Protesters run as a policeman fires tear-gas shells on the outskirts of Srinagar on Friday. REUTERS

Tribune News Service

Srinagar, August 5

Three persons were killed and over 300 injured in fresh clashes that broke out across Kashmir after the Friday prayers even as the government imposed a curfew to prevent separatists from marching to Hazratbal.Mohammad Maqbool Wagey was killed and eight persons were injured at Nagam Chadaroo in central Kashmir’s Budgam district as security personnel allegedly opened fire at protesters, a charge refuted by the Army. With a bullet in the chest, Maqbool was brought to the Nagam sub-district hospital where he was declared “brought dead”. Eight of the injured were referred to the SMHS Hospital, Srinagar.Zahoor Ahmed was killed in the Khan Sahib area of Budgam district. He too was hit by a bullet in the chest during clashes and was declared “brought dead” by doctors. In Sopore town of Baramulla district in north Kashmir, where massive protests broke out after the Friday prayers, 50 persons were injured. Danish Rasool of Wagoora, who received several pellet injuries, died in hospital. Fifteen protesters were injured in clashes at Zurhama in Kupwara district. The police used teargas shells and pellet guns to disperse a mob.The ancestral house of minster Asia Naqash in the Habbak area of Srinagar was pelted with stones. Nobody was inside.

Symbols do matter. And an army tank, with its gun-turret pointed towards Parliament House, makes a very unhappy sight. And this symbolism decidedly gets additionally rancid with Brahmos missiles stationed at Vijay Chowk. Newspapers have published photographs of the tank and missiles positioned, all as part of an exhibition being organised by the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO). DRDO has rightly earned a reputation of being a vastly under-performing and grossly over-rated organisation among the pantheon of holy cows, beyond reproach and scrutiny. Still it has been allowed to display its doubtful wares at Parliament House. The members of Parliament may be our law-makers but that does not make them experts in making any knowledgeable decisions. The DRDO exhibition is a clear case of over-sale. And these photographs do convey a disquieting picture. One newspaper even felt constrained to caption its photograph: “This is not a coup!” It can only be hoped that when the Speaker of the Lok Sabha, Suchitra Mahajan, allowed the parking of a tank outside Parliament House, she was totally unaware of the distressing imagery at work. With all due respect to her office, she has been a very ordinary and a very mediocre member of a political party that had always tried to make a fetish of its respect and preference for “the soldier.” The ruling BJP may have its own political agenda in injecting a heightened degree of militarism in our public discourse, but as the Speaker of the Lok Sabha she has an institutional obligation to see to it that this temple of democracy does not get slighted, even inadvertently. We live in times when the phony politician deliberately and cynically invokes patriotism to enlist the voter’s support for his unsavoury quest for power. This is a global trend. India and its politicians are no exception. But the country needs to remember that politics of nationalism invariably leads to dangerous jingoism which in turn instigates prescriptions of tests of patriotism. Nationalism is a healthy and empowering sentiment and the soldier is always worthy of respect and a salute. But in these ugly times the democratic voices need to remain vigilant against any creeping militarism.

Students pay floral tributes at Major Sandeep Sankhla War Memorial to mark the 17th anniversary of Vijay Diwas in Sector 2, Panchkula, on Sunday. Tribune Photo: Nitin Mittal

Panchkula, July 24

Army veterans from across the tricity today gathered at the Major Shankla War Memorial, Sector 2, Panchkula, paid homage to martyrs on the 17th anniversary of the Kargil Vijay Divas. The commemoration ceremony was organised by the Indian Ex-Servicemen Movement (Panchkula and North Haryana).The ceremony saw school children and Army veterans singing patriotic songs and reciting poems. A group of students from Doon Public School, Sector 21, Panchkula, sang a patriotic song penned by a retired Brigadier. Col Mahesh Chadha (retd) recited a poem written by him. Kirti, a student of Doon Public School, presented a poem on Kargil heroes written by her.Students of St Vivekanand Millenium School, Pinjore, presented a patriotic song. Ambala MP Ratan Lal Kataria also recited a poem he had written about war heroes.Lt Gen KJ Singh, GOC-in-C, Western Command, paid homage to martyrs. Veterans and school students also paid tributes to the martyrs. — TNS

