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Pashtuns will not buy Pak Army’s Dollar Jihad & Dollar Islam: Dr Said Alam Mahsud

News Intervention Bureau
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Pashtuns will not buy Pak Army’s Dollar Jihad & Dollar Islam: Dr Said Alam Mahsud

Peshawar bomb blasts have cleared the air for Pashtuns and they are now loudly proclaiming that Pakistan Army is their biggest tormentor. A day after Pashtun Tahafuz Movement (PTM) founder Manzoor Pashteen squarely blamed the Pak Army for Peshawar bomb blasts, another senior PTM leader Dr Said Alam Mahsud singled out Pak Army and its generals for filling their coffers over the dead bodies of Pashtuns. A pediatrician by profession Dr Said Alam did not mince words in his latest vlog and said that it is the “uniform” that’s behind terrorism in Pashtun lands. Across Pashtunistan reference to “uniform” clearly means Pakistan Army.

Pashtun leader Mahsud went on to say that the CTD drama in Bannu or the bombs used in devastating bomb blast inside the mosque in Peshwar’s police line mosque have all been brought by no one but the Paki regime. He said “You need our bodies again to fill your coffers. Then you will sell Jihad, sell Islam and fight a new war.” He further said, “but now we will not allow this to happen, be deceived in the name of dollar Islam and dollar Jihad.”

Addressing the Pakistan Army generals, he said that Islam and Jihad will not be bought by Pashtuns anymore. He warned that if the Pak Army does not stop this genocide then they would be exposed from head to toe in front of the whole world and that the world will come to know and realise that that there is “no Taliban, no terrorist, no Sipah Sahaba, no Jaish Muhammad, it is all you [Pak Army]. This [Pakistan] is a terrorist state!”

Video: Dr. Syed Alam Masood, pediatrician and senior PTM leader, blames Pakistan Army for Peshawar bomb blast and using terrorism as a weapon against Pashtuns.

Dr. Mahsud opined that the Pakistan Army generals say that they have wiped out terrorists and cleared the areas, but the fact is that they have instead destroyed Pashtun houses by taking away their belongings and have also destroyed the markets. He accused the Pakistani regime of providing a covert safe haven to terrorists while all these years the subservient Pakistani media said that the “Pakistan Army is brave and they have wiped out the terrorists”.

Dr Said Alam Mahsud further explained that Pakistan is in a financial crisis, the dollars are gone and it’s General Bajwa, General Faiz Hameed and Barrister Saif who have brought back these terrorists from their hideouts. They are all behind these terrorist attacks, he said.

Pakistan engineered Peshwar blast to extract money from China and US: Manzoor Pashteen

Vivek Sinha
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Pakistan engineered Peshwar blast to extract money from China and US: Manzoor Pashteen

Manzoor Pashteen finally said what had already been known for some time and was often discussed in select Pashtun gatherings. In a carefully worded tweet the founder of Pashtun Tahafuz Movement (PTM) blamed the Pakistani regime for engineering blasts at a mosque in Peshawar that killed more than 90 people and seriously injured over 150 in order to extort money from both China and the US. The reference to Pakistan Army or to the Paki regime is implicit yet the words make it amply clear that its Rawalpindi that’s being referred to by the Pashtun leader.

“Unrest will be created, there will be explosions, talk will reach CPEC. Then Money will be taken from China because CPEC has been damaged by terrorism, so we need to crush it. And then Dollars will be taken from America (US) that we have to build more so that CPEC fails. So kill one and build two to keep the business going,” said Manzoor Pashteen in his Urdu tweet (see below) soon after the Peshawar bomb blasts on Monday. The second last line in Pashteen’s rather cryptic tweet could either mean asking dollar donations for strengthening Taliban’s terrorist network or building supporting infrastructure which can be detrimental to CPEC’s success. In the last line Manzoor Pashteen clearly said that these sponsored terrorist attacks by the Pakistan Army are only a means for the Pakis to mint money.

