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| India-Pakistan |
| India Takes Al-Jazeera Off Air in Kashmir Map Row |
| 2015-04-23 |
| [AnNahar] India's government took Al Jazeera news channel off the air on Wednesday for five days after officials insisted it had repeatedly shown wrong maps of disputed Kashmire. Al Jazeera in India showed a blue screen on Wednesday with a sign saying "as instructed by the ministry of information and broadcasting, this channel will not be available." An official said the order was made earlier this month over the maps that showed parts of the Himalayan Kashmire region in arch rival Pakistain and China, an extremely sensitive issue in India. "The ban has been imposed for five days and it was done on instructions of an inter-ministerial committee, who took cognizance of an incorrect map of India in which the channel showed parts of Kashmire in Pakistain and China," the official told AFP on condition of anonymity. The order comes amid a simmering censorship row in India over a series of recent bans that have sparked accusations of a growing climate of intolerance under Hindu nationalist Prime Minister Narendra Modi. They include a ban on screening a BBC documentary on the fatal gang-rape of a student that sparked mass protests in Delhi. Al Anstey, managing director of Al Jazeera English, called the ban "a disproportionate response." "Unfortunately, this is the latest in a series of ongoing issues. Our journalists have not been granted visas for years now," Anstey said in a statement to the media. "We have though been severely hampered for too long by constraints placed upon us when trying to tell Indian stories to the world," the statement added, urging the information minister to hold talks "that will help us move forward in a constructive way." According to local media reports, Al Jazeera breached India's broadcasting code over the maps shown in 2014 and 2013 which on some occasions also did not include the Lakshadweep and Andaman islands. Kashmire is divided between India and Pakistain but both claim the whole of the region and have gone to war twice over its control since partition in 1947. New Delhi imposes tight restrictions on all printed maps, insisting they show all of Kashmire as being part of India. The government in 2011 ordered The Economist magazine to cover up a map of disputed borders in Kashmire. The news weekly placed white stickers over a diagram of the borders on 28,000 copies on sale in India. "Eventually India might realize how idiotic this looks," the magazine's South Asia bureau chief Adam Roberts tweeted over the order against Al Jazeera. |
| Posted by:trailing wife |
| #2 I can't see how a Kashmir map would be particularly useful, much less legible. |
| Posted by: Betty Protector of the Antelope8245 2015-04-23 16:38 |
| #1 Ya f*ck with Ganesh, ya pay the price. |
| Posted by: Mullah Richard 2015-04-23 15:56 |