Pakistan-based separatist mouthpiece Kashmir Media Service (KMS) has launched a state-of-the-art Internet radio to boost secessionist campaign in Kashmir. The round-the-clock Internet transmission would feature hourly current news, commentaries, talk shows and “revolutionary songs” to flare up anti-India sentiments in Kashmir, according to sources.
KMS is an Islamabad-based news agency that essentially feeds Pakistani and international print and electronic media on the day-to-day happenings in Kashmir. The agency mainly relies on reports published in local newspapers in Srinagar and voice-overs of separatist leaders.
The online radio would be the latest edition of Radio Sada-e-Hurriyet-e Jammu Kashmir (RSHK), a mouthpiece of separatists, launched in 1991 at an unknown place. Even as the radio had tremendous success in the initial phase of anti-India insurgency in Kashmir, it lost ears gradually. Observers say that unauthenticated and exaggerated broadcast on Kashmir conflict impacted the RSHK outreach.
“The RSHK has launched its round-the-clock Internet transmission featuring hourly news, commentaries, reports, talk shows and revolutionary songs,” announced the KMS on its website that also features a link to download the broadcast.
The website says that RSHK has been working for the last 24 years broadcasting programmes to strengthen the Kashmir liberation movement. “It has been effectively projecting the human rights violation by Indian troops in occupied Kashmir,” it reads.
Sources said that KMS is popular among separatist leaders in Kashmir, but not among public. “Many separatist leaders are interviewed on special occasions and the voice is broadcast on Radio Pakistan and PTV,” a Hurriyat Conference activist told The Pioneer.
The launch of Internet radio seems to be part of Pakistan’s renewed policy on sustaining Kashmir conflict.
last month, Pakistan’s insistence on holding talks with Kashmiri separatists on the sidelines of a conference between National Security Advisers of India and Pakistan in New Delhi resulted into last minute cancellation of the proposed talks.
Incidentally, militants in Kashmir have intensified using internet to post their pictures and videos to lure fresh recruits. On September 2, police in south Kashmir detained six youngsters for posting these pictures on social networking sites. However, there is no word from the police on the RSHK broadcasts.