Using sponsored terrorist attacks on its own citizens is not something new for the rogue Pakistan Army. On December 16, 2014 six armed ‘Taliban terrorists’ entered the Army Public School (APS) at Peshawar and opened fire inside the school premises killing around 150 people that included 132 school children. Immediately after this attack, the ISPR– Pakistan Army’s public relations wing– launched a worldwide campaign to prove that Pakistan itself is a victim of terror and they desperately need funds to fight Islamic extremism and Taliban’s terror attacks. Later on Pashtuns came to know that this entire operation was planned by GHQ Rawalpindi that used its proxy TTP (Tehreek-e-Taliban) to massacre school children at Peshawar. “The APS school is located inside military cantonment and one has cross through numerous check posts to reach inside. It is impossible for TTP terrorists to carry heavy guns and ammunition inside APS Peshawar unless an until they were actively helped by top brass of Pakistan Army,” revealed Khan in a conversation with this reporter. Khan is a Pashtun and gave only his last name. His only child was killed in the 2014 APS Peshawar massacre.

Pakistan Army has always used Pashtuns as cannon fodder for their sinister gambit across South Asia. Indoctrinated Pashtun youth were sent to wage jihad against India in Jammu Kashmir and to fix Rawalpindi’s foes in Afghanistan. All Paki regimes whether military dictatorship or the Rawalpindi-backed civilian governments, propped up at Islamabad, followed the policy to exploit Pashtuns in the name of Islam. The Panjabi officers in Pakistan Army built business empires at the expense of AK-47 wielding Pashtuns, who were subsequently getting killed.

Over the years ‘enforced disappearance’ was followed as a state policy to weed out Pashtuns who dared to oppose Rawalpindi. It was in this backdrop that Manzoor Pashteen formed Pashtun Tahafuz Movement (PTM), a non-political unarmed nonviolent organisation that works for the protection of Pashtuns.

When Pashtuns started rallying behind Manzoor Pashteen the Pakistan Army tried to mislead PTM in the name of negotiations. In yet another tweet after the Monday Peshawar blasts Manzoor Pashteen laid bare this nefarious gambit of Rawalpindi. “Armed organizations were infiltrated in different areas in the name of negotiations. When we held rallies against it, propaganda was started (against us). We kept shouting that ground is being prepared for war, in the name of peace. Over the last 20 years ago, the blood of Pashtuns is being shed in the name of negotiations, explosions and operations,” said Manzoor Pashteen in his Urdu tweet (see below).

Just a day before the Pakistan-sponsored terrorist attack at Peshawar mosque, a ‘missing persons’ camp was set up at Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa by the family members of Pashtuns who have been forcibly disappeared by Pakistani forces over the last several years. “No Pakistani state institution or government institution has shown seriousness to solve the issue of Pashtun missing persons,” said Manzoor Pashteen. In fact, Pakistani regime uses ‘enforced disappearance’ as a state policy to curb dissent. Several hundred thousand Baloch, Sindhi, Kashmiri and Pashtuns have been abducted by Pakistani forces over the last decade whose whereabouts are are still unknown. The family members of these unfortunate ‘missing persons’ do not even know if their dear ones are dead or are languishing in any Pakistani jail.

UNHRC ‘requests’ Pakistan to stop enforced disappearances

News Intervention Bureau
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UNHRC ‘requests’ Pakistan to stop enforced disappearances

Under the Universal Periodic Review process at the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva, the member states have asked Pakistan to stop enforced disappearances and other human rights abuses and demanded the protection of people.

This review was Pakistan’s fourth, having previously been reviewed under this process in 2008, 2012 and 2017 where Pakistan had promised to criminalize enforced disappearances and to hold perpetrators accountable. However, the Council said that it hasn’t happened despite efforts to legislate against the practice after the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Pakistan presented the report of Pakistan.

 Germany,India, Brazil, Netherlands, Paraguay and other member states have asked Pakistan to ratify the Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance and that they need to resolve the issue of custodial killings. Italy recommended ending enforced disappearances, ratifying the EDK Convention and holding those involved accountable.

While the UK and United States demanded democratic policies from Pakistan, they expressed concern over the killing of minority groups, religious minorities, especially Ahmadis.

In addition to the detailed report on killings in fake encounters of missing persons, Pakistan had assured in the previous meeting that children and women would not be harmed during the operation, but the situation hasn’t changed.Apart from this, in the previous meeting, Pakistan had committed to take action against the person involved in the ‘violence’, but a list of 1713 persons was collected whose disappearances were not punished and held accountable.

