Hot Kashmir - Latest news updates, Current Situation in Kashmir

Jammu, February 11 (Scoop News) – Chief Minister, Omar Abdullah Friday said that Jammu and Kashmir is working with the Central Government on a programme of deploying healthcare patrol and critical ambulance service on the National Highway (NH) from Jammu to Srinagar to meet any eventuality on this count.

FAHEEM ASLAM

Srinagar, Feb 12: Ouster of the Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak after 18 days of continued struggle by the people seems to have generated a lot of interest in Kashmir, with the political circles in Jammu and Kashmir, both mainstream and separatists, having their own take on Friday’s development.

On Reading Mirza Waheed’s ‘The Collaborator’ GUEST COLUMN BY SIDDHARTHA GIGOO

I first got to know of Mirza Waheed through Sameer, a friend of mine, who goes on postponing a rendezvous with me. It must have been the summer of 2009. I had read Sameer’s riveting short story, ‘The Brave’ and was in awe of it, particularly the visual imagery and characterization.

Mirza Waheed was born and brought up in Srinagar, Kashmir. He spent some of his childhood years in the mountains of the valley where his father worked in tourism and at home near the Dal Lake where his family continues to live. As a teenager, he closely witnessed the peak years of the separatist militant uprising and the brutal military crackdown in Kashmir. During one of the many curfew-bound seasons in Srinagar in the early 1990s, when everyone was restricted indoors by the security forces, he learnt the rudiments of Kashmiri papier-mache art from his grandfather, father and uncle. He earned his first income hand-painting a hundred decorative Easter eggs meant for export to Western markets.

Is there any scope for comparison between an individual like Noor Muhammed Bhat and a state that by definition is infinitely more powerful than the individuals it is supposed to represent? If there is an element of protest and dissent in Bhat's conduct, there is also a background of the reality of Kashmir's unending suppression

The WikiLeaks report on widespread torture employed by the Indian army and paramilitary forces in Kashmir may have come as a surprise to some people for it raises serious questions about the institutional integrity of the ‘largest democracy in the world’. However, in Kashmir the leak was simply digested as a mere attestation of what has been going on for decades. This lack of any enthusiasm at the revelations may be due to the near total cynicism among Kashmiris as the world has forgotten their sufferings.

Syed Ali Shah Geelani  New Delhi, Dec. 12: Arrangements for a dynastic succession are brewing in another Kashmiri political clan. The ageing and ailing patriarch of the Hurriyat’s hardliners, Syed Ali Shah Geelani, is mulling handing over the secession baton to elder son Syed Naeem Geelani, who was allowed to return home last month by the government after more than a decade in Pakistan.