Thu 08 August 2019:
Pakistan said on Wednesday it would expel India’s ambassador and suspend bilateral trade with its arch-rival after New Delhi stripped its portion of the contested Kashmir region of special status.
Neighbors China and Pakistan, which both claim parts of Kashmir, have voiced fierce opposition to India’s removal of a constitutional provision that had allowed the country’s only Muslim-majority state to make its own laws.
Nuclear-armed India and Pakistan have twice waged war over Kashmir and in February engaged in an aerial clash. India, which has been battling insurgents there for 30 years, said the special status had hindered Kashmir’s development and it wanted to fully integrate the region with the rest of the country.
Moin-ul-Haq, Pakistan’s newly appointed ambassador to India, has yet to take up his post but will now not move to New Delhi, while Indian Ambassador Ajay Bisaria will be expelled, Islamabad said in a statement on Wednesday.
“It is very obvious that our ambassador wouldn’t be in Delhi, and obviously the man who is here will also leave,” Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi said in a telephone interview with Pakistani TV channel ARY News.
A spokesman for India’s foreign ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Pakistan’s move.
MEDICAL SERVICES DISRUPTED
All telephone, television, and internet connections remained severed in Kashmir. At night, police vans have patrolled the streets with loudspeakers warning residents to stay indoors.
Jammu and Kashmir Governor Satya Pal Malik asked officials to ensure people had enough supplies and assured them of their security, Reuters partner ANI said in a report.
Local authorities have not declared a curfew, but instead clamped down on non-essential travel and gatherings of four or more people, effectively keeping restive people in their homes.
Officials with emergency services such as hospitals and the fire department said their staff were also frequently stopped at checkpoints, with access sometimes blocked.
The principal of Srinagar’s Government Medical College, which runs Kashmir’s largest hospital network, comprising about 3,500 beds, had to personally visit district officials to coordinate services or seek approvals, a hospital official said.
“The principal doesn’t have any means of communication,” added the official, who asked not to be identified. “Police stations have been given satellite phones but not him. That shows their (government’s) priority.”
About 200 police and local administration officials have received satellite phones, with several hundred more using a restricted military network, a police official said.
A radio communications network links Srinagar’s 21 fire stations, but with telephone lines down and no satellite phones, firemen can only be alerted by a call from police or an individual who visits a fire station.
Think your friends would be interested? Share this story!