According to the HRCB, Pakistan had assured a fair and transparent trial of the prisoners, which has not been implemented. All the evidence of Rashid Hussain and Abdul Hafeez Zehri case has been collected till now Pakistan has not given them a chance to trial while Rashid Hussain is still missing.

The Universal Periodic Review was established in 2007, which is an important mechanism of the Human Rights Council under which the human rights record of all the member states of the United Nations is reviewed every four to five years.

Pakistan hikes electricity tariff in POJK

News Intervention Bureau
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Pakistan hikes electricity tariff in POJK

The Pakistani Army led government has ended the special electricity tariff for Kashmir and has set the price of electricity for Occupied Kashmir. According to the power division, the electricity tariff of Kashmir has been fixed at Rs.16 per unit and the draft of the agreement has been sent to the Kashmir government. It should be noted that the people of Occupied Kashmir have been protesting for expensive electricity and other food items for the past several years, which the Pakistani Army led government has always ended the protest by consoling the local people that their demands would soon be accepted.

The region (Occupied Kashmir) that generates about 13 billion units (worth one trillion 70 billion rupees) of electricity annually receives only 70 crores per year. It should be noted that currently 4900 megawatts of electricity is being generated in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir in various projects. The Pak Army led government has abolished the Electricity Department of Kashmir and now it is being handed over to K Electric and thus it is anticipated that the electricity bill of Kashmir will now increase threefold.

30 people killed in Peshawar mosque blast

News Intervention Bureau
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30 people killed in Peshawar mosque blast

30 people were killed and more than 150 injured in a suicide blast at a police lines mosque in Peshawar, the capital of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province during afternoon prayers on Monday. The sound of explosion inside the mosque in the Sadar Police Lines area of Peshawar was so intense that it was heard far away, in which many people were injured. Gunshots were also heard in the area after the explosion.The blast occurred inside the mosque in the Police Lines area around 1.40 p.m. when worshippers, which included personnel of the police, army and bomb disposal squad – were offering the Zuhr (afternoon) prayers. It was a suicide bomb attack where a Pak Army sponsored suicide bomber who was present in the front row blew himself up.

Rescue being carried out of those trapped in the debris inside a mosque in Peshawar, following a bomb blast (Photo: Social Media)

After the explosion, the rescue personnels reached the spot and the injured have been shifted to the nearby hospital.Officials of the law enforcement agencies had also reached the spot and the area has been sealed by the security personnel.

The hospital has confirmed the death of 30 people, including 18 policemen, while more than 150 people have been injured in the blast, most of whom are said to be in serious condition.The hospital management has requested citizens to donate blood as they are in dire need of it for treating the bomb blast victims.

Project Veritas exposé on Pfizer reveals pharma giant’s plan to manipulate Covid vaccines

Sadiksha Waiba
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Project Veritas exposé on Pfizer reveals pharma giant’s plan to manipulate Covid vaccines

An undercover investigation by Project Veritas caught on camera a high ranking Pfizer scientist revealing that the pharmaceutical giant was exploring ways to mutate the Covid-19 virus for profit. The investigative journalist of Project Veritas honey trapped Jordan Trishton Walker, Director of R&D Strategic Operations and mRNA Scientific Planning at Pfizer. On their ‘date’ the Project Veritas journalist asked Jordan Walker about Pfizer’s vaccine development programme for Covid-19 virus. Jordan Walker blurted out the truth in order to impress his ‘date’, unaware that the journalist was video recording their entire conversation. Walker explained that Pfizer was actively mutating the virus by infecting monkeys in order to preempt vaccine development for upcoming Covid variants so as to make heavy profits later on. Walker called Pfizer’s research as “Directed Evolution”. Pfizer’s efforts are similar to the controversial “gain of function” research that enables virologists to make viral infections more lethal.

