during the meeting. He called for inclusion of Kashmiri leadership in talks, saying that bilateral engagements between India and Pakistan had proven futile in the past and the dialogue process could be made result-oriented by involving the Kashmiri leaders.

Meanwhile, Malik assured the veteran leader that Pakistan would continue to support the Kashmir’s struggle for securing their inalienable right to self-determination.

Published in The Express Tribune, February 27^th, 2012.

Battle of survival: Watching the tongues slip into extinction

While lawmakers table ‘ethno-linguistic’ basis for the creation of new provinces; in hindsight, the debate renders itself preposterous given the fact that 28 of the languages across the country are dying out.

Preservation seems to be one item missing from the to-do lists of lawmakers.

Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa (K-P) and other northern areas of the country are host to about half of languages spoken in Pakistan — a significant majority of which have been listed as ‘endangered’.

The United Nation Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) Atlas of the World Languages in Danger documents around 28 Pakistani languages as endangered in various categories. The UNESCO Atlas lists six of these languages as ‘severely endangered’, 15 as ‘definitely endangered’ and seven as ‘vulnerable’.

Dying out

According to the UNESCO report, among the languages Pakistan could potentially lose are: Khowar spoken in Chitral and parts of Gilgit with an estimated number of 220,000 speakers left; Burushaski spoken in Nagar Hunza which has 87,000 speakers left; Maiya in Indus Kohistan with 220,000 speakers left; Purik is mainly spoken in Kashmir; however, data regarding the exact number of speakers is not available.

Furthermore, Bashkarik is majorly spoken in Swat and Dir by around 40,000 people, Bateri on the east bank of Indus Kohistan with 29,000 speakers, Bhadarvi along the Line of Control in Kashmir with 66,198 speakers, Gawar Bati in Chitral with 9,500 speakers, Kati in Nuristan and Chitral by 18,700 people, Kundal Shahi in Neelum Valley with just 500 speakers, Orumuri in South Waziristan with a 1,000 speakers, Palula in Chitral with 8,600 speakers, Savi in Chitral and Afghanistan with 3,000 speakers and Torwali in Swat is spoken by around 60,000 people.

Similarly, Chilasso is spoken in Indus Kohistan with around 2,000 speakers left, Dameli in Chitral with 5,000, Domaki in Gilgit with 500, Gowro in Indus Kohistan with around 200, Kalasha in Chitral with 5,000, Kalkoti in Dir Kohistan with around 4,000, Ushuju in Swat with 2,000, Wakhi along Wakhan corridor with 75,000, Yidgah in Chitral with 5,500 and Zangskari whose exact number of speakers are not available.

No preservation

However, Forum for Language Initiative (FLI) Programme Manager Mohammad Zaman Sagar has questioned the authenticity of the figures. Zaman told The Express Tribune that there is a Badeshi dialect in Swat, which is on the verge of extinction, has only two speakers left.

He added that the number of speakers of the Gowro language are stated to be around 40,000, while the total population of Kalam stands at around 70,000.

“Some of these figures are as old as 1970s,” he said.

Zaman believes lack of documentation to be a major hurdle in the preservation of these languages. According to him, only Khowar, Palula and Kalasha have been documented for in Chitral out of more than a dozen languages spoken in the region; only Gowro and Torwali have been documented for in Indus Kohistan and Swat out of around six languages; and only Indus Kohistani and Sheena have been documented for in Indus Kohistan out of as many as six languages.

The FLI programme manger said that even on the national level, proper documentation has only been conducted of around 20 languages.

He said that Yidgha in Lotkuh was under threat of extinction with hardly 1000 speakers left, while Badeshi and Ushuju in Swat, Gowro and Bateri in Indus Kohistan, Domaki in Gilgit and Kundal Shahi in Kashmir were also endangered.

Zaman lamented government apathy towards these languages and said: “We will only be able to express our sorrow, after a language dies down.”

Restive frontiers

Lack of an official body monitoring preservation is not the only obstacle. Militancy in the tribal belt has also created significant stumbling blocks for the preservation of these languages — with Ormuri in South Waziristan as a classic victim.

Unofficial figures state that Ormuri is spoken by around 10,000 peoplein the the Kaniguram area of the South Waziristan — a remote village in Mehsud tribe’s heartland.

“The number of Orumuri speakers is about 10,000,” said Zaman, adding that a majority of locals who used this language have been displaced due to militancy — scattering them across the country.

“Within a community, a language is automatically preserved when you speak it, but when a group is displaced, the chances of that language being abandoned or dying out are much higher,” Zaman said.

Lack of govt support

Fakhruddin Akhundzada, a language activist belonging to Chitral and associated with the FLI, was of the view that the lack of government support was the basic hurdle in preservation of these languages.

“Unlike Urdu, which is language to only six percent of the population, no other language gets any attention from the government,” he said.

He pointed out that there was no law at the federal or provincial level to encourage and preserve these languages except a recent effort by the K-P government to set up a language authority.

However, Akhundzada believes that the advent of social media and the telecommunication revolution maybe be serving as a blessing in disguise for these dying languages.

“Most of these languages do not have any script; however, use of Romanised versions by many people in short messaging service (SMS), chatting and Facebook, have recently risen,” he said.

It seems though, without concerted efforts on the part of the country as a whole, we may very well not hear the sound of these languages again.

Published in The Express Tribune, February 21^st, 2012.

Protests erupt in IHK after youth slain by Indian army

SRINAGAR  – Protesters blocked a main highway in restive Indian-occupied Kashmir on Saturday after a young Kashmiri was shot dead by the army in what military officials described as an “accidental” shooting.
Ashiq Hussain Rather, 22, was killed late Friday when a soldier accidentally fired his rifle as security forces combed the area for militants, the army said.
The killing …

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Top Kashmiri leadership detained in IHK

ISLAMABAD – The top Kashmiri leadership in the Indian-held Kashmir (IHK) was detained following a crackdown launched on Saturday, seemingly to foil the preparations for the Kashmir Solidarity Day being observed in Pakistan and both sides of Line of Control (LoC) today (Sunday).
The leading political representatives put to house-arrests during the raids in Srinagar included All Parties Hurriyat …

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Four of a family die of suffocation in Gujrat

 At least four persons of a family died of suffocation due to leakage of gas here in Gujrat late Sunday night.
According to rescue sources, a family residing in Doulat Nagar of Gujrat had left gas heater turned on to keep them warm.
At late night the heater turned off as supply was suspended due to low pressure.
Later after restoration of supply, leakage from heater continued and gas filled …

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