Herald Report Islamabad: Left parties and women organizations of Pakistan have condemned the Indian government’s revocation of Jammu and Kashmir’s autonomy. In a statement, it will escalate tensions in the region and will affect tens of millions of working class and women in the two countries. AWP: The Awami Workers Party AWP), a Left party, condemned the Indian government move, saying, …

Why Modi’s move on Kashmir is likely to achieve the opposite of what he intends, questions the Economist When the princely state of Jammu and Kashmir joined the fledgling Indian union in October 1947, it had little choice in the matter. Pakistan-backed tribesmen had invaded; only Indian troops could repel them. The consolation was that Kashmir was promised a lot …

#kashmir Posted by Suchitra Vijayan on Sunday, 4 August 2019   By Hassan Akber   What Has India Done? After days of troop surges, arrests, speculation and denials, Indian Home Minister Amit Shah introduced a presidential order and a bill in Parliament on August 5, 2019. Through the order, India has revoked Article 370 of the Indian Constitution thereby ending …

Professor Faisal Devji on Muslim depoliticisation, Hindu nationalism and historians mimicking detectives. Here is excerpts from an interview with Seema Chishti of The Indian Express   What do you make of contemporary history writing? As Gandhi realised more than a century ago, history, or rather historical consciousness, had not only come to define the self-proclaimed superiority of western civilisation in …

By Aziz Ali Dad Every ideology, religion and worldview contains seeds of discontent within. The Enlightenment brought about a change in every sphere of life. But like any other transformation, it also sowed the seeds of discontent. After disenchanting the world it had, in a manner of speaking, thrown the individual into the world. Bereft of old certainties, human individuals …

Expresses solidarity with ‘prisoners of conscience’ in GB, their families and AWPGB struggle for rights Herald Report Islamabad: Women Democratic Front (WDF), Pakistan’s premier socialist-feminist organization, has condemned a recent verdict of an anti-terrorism court awarding 90 years prison term to political activists Iftikhar Hussain Kabalai, a leader of Karakoram National Movement. WDF president Ismat Shahjahan in a solidarity message …

Paris-based Watchdog Reporters Without Borders (RSF) warned of an “alarming decline” in the state of press freedom in Pakistan and called on Prime Minister Imran Khan to take urgent measures to address the situation. RSF took issue with Khan’s recent statement during a trip to Washington that talking about curbs on press freedom in Pakistan was a “joke,” outlining several …

Turtuk was part of Pakistan until 1971, when the Indian army occupied the village during a border war along the Line of Control and never gave it back. By Dave Stamboulis A tumultuous history Turtuk is incredibly hard to get to. The small hamlet sits at the far end of Ladakh’s Nubra Valley in far northern India, hemmed in by …

Islamabad needs to rethink its foreign relations in the context of a new ‘Great Game’ in the Eurasian region and beyond war and peace in Afghanistan, say experts   HAH Report   Islamabad: Diplomats and experts on Wednesday stressed the need for a thorough revamping of Pakistan’s foreign policy and it’s relations with its neighbours and the United States in …

Almost 20 years on, thousands of displaced families from kargil are struggling in slums around Pakistan, waiting for government promises to materialise     By M Ilyas Khan BBC News Islamabad, July 26: The war began soon after Zainab Bibi was married in the spring of 1999. “We were at home and it was night time, around 8pm. We saw shells exploding on …

By Jon Allsop Yesterday, the president of the United States “fanned the flames of a racial fire.”According to a panoply of major news outlets, Trump “starkly injected” “racially infused” and “racially charged” words into a morning tweetstorm; the language he used was “widely established as a racist trope” and “usually considered an ugly racist taunt.” The remarks were “called racist and xenophobic”; “denounced as racist”; an “example of ‘racism’” (note the quote marks). What …

Locals demand SP Ghizer’s suspension, deployment of police on border areas. Over 30 armed men from Kohistan intruded Handarap Valley in Gupis, kidnapped four people.    By Inayat Abdali GAHKUCH: Notables and political leaders of Ghizer District have given 24 hours ultimatum to GB government for recovery of four people who have been kidnapped by armed gangsters from Handarap Valley. They …

  Tajikistan has opened a criminal investigation after 14 prison inmates died of food poisoning while being transferred from Tajikistan’s northern Sogd region to prisons in Dushanbe, Norak, and Yovon in southern Tajikistan on July 7. “During transportation, one of the prisoners shared three pieces of bread with another 15 inmates in Varzab Valley,” the Justice Ministry said in a …

OHCHR blasts India and Pakistan for failing to improve the situation in the contested Kashmir and Gilgit-Baltistan   Herald Report The UN human rights office on Monday blasted India and Pakistan for failing to improve the situation in the contested Kashmir and Gilgit-Baltistan, while renewing calls for an international probe into violations in the disputed Himalayan region. Last year, the …

Haider Ali questions the role of South’s elite class in running community organizations and marginalization of GBC By Haider Ali Shakespeare in his two classic masterpieces Hamlet and Merchant of Venice has exposed the aristocracy and upper classes’ corruption, immorality, their oppressive behaviour towards the middle and lower classes, their victimization, exploitation, and commodification of the poor through rituals. The …