“One of the things we’re exploring is like, why don’t we just mutate it [COVID] ourselves so we could create — preemptively develop new vaccines, right? So, we have to do that. If we’re gonna do that though, there’s a risk of like, as you could imagine — no one wants to be having a pharma company mutating f**king viruses,” Pfizer scientist Jordan Walker explains to the Project Veritas undercover journalist on video. On further probing Walker goes on to say “Don’t tell anyone. Promise you won’t tell anyone. The way it [the experiment] would work is that we put the virus in monkeys, and we successively cause them to keep infecting each other, and we collect serial samples from them.” He even goes on to refute the claims that the outbreak of the Corona virus in Wuhan was organic. Jordan Walker says “You have to be very controlled to make sure that this virus [COVID] that you mutate doesn’t create something that just goes everywhere. Which, I suspect, is the way that the virus started in Wuhan, to be honest. It makes no sense that this virus popped out of nowhere,” he said. “It’s bullsh*t”.

Jordan Walker was engrossed in this conversation with the undercover Project Veritas journalist when James O’ Keefe, Founder-Editor Project Veritas walked in to ask some direct questions. “Why does Pfizer want to hide from the public that they are mutating the Covid viruses?” James O’Keefe asked a pointed question to Pfizer executive. At this point Jordan Walker became hysterical as he understood that whatever he was saying to impress his “date” had been videotaped and that he had revealed the sinister plans of Pfizer. “I am literally a liar. I was trying to impress a person on date. By lying,” blurted the panicked Pfizer scientist James Trishton Walker. He later on tried to physically assault James O’Kefee and his cameraperson and also broke their iPad.

The investigative video was released on 26 January 2023 that immediately went viral and had garnered over 41.7 million views on Twitter at the time of writing this report. Millions had also watched and commented on this video report on YouTube but YouTube removed the video citing their dubious regulations.

A couple of days later Pfizer issued a convoluted press statement that reads like a desperate PR attempt to salvage pride. However Pfizer’s statement did note that “…in a limited number of cases when a full virus does not contain any known gain of function mutations, such virus may be engineered to enable the assessment of antiviral activity in cells…” (see photo below).

. Pfizer’s convoluted statement in response to Project Veritas expose

Dead bodies of ‘Missing’ Baloch found in occupied Balochistan

News Intervention Bureau
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Dead bodies of ‘Missing’ Baloch found in occupied Balochistan

The body of a missing youth was recovered from Quetta, the capital of occupied Balochistan, while the body of a missing person was also recovered from Khuzdar district.

The mutilated body of Mohammad Sultan Marri, son of Sarang, who went missing 28 days ago in the capital of Balochistan, was recovered from the hilly area of Eastern Bhai Pass today. He had earlier been taken into custody by the local Pakistani administration and then to the hospital.

The other body recovered is that of a person named Muhammad Idris son of Muhammad Ibrahim Sukna Khatan Latifabad, who had gone missing a week ago from Khuzdar district. His body was recovered from the mountains of Kalgali on the border of Basima and Sorab on Thursday. The local people reported that, the Levies Force reached the spot and took possession of the body and shifted it to the Civil Hospital Basima.
It is feared that Pakistani forces have killed them after forcibly abducting them.Despite severe internal problems, the state forces and its intelligence agencies continue to oppress the people of Balochistan.Over the last two decades more than 30,000 Baloch people have gone ‘missing’ across Pakistan-occupied Balochistan (POB) and another 10,000 Baloch people have been killed by Pakistani security forces under its ‘kill and dump’ policy.

Pakistan’s economy is on the brink of collapse’: Financial Times

News Intervention Bureau
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Pakistan’s economy is on the brink of collapse’: Financial Times

The leading British daily leading newspaper the Financial Times analysts have written about the economy of Pakistan and that there are fears of the Pakistani economy sinking.

According to the Financial Times, Pakistan’s power outages and a severe shortage of foreign exchange have made it difficult to conduct business as officials scramble to avert a deepening crisis and revive the IMF program.

The report further mentions that containers full of imported goods are piling up at Pakistan’s ports as exporters are unable to make payments due to inability to get dollars. Further, various factories, including textiles, are closing due to shortage of raw materials and energy problems.Planning Minister Ahsan Iqbal told the Financial Times that the country had “drastically” reduced imports in an attempt to conserve foreign currency.

UN appointed observers must quit Kashmir

Prof. K.N. Pandita
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UN appointed observers must quit Kashmir

India at the UN Security Council
In 1948, India approached the UN Security Council with the request that Pakistan has armed and abetted an attack on the State of Jammu and Kashmir with the motive of annexing it. The State formally acceded to the Indian Union on 26 October 1947. The Security Council’s mandate is that an illegal occupation of the territories of another country will be vacated and towards that end, the UN will provide the necessary support to the aggrieved party to recover its lands.

