On Tuesday 19 Aug 2008 4:32:38 am Tim Bray wrote: > I wonder how many people inside India realize that the country has a > big public-relations problem in Kashmir. Looking in from outside, the > appearance is that the government is inflicting pretty severe > brutality in order to impose Indian citizenship on a population that > really doesn't want it. I say "appearance" because I've never been > close enough for a first-hand view. But from outside, it really looks > bad. -Tim
I could write a book on this. But it is true. If I list all the reasons - it will start looking like a conspiracy theory. I belong to a group of people who are well aware of what is seen about Kashmir outside of India and I don;t expect any changes soon. Apart from the fact that brutality has occurred, Pakistan has consistently won the propaganda war by making sure that every Pakistani mews medium for the past 20 years has always carried the figures "600.000 Indian troops in Kashmir raping Muslim women and killing children 90,000 Kashmiris killed. These figures need to be contrasted with Indian figures that are typically something like 30,000 civilians killed in terrorism and violence 5000 troops killed in violence To add confusion, Pakistan was a very important state to the US during the cold war and anything that happened in Kashmir was "an internal affair" which a most valued ally worked for the forces of "freedom and democracy". That means that news media like CNN and the BBC too picked up the reports "600.000 Indian troops in Kashmir raping Muslim women and killing children 90,000 Kashmiris killed." It is only when the terrorist training camps in Pakistan Occupied Kashmir and the adjoining geographic areas of NWFP and FATA stared producing people who were killing US and NATO troops in Afghanistan did it become apparent that a Western political view of Kashmir was inconsistent with reality. The media will learn as soon as the governments figure out what is what. shiv
