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Imran fears India may use Afghan soil to target Pak

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Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan has expressed fears that India may use Afghan soil to destabilize and target Islamabad.

“Pakistan fears India will use Afghanistan to destabilize us,” he said addressing the inaugural ceremony of the two-day Pakistan-Afghanistan Trade and Investment Forum in Islamabad.

“We tried to be friends with India but could not succeed. We realize that India is ideologically against Pakistan”, he added.

 

The premier said that the Narendra Modi-led government in India was not only against Pakistan as a country but was also against its own Muslim population.

“The treatment of Muslims in India today has never happened before. Minorities in India have been under continuous suppression,” he said.

Talking about the decisions being taken by the Indian government in Kashmir, Khan said that it was bent upon inflicting atrocities on innocent Kashmiris.

“Lockdown in Indian Illegally Occupied Jammu and Kashmir (IIOJK) is the worst example of suppression and barbarity,” he said.

While Khan’s government is feeling the pressure and criticism of not raising the Kashmir issue at global platforms, the premier said that his government has always raised the issue at every regional and international forum, vowing to continue until the resolution of the Kashmir dispute as per the UN Security Council resolutions is implemented.

It is pertinent to mention that after the US expressed desire to see increased role of India in Afghanistan’s development and progress; Pakistan has been consistently raising its concerns over Washington’s intention to increase Indian presence, which it says will have negative impact on the border security and broad based relations between Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Pakistan maintains that New Delhi has been engaging with terror elements in Afghanistan and has been promoting them to target Islamabad.

Islamabad has also raised its concerns with the US administration, as it does not want to see increasing Indian presence in Afghanistan.

Pakistan security establishment has also maintained and alleged that terror attacks, groups and other extremist elements, who cross over the border to target sensitive installations and claim lives of innocent civilians in the country, are in contact with Indian agencies.

However, the Pakistani claim has always been rejected by New Delhi.

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Lockdowns in China Force Urban Communities to Defy Censorship and Vent Frustration Online

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Anyip Mobile Proxies

Shanghai’s rich middle class is leading a wave of online dissent over the strict and prolonged lockdowns imposed in various parts of the country. Chinese internet censorship is struggling as patience is wearing thin in many urban centers, coming up with creative forms of online protests.

Social Media Posts Revealing Lockdown Tension in Shanghai

Drawn-out lockdowns are nothing new in China as authorities insist with the nation’s zero-Covid policy since the start of the pandemic. Currently over This time around, however, metropolitan areas like Shanghai are increasingly difficult to keep quiet, given that its more than 25 million residents have seen weeks of total isolation along with food shortages and many other service interruptions.

Dozens of towns and reportedly over 300 million Chinese citizens have been affected by lockdowns of different severity. As expected, urban netizens have been most outspoken over their difficulties by finding creative ways to get around state censorship and bans placed on topics, news comments and spontaneous campaigns.

Shanghai residents have been using mobile proxies and hijacking seemingly unrelated hashtags to talk about healthcare issues, delivery failures and the overall severity of their situation. The “positive energy” that the Chinese government wants to transmit during the recent prolonged series of lockdowns does not come naturally to those counting food supplies and online censors are working hard to filter words, trending topics and undesired social media sharing.

WeChat groups and message threads are under constant monitoring. Posts questioning the zero-Covid approach have been quickly deleted, including by leading Chinese health experts like Dr. Zhong Nanshan. Video footage is soon censored and protests and investigations are quickly made to disappear.

Where this has not worked, officials have exposed banners with warnings and outright threats like “watch your own mouth or face punishment”, while drones have been patrolling the city skies. Yet, if anything, this has led to further tensions and unspoken confrontation with Shanghai’s educated and affluent middle class.

Creative Online Solutions Harnessing Civic Energy

Announcements by Chinese social media that they would be publishing the IP addresses of users who “spread rumors” have not helped either. Tech industry research has shown that much of Asia’s tech-savvy population has a habit of using mobile proxies and other privacy tools, quickly finding workarounds to browse the internet freely and talk to the world about the hottest topics.

The sheer volume of forbidden posts is already a challenge for the very censorship system, experts explain. Unable to track all trending hashtags, state workers overlook topics that speak about the US, Ukraine or other popular news. Linking human rights elsewhere to their situation, Chinese online dissidents establish their informal channels and “hijack” the conversation to share personal or publicly relevant information about the Covid suppression in their town.

Sarcastic and satirical posts still dominate. Others hope to evade the censors by replacing words from famous poems or the national anthem. One thing is certain – social media, when harnessed with the right creativity, has proven its ability to mount pressure on the government in even some of the most strictly controlled tech environments like China.

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