India approached the Security Council on 1st January 1948 requesting that the State of Jammu and Kashmir, a part of the Indian Union by virtue of the ruler signing the Instrument of Accession, has been attacked by the gunmen armed and abetted by Pakistan, should be vacated.

To the great shock of Nehru and the Indian nation, the Security Council blatantly favoured Pakistan and made her a party to the dispute instead of declaring her an aggressor.

Politicizing the issue
The reason why the Anglo-American bloc gave outright support to Pakistan was that Pakistan had aligned with the capitalist bloc and India was close to the Soviet bloc. The capitalist bloc wanted a foothold in the sub-continent to disallow the Soviet Union to expand southwards to reach the warm waters of the Indian Ocean. The Soviet expansion theory was a figment of the imagination of the capitalist bloc.  

Resolutions
The UN Security Council deliberately politicized the Kashmir issue and made a mess of the whole thing by equating the aggrieved with the aggressor. In 1948 and 1949 two consecutive resolutions were passed by the Security Council. The most important clause of the resolution was that Pakistan will withdraw all its fighting forces from the territory of the ruler of Jammu and Kashmir; India will reduce  the number of her combat forces and leave behind only such numbers as would be required to maintain law and order to run the administration smoothly. Once that was done, the Security Council would appoint a Plebiscite Administrator to conduct a plebiscite in the state to ascertain to which dominion the people of the State would like to accede.

Since the ceasefire had been announced on midnight of 31 December 1948, the Security Council decided to appoint an observers’ group to monitor that the ceasefire was not violated along the Line of Control (LOC) in J&K. It was called United Nation’s Military Observer Group for India and Pakistan or (UNMOGIP). The UN Security Council appointed the group mostly from the European member countries.

Abuse of office
Hindsight shows that this group, instead of honestly monitoring the situation on the ground, indulged in clandestine activities like spying on Indian troops and their movement etc. The truth is that the Indian government, already having burnt its fingers, was reluctant to accept the group. It was thrust on her. Even a Plebiscite Administrator viz, Admiral Nimitz, was also nominated by the capitalist group without the clauses of the Resolutions of Security Council having been fulfilled. However, India put its foot down and refused to accept the nominated Plebiscite Administrator on technical grounds.

Notwithstanding the unwillingness of the vast political leadership in India including those from the ruling class, the Government of India provided all facilities as were admissible under the protocol to the Observes Group. They had the freedom of crossing the LoC without obstruction. They lived a luxurious life with all facilities provided by the Indian government. More often than not they submitted false and fabricated reports to the Secretary-General castigating the Indian army for violating the ceasefire and other things.

The headquarters of the observers’ group became a hotbed of intrigues particularly when the armed insurgency broke out in J&K in 1990. The insurgent groups and their sympathizers among the majority population made it their practice to gather huge crowds of slogan chanters and bring them to the headquarters of the UN Observers, hand over petitions and fabricated reports of atrocities on the civilian population by the security forces. These false and fabricated reports were forwarded to the UN Security Council which found material to malign India.

Several times India lodged complaints with the Observers Group with the Security Council averring that the group had no business to respond to the petitions and protests of the civilian population of Kashmir and that they should restrict themselves to the mandate given by the UNSC.

As a result of India’s persistent complaints and also the group indulging in unwanted and unsolicited activities, the number of observers was reduced and only a small number were left behind.

Justification
There are reports that the External Affairs Ministry of the Government of India is proposing to ask the observer’s manpower to quit India. There is justification for that.

Firstly, the Kashmir question as was propped up by the security council is almost dead. It is dead because Pakistan has abused the plebiscite resolution since it has not withdrawn its fighting forces from Kashmir and has not vacated the part of J&K illegally occupied by it.

Secondly, Pakistan handed over more than 5,000 sq km of J&K State territory to China in 1963 which is an illegal act. The Security Couincil Resolution of 1949 states that no change will be made in the geography of J&K. Hence the Resolutions of the UNSC are null and void because the Security Council has not taken any action against the defaulter.

