Wed 07 August 2019:
India’s Hindu nationalist government on Tuesday hailed “historic” legislation to bring Kashmir under its direct control but Pakistan and China challenged the divisive move, sending tensions soaring between the nuclear neighbours.
China has called India’s move to abolish Kashmir’s special status “not acceptable” and said it was not binding, following condemnation from Pakistan.
“Recently India has continued to hurt Chinese sovereignty by unilaterally changing domestic law,” Chinese foreign ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said on Tuesday.
She reiterated that India’s claim over Ladakh, as part of Kashmir, involved Chinese land. “This act is not acceptable and won’t be in any sense binding,” Hua said.
Beijing urged New Delhi to abide by bilateral agreements and avoid acts that would further complicate the border issues, she said.
The upper house of India’s parliament also passed a bill proposing the state of Jammu and Kashmir – which includes the Kashmir Valley and the Ladakh area – be split into two federal territories. Jammu and Kashmir will have a state legislature, and Ladakh will be ruled directly by New Delhi.
The office of Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan called both his Malaysian counterpart, Mahathir Mohamad, and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan to warn that the move could have “serious implications” for regional security and “was in clear violation” of UN Security Council resolutions.
Refugees in Pakistani-held Kashmir meanwhile voiced fears for relatives on the other side of the disputed Himalayan border. Many of the roughly 250 people in the Manak Paiyan refugee camp near Muzaffarabad, the largest city in Pakistani-held Kashmir, fled fighting in the 1990s but still have family on the other side of the Line of Control, the de facto border slicing through the heavily militarised region.
Tensions between China and India have periodically flared along their 4,000km (2,485-mile) border, resulting in a brief war in 1962. Beijing and New Delhi have made efforts to repair their relations since a tense stand-off two years ago at the Doklam plateau, which is claimed by India’s ally Bhutan.
On Monday, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party rushed through a presidential decree to remove from the country’s constitution an article that granted special autonomy to the Kashmir region and prevented non-natives from purchasing property or holding government jobs there. The bill proposing the Indian-administered part of Kashmir be divided into two regions directly ruled by New Delhi still needs to be ratified by parliament.
– Security clampdown –
Earlier, national security adviser Ajit Doval said in a report to his department that there was “peace and normalcy” and “no agitation” in Kashmir after the announcement, local media reported.
But with mobile and internet services shut down and Kashmir virtually cut off from the outside world since the early hours of Monday, limited news emerged from the region.
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