Ajay Banerjee

The Indian troops stationed along the 255 km-long Darbuk-Shayok-Daulat Baig Oldie (DS-DBO) axis keep vigil amid howling winds and gurgling Shayok river in the rugged Karakoram mountain range of eastern Ladakh.Eastern Ladakh shares a 826-km frontier with China and is geographically defined as the area from Karakoram Pass in the north to Demchok in the south-east.The DS-DBO road is a key thrust area of the Ministry of Defence for this strategic northern-most corner of India — termed sub-sector north (SSN) by the military. The road will help India’s efforts to dominate the Line of Actual Control (LAC) — the de facto border — and also areas abutting Aksai Chin (under Chinese control), Jiwan Nalla, Chip-Chap river, etc. The two armies have had face-offs in 2013 and 2014 in the area over differing perception of the LAC.DBO, located at 16,700 feet, is a flat plateau. It hosts a mud-paved Indian Air Force’s advanced landing ground. It’s just 20 km short of the 18,726-foot-high Karakoram Pass that divides Ladakh and Xinjiang province of China.A northward journey commencing from Darbuk, located 110 km east of Leh across the 17,800-foot-high Chang La, is tough, tricky and runs through a treacherous terrain where oxygen is scarce and the road runs at an altitude of 14,000 feet or more.The hamlet of Shayok, comprising 25 families, is the last Indian village on this route. The remaining 210 km from Shayok to DBO has no civilian population and jagged mountains of the Karakoram range dominate the landscape.In the first week of July, a new bridge across the Shayok river was opened. However, the river, a tributary of the Indus, needs to be bridged at five more places to make the road useable 24×7.“In the winter, it’s easier. Trucks can run across the frozen Shayok. In summer, we have to time our move with the snowmelt,” says Col BS Uppal, whose battalion is based at DBO. The work on completing road is being monitored from the South Block in Delhi.The previous road — built between 2000 and 2012 at a cost of Rs 320 crore — was too close to the Shyok river and got washed away. Around 160 km of it is being re-aligned. As of now, stretch up to 105-km mark is metalled. This year’s target is to stretch it further to 156 km.The other option to reach DBO from Leh is via the 20,000-foot-high Saser La.The Central Road Research Institute (CRRI) is currently studying a way to make a road or a tunnel under the permafrost of Saser La. As of now, there is no commercial use of the DS-DBO road.The sensitivity of the Karakoram Pass was studied by Sir Francis Younghusband, a British Army officer and explorer, in the early 1900s. He feared a Russian invasion through the Karakoram Pass. But those fears are long gone — India and China have a rare settled boundary at the Karakoram Pass.

(To be concluded)

Chinese and Indian troops holding banners during a face-off along the LAC, and (right) an Indian boat patrols the Pangong Tso in eastern Ladakh. Tribune photos

Ajay Banerjee

“War-gaming” is an art of predicting a future outcome of military postures. An assessment done along the sensitive and strategically vital eastern Ladakh region predicts that armies of both nations — India and China — can at best advance 10-12 km into one another’s territory in case of a war.Eastern Ladakh, part of Jammu and Kashmir, shares 826-km frontier with China and is geographically defined as the area from Karakoram Pass in the north to Demchok in the south-east.(Follow The Tribune on Facebook; and Twitter @thetribunechd)A “war-gamed” eastern Ladakh — a land of barren tree-less landscape dotted with high mountains and equally high passes — has been virtually militarily “tailored” to prevent a repeat of 1962 — when China, with a few exceptions, literally overran the Indian military defences.An Indian assessment says despite Chinese People Liberation Army’s (PLA) numerical superiority and military strength (20 lakh soldiers backed by long-range missiles), it can be “stopped”.This includes a method of getting real-time updates on Chinese movements; countering their patrols along the disputed Line of Actual Control (LAC) — the de facto border — with own patrols; maintaining a minimum level of firepower and future stationing of fighter jets at Leh, the key air base in Ladakh.The Army and the Indo-Tibetan Border Police (ITBP) have been tasked with conducting joint patrols along the LAC at 65 designated points, identified by the high-power China Study Group.Key points of differing perception along the LAC include the Pangong Tso, a 135 km-wide glacial-melt lake which straddles both countries. It has boat patrols from either side.Major Abhishek Singh, in charge of boat patrols in India, says “both sides on coming face-to-face maintain a distance of 25-30 feet”. A stand-off asking each other to back off can last a few minutes to about an hour, he says.The sub-sector north (SSN) that includes the Depsang plains at 18,000 feet and also the areas abutting the Aksai Chin and Galwan are among the other flashpoints.The latest Indian stance along the LAC is not akin to Jawaharlal Nehru’s failed 1960-1961 “forward policy”, but it mandates holding claims line along the LAC.The “forward policy”, as explained by Neville Maxwell in his acclaimed book “India’s China war”, entailed taking up permanent positions along the high ridgelines of eastern Ladakh as per India’s unilaterally decided boundary of 1954. The latest Indian positions are more in line with maintaining the sanctity of the LAC.All this is backed by political agreements at the top political level to ensure that no bullet is fired. The Border Defence Cooperation Agreement (BDCA) inked in October 2013 disallows night patrolling by either side.The April 2005 protocol, termed as the “protocol on modalities for implementation of Confidence building measures (CBMs) in the military field along the LAC in the India-China border areas”, mandates soldiers of either side to show a banner with a slogan painted across. The banner primarily cites the 2005 agreement and says there is a need to back off from the present positions of patrolling.Around 150 “banner drills” are conducted annually as both sides hold on to peace.