Thirdly the Kashmir issue is dead as far as the UNSC is concerned because under the various clauses of the UN Charter if two warring states enter into a negotiated bilateral deal, the UNSC loses the right to dispense with the dispute. This was categorically stated by Kofi Anan, the then Secretary General of the UN, when he was on an official visit to Pakistan. India and Pakistan have signed the Shimla Agreement in which they have committed to resolve the Kashmir issue bilaterally and through negotiations. This dispenses with the role of the UNSC and also the UN Observers in J&K.

Fourthly, although India is not obliged to undertake a plebiscite in J&K in the light of Pakistan having trampled the resolution of 1948 and 1949 under foot, even then India brought democratic dispensation to the people of J&K. Ever since the independence of India in 1947, no fewer than eight elections to the legislative assembly and as many elections to the parliament have been conducted in J&K. Most of these elections were witnessed by correspondents and observers from different countries and organizations like the European Union and the British Parliament. Therefore, as democracy has stabilized in J&K, and the Kashmir issue is dead for the UN, there is no logic or justification in asking the UNMOGIP to continue to be in the state with no assignment to complete or mandate to adhere to.

Pak’s abortive resolution
The tailpiece bought to this narrative is most interesting. In February 1994, Pakistan, incited by the capitalist bloc at the UN Human Rights Commission in Geneva, brought a resolution against India highlighting the so-called violations of human rights in J&K. Pakistan, prompted by western godfathers, managed to rope in the OIC countries and left no stone unturned to pillory India. The situation was critical and the western bloc was happy that India would receive a thrashing.

But salutes to the then Prime Minister late PV Narasimha Rao, who played his cards like a veteran politician. He met the challenge on two fronts. One was that he brought a resolution in the parliament in which the government said that PoK and Gilgit-Baltistan are the territories of the Indian Union and Pakistan has forcibly and illegally occupied them since October 1947. India resolves that it has the will and strength to retake the part of its territory. This resolution has immensely impacted India’s Kashmir policy. The Reorganization Act of 2019 is the by-product of the same Resolution.

The second masterstroke played by PM Narasimha Rao was to send post haste a very important emissary (name will not be disclosed) to Iran to apprise the government of Iran about the truth of the Kashmir dispute. The emissary succeeded in his mission and just one hour before the debate on the draft resolution would begin, Iran declared its withdrawal from supporting the resolution. With Iran taking the decision, the OIC members fell one by one indicating to the chairman of the session that they were withdrawing their support to the resolution. In this way, India overcame a difficult situation, thanks to the late Narasimha Rao.

Pakistan’s effort of defaming India in the comity of nations has been defeated by the unilateral decisions about the governance of the J&K. Under that logic, India is perfectly right in demanding that the Observation Group winds up in Kashmir, and the sooner the better.

Time to act
There is another aspect to the issue. Everybody knows that owing to the political, economic and social failure of Pakistan, that state is on the verge of dismemberment. For many years in the past and more particularly during the last six months, there have been massive anti-Pakistan protests in PoJK and Pak-occupied Gilgit-Baltistan demanding that India take back POJK and POGB as it is legally her territory and they want liberation from the tyrannical and discriminatory rule of Islamabad. They are raising Indian flags and encomiums for Prime Minister Modi.

We will recall that during all these decades of the Kashmir dispute, Pakistan has been invoking international law for extending “moral, political and diplomatic” support to Kashmiris. India should also shed all inhibitions and come out openly in support of the freedom of oppressed people of POJK, Pak-occupied Gilgit-Baltistan (POGB) and Balochistan from the stranglehold of the Punjabi bureaucracy and Pakistan Army.

It may be said in passing that the Narendra Modi government has been repeatedly saying that it has the agenda of implementing the Parliaments’ unanimous resolution of 22 February 1994 and it is looking for an opportunity to take back the territory usurped by Pakistan. The army commanders have said that they are ready to march to Muzaffarabad, once instructions come from the Defence Ministry. We hope that the government of India will not waste more time because this is the perfect time for action.

BBC: Voice of the World or Voice of Slander ?

François Gautier
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BBC: Voice of the World or Voice of Slander ?

