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ISLAMABAD, MAY 01 (DNA) – Azad Jammu and Kashmir President Sardar Masood Khan in his sharp reaction over the statement of a Bharatiya Janata Party leader Subramanian Swamy regarding the resettlement of 0.5 million pundits in occupied Kashmir, has said that we welcome the pundits who are Kashmiri subjects but will Swamy talk about 200,000 Muslims of Jammu who were ruthlessly martyred by RSS, Indian National Army and Dogra Army in November 1947.
While describing Swamy’s statement a plethora of lies, he said that butchers like Swamy cannot hide the ongoing repression, barbarity, and terrorism in Kashmir behind the pundits’ issue.
In a statement Friday, the AJK president asserted that the Kashmiri Hindus were evacuated at the behest of the then puppet Governor of Occupied Kashmir Jagmohan in 1989-91 under a strategy designed to give a religious colour and to malign the Kashmiris movement for the right of self-determination.
The fact is that the Kashmir movement has nothing to do with Hindu-Muslim divide because both the nations have been peacefully living here over centuries. However, he added, the BJP and RSS have now brought both the nations eyeball to eyeball against each other.
The AJK president said that the Indian Army martyred 33 Kashmiri people and injured 150 others in occupied Jammu and Kashmir during the month of April, while only nine Kashmiri people had lost their lives because of coronavirus during the same month. This suggests that Modi virus is more dangerous and disastrous than coronavirus for the people of occupied Kashmir.
Sardar Masood Khan said that 570 branches of BJP and RSS in 39 countries including Muslim states with more than six million activists are promoting violence and hatred. In India itself, hooligans of both these fanatic groups are targeting Christians, Dalits, Sikhs and Muslims. There is a need to keep watch on the network of both these groups abroad which provide financial resources for violent activities.
The AJK president expressed concern over the statement of a British Labor party leader Keir Starmer in which he had said that we must not allow issues of the subcontinent to divide communities in the UK and that Kashmir was a bilateral issue between Pakistan and India.
“Kashmir is not a bilateral issue between Pakistan and India, but it is an international issue which is still on the agenda of the UN Security Council,” declared Sardar Masood Khan adding that Britain owes dual responsibility because this issue had erupted during the English government in the subcontinent, and at the same time, it is on the Security Council agenda, and being a permanent member of the Security Council, it is the moral and legal responsibility of Britain to play its role in the peaceful resolution of the issue. = DNA
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FAO introduces walk-in tunnels for off-season vegetable production in KPK tribal districts
PESHAWAR, MAY 01 (DNA) – The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) has introduced tunnel-farming in the tribal districts of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa with support from USAID as part of its efforts to promote effective-modern ways of agricultural production in the wide-range climate of the region. Seventy-five walk-in tunnels are installed in Khyber, South Waziristan, North Waziristan and Orakzai District of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.
The activities were initiated before the onset of COVID-19, and as such provided a welcome and timely relief to local farmers who can now enjoy the harvest at a time when their lives and livelihoods are disrupted due to the lockdown.
These farmers were provided walk-in tunnel structures and high quality certified vegetable seeds that were cultivated and are now ready to be harvested. This activity is part of a restoring subsistence and promoting modern commercial agriculture program in the tribal districts of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa which aims to promote sustainable agriculture enterprise development by establishing market structures and services, developing value chains, expanding markets, and building capacity of both men and women farmers.
Before the onset of COVID-19, FAO steered extensive off and on-job trainings for the farmers and arranged external exposure visits to introduce them to tunnel farming. The familiarization with modern technology targets capacity-building and increased profitability from agricultural activities.
Now during the COVID-19 pandemic and related lockdown, producing and harvesting vegetables under tunnels will enable farmers to have enough agri produce for a diversified diet for self-consumption as well as for selling in their neighborhoods and local markets. FAO is also supporting these tunnel farmers in developing linkages with local and national markets.
“The poorest and most vulnerable groups have higher likelihood to experience higher negative effects of the current pandemic and related lock down. This includes subsistence farmers as well as smallholder farmers’ enterprises. Modernization of Agriculture practices and digital technology to provide real-time information to farmers on prices or to support the supply chain can be effective resilience and mitigation measures in time of shocks such as COVID19,” said Minà Dowlatchahi, FAO Representative in Pakistan.
FAO will continue to support farmers with modernization and agro-technology in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Merged Districts to boost higher value production, food security and agro-livelihood opportunities. Walk-in tunnels help increase productivity – reducing the yield gaps and also help achieve sustainable increases of agro-food through improved agriculture practices. = DNA
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