(To be concluded)

For the third straight day, newspapers have remained off the streets in the Kashmir Valley. The Tribune’s Srinagar edition was also a victim of the ban on newspapers after the killing of Hizbul militant Burhan Wani. The authorities are pulling out all the stops to contain a new trend. Locals would earlier remain behind closed doors during encounters. The security forces now encounter locals trying to disrupt anti-militancy operations. The events after Wani’s killing are a much larger reflection of the earlier localised protests. The body count may not be an accurate index of the extent of the unrest because at many places lightly armed security forces chased off the protesters without firing a shot.It was perhaps in response to the widespread nature of protests that the authorities opted to take locally printed newspapers off the streets for three days while newspapers editions from the mainland have been off limits for much longer. The authorities’ zeal may have been misplaced in equating the inflammatory potential of social media and channels with that of locally printed newspapers. Newspapers have a social contract with the state predicated on the grant of several concessions. A newspaper can take an extreme and irresponsible stand only to its own peril.   The authorities are also too well aware of the various ways in which the message of responsible reporting can be subtly transmitted to those newspapers unmindful of their civic duty during times of extreme unrest. Is it their case that this option was exercised and did not make headway? If not, perhaps it would have been a better idea to allow newspapers to be printed. At least the sight of newspapers being delivered provides some semblance of normality, however perfunctory and transient. The printed word, even if published under the watchful eye of the state, could have been a counterfoil to wild rumours that sweep the streets during such times. The ban on newspapers comes to an end on Tuesday. The situation in the Valley on the day will tell whether the printed word was an impediment or an ameliorative exercise.

Wing Commander Pooja Thakur led the Guard of Honour when US President Barack Obama visited India for the R-Day parade in 2015. PTI file photo

New Delhi, July 14

Wing Commander Pooja Thakur, who led the Guard of Honour during US President Barack Obama’s visit here last year, today moved the Armed Forces Tribunal after being denied a permanent commission.Her lawyer claimed that the IAF had a “dual policy” on permanent commission when it came to men and women, a charge strongly denied by sources in the IAF.Admitting the matter, the tribunal has sought IAF’s response in four weeks. Giving details, IAF sources said permanent commission was not something which was doled out. They underlined that an officer, man or woman, had to first willingly seek permanent commission and then meet the laid down criteria.They said 37-year-old Thakur was commissioned into the Administration Branch on June 16, 2001. At that time an officer of the Short Service Commission could serve for five years and then opt for another six years, as  per rules framed on November 25, 1991.  The scheme was extended by another four years in 2003, raising the total service period to 15 years.“One year prior to the end of the second tenure, one has to give in writing whether he/she wants to retire, wants permanent commission or wants another extension,” the sources said.They said of the 12 women officers in Thakur’s batch, 10 had opted for permanent commission.“All the 10 other officers were granted permanent commission. Wing Commander Pooja explicitly sought an extension of four years. Another officer opted to retire,” the sources said. Interestingly, in July 2015, Thakur put in an application for premature separation from the  force which she said would be effective from January 2016. However, in December last year she changed her mind and said she wanted to continue till retirement, a request which was accepted by the IAF. Thakur, who is undergoing a course at the MDI Gurgaon, funded largely by the IAF, put in an application about 10 days prior to her retirement seeking permanent commission, which the IAF rejected. — PTI

HAGUE RULING PUSHBACK Beijing hints tribunal on South China Sea was ‘bribed’, issues white paper on disputes