Once upon a time, the BBC was the voice of the world. I remember, as a young journalist covering India, that we all listened to the BBC radio, as we knew that it was more truthful than the All India Radio or Doordarshan. Indeed when Indira Gandhi was assassinated, it was the BBC that first broke the news.

Great power is often misused. I reported on the valley of Kashmir from 1989 to 2000, and Mark Tully, the Chief of Bureau of BBC India was the guru to us all – western as well as Indian journalists. That means that what the BBC uttered, everybody would repeat. Unfortunately, Tully then kept saying that the Indian Congress Government (not the BJP, mind you) was lying when it was accusing Pakistan of training, arming and financing Kashmiri militants, and sending them back across the Line Of Control. But it made sense to me, and I was probably the only one who wrote so, both in my dispatches for Le Figaro, France’s National Daily, and articles for Indian newspapers, such as The Hindustan Times or The Indian Express. I was also a witness of the ethnic cleansing of the Kashmiri Hindus – 350,000 of them chased out of their ancestral lands and houses, for no other reason that they belonged to another religion than Islam. There again, the BBC kept quiet, and Mark Tully to this day, has not acknowledged this near genocide.

I have often criticized Narendra Modi, but the true story of the Godhra riots has never been told by the BBC. It started because 59 Hindus, 32 of them innocent women and children, were burnt to death like animals in the Sabarmati Express, because they had just come back from Ayodhya. This was the spark that ignited a long pent-up anger, and Hindus from the Shudras to Brahmins, came down in the streets in uncontrollable fury, and started killing muslims. I am not going to condone this type of absolute violence, but let me say two things. One, that it is not Mr Modi who perpetrated these crimes with his own hands ; and two, that if my wife or my daughter had been burnt to death by criminals, I would have also gone down and killed. The only question is : did Narendra Modi wait nearly 24 hours before calling the army – he must have also been extremely moved emotionally by the Sabarmati holocaust. Of course the BBC never mentioned this first extremely important piece of gory news, the Sabarmati Express genocide, and jumped immediately to the wrong conclusion that Mr Modi ordered his people to kill mercilessly.

The second part of the BBC documentary deals with more recent events, like the removal of Article 370 in 2019. Again, intentionally bad journalism. The Kashmiri Muslims not only evicted all Hindus, Sikhs and Buddhists from the Valley of Kashmir, but also Nehru made a provision that no citizen from other part of India could own a business in Kashmir, buy a house and settle there. This did not stop the Kashmiri Muslims from pouring all over India, from Delhi to Pondicherry, and cornering today the souvenir/carpet/ shawls/papier maché market, selling on the sides, drugs or dealing in slush money. This was an injustice that Mr Modi set right – and he must be praised for it. I must also say that Kashmiri Muslims today portray themselves as victims, but I have seen with my own eyes that they started a war against India in the name of Islam.

This said, I disagree with the banning by the Indian Government of the BBC series “The Modi Question”. The BJP Media Cell is always on the back foot and does not know how to handle press matters. What is needed, when you deal with western media, is a concise, cartesian and detailed reply, like the one I have given above, rather than emotional reaction that reinforces the western media’s cliché of Narendra Modi being a dictator.

There have been many scandals plaguing the BBC in recent times, including pedophilia and sexual misconducts. Last week, the BBC chairman, Richard Sharp, who himself is a multimillionaire, acknowledged that he had facilitated a loan of 800 000 British pounds, (a bit more than 8 crores Indian rupees) to the ex-Prime Minister Boris Johnson. It is the same Boris Johnson, who, in gratitude, named Richard Sharp (who has offered to resign) Chairman of the BBC. The ‘colonial mindset’ accusations by the BJP spokespersons against the BBC, appear to me also a little cliched. The young journalists who today work at BBC have no idea, or even interest, in what their great great grand-fathers did in India. I would rather state that the BBC, like CNN of the New York Times, or Le Monde, possess a great ignorance of modern India, and that they hold ancient and outdated prejudices as absolute truths.

Finally, let me say that 99% of the BBC-India staff is indian. Why, instead of accusing BBC London, can’t the Indian government deal firmly with its own citizens? One of the most insidious and anti-indian BBC journalists is Geeta Pande – who is a Nepali. In China, or even in Indonesia, she would have long ago been escorted back to her country. Firmness begins at home.

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