BEIJING: China could set up an air defence zone in the South China Sea (SCS) if it feels threatened, a top official said on Wednesday, a day after a UN-backed tribunal ruled the country had no historic rights over islands in the contested region.
AFP
Philippine and Japanese Coast Guard conduct a drill on board a Philippine Coast Guard warship.
An arbitral tribunal set up by the Permanent Court of Arbitration (PAC) in The Hague ruled that China had violated the sovereign rights of the Philippines and caused harm to the coral reef environment. A belligerent China dismissed the verdict, calling the tribunal “illegal” and the ruling “null and void”.
Vice foreign minister Liu Zhenmin told a news conference that China has the right to set up an air defence identification zone (ADIZ) over the South China Sea if “our security is being threatened”.
“Whether we need to set one up in the South China Sea depends on the level of threat we receive,” Liu said.
Setting up an ADIZ would mean that international flights flying over the waters would be required to notify China. Liu spoke while releasing a white paper explaining China’s position on the South China Sea disputes. China had set up an ADIZ over the East China Sea in 2013, prompting angry reactions from the US and Japan, though the zone was not fully enforced.

Reacting to India’s call for parties involved in disputes in the South China Sea to abide by international law to ensure calm in the region, the Chinese foreign ministry said it agreed with the opinion.

“In those public statements made by relevant governments, if it is said that the dispute should be resolved by fully complying with the international law, I think it is the same with what Chinese government is upholding,” foreign ministry spokesperson Lu Kang said when he was asked to react to India’s statement.

In an attack against the tribunal that gave the ruling on the South China Sea, Chinese officials indicated the panel could have been bribed. They said it was financed by the former government of the Philippines.

Quoting vice foreign minister Liu, Lu Kang said the tribunal was “financially supported by the former Philippines government. It is not the same as the International Court of Justice or the United Nations. These judicial organs are supported by the UN. But things (in the tribunal) are different. I believe it will be helpful to make that clear.”

The white paper explaining China’s position dismissed the Philippines’ claim on several islands and reefs. “The Philippines’ territorial claim over part of Nansha Qundao is groundless from the perspectives of either history or international law,” the paper issued by the State Council Information Office said.

It noted that the then government of the Philippines had unilaterally initiated arbitration on the South China Sea dispute in 2013.

“By doing so, the Philippines has violated its standing agreement with China to settle the relevant disputes through bilateral negotiation, has violated China’s right to choose means of dispute settlement of its own will,” it said.

Does India support China on dispute? Beijing thinks so

BEIJING: A state-run newspaper on Wednesday proudly displayed a world map showing countries that support China’s position on the South China Sea (SCS) disputes – and in what some would describe as a flight of diplomatic fancy, it included India.

Screenshot of China Daily map showing India, with incorrect depiction of its boundary, among countries backing China.

The countries purportedly backing Beijing, actually most of the world barring North and South America and Australia, were predictably coloured in red in the map on the front page of China Daily.

The text above the map said: “More than 70 countries have publicly voiced support for China’s position that South China Sea disputes should be resolved through negotiations and not arbitration.

In contrast, just several countries, mainly the United States and its close allies, have publicly supported the Philippines and called for observing the ruling as legally binding.”

The report raised eyebrows in New Delhi, as it came a little more than a fortnight after China blocked India’s application to join the Nuclear Suppliers Group during the elite club’s plenary in Seoul last month.

Sources in New Delhi described the report as part of a “misinformation campaign by China”. A source said: “Our statement yesterday makes our position very clear.”

Asked about the map, China’s foreign ministry told HT: “For the China Daily map, please ask the newspaper.”

Members of the MES Employees Union stage a protest outside the Commander Works Engineers office in Bathinda on Friday. Tribune photo: Pawan sharma

Tribune News Service

Bathinda, July 8

The MES Employees Union today staged a dharna and demanded that they should be given pension according to the old scheme. They also demanded discontinuation of pension under the new scheme.The members of the union also said the contract system should be discontinued immediately in government offices. Their other demands include linking of the medical allowances with pay; Income tax rebate till Rs 5 lakh annual salaries; ceiling on bonus should be scrapped; job for a family member of the employee who died on duty.The rally was addressed by president J Singh, general secretary Darshan Singh Maur, Jagjit Singh, Gurnam Singh, Mohinder Pal Singh and Surjit Singh.