this is bbc news, the headlines: after days of violent clashes, sit ins by protesters, and hundreds of cancelled flights it appears that hong kong airport — one of asia's busiest transport hubs — has calmed down. authorities have used new powers in an attempt to get flights departing and arriving largely on schedule. president trump says he has delayed the introduction of a 10% tariff on some chinese imports until mid—december, to prevent hurting american customers during their holiday shopping. earlier this month, he'd announced that tariffs on $300 billion worth of chinese imports would take effect in september. goods likely to be popular holiday gifts will now be temporarily spared. the us attorney general, william barr, has ordered staff changes at the new yorkjail where the financier, jeffrey epstein, died while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges. epstein was found on saturday after apparently hanging himself.

now on bbc news: hardtalk‘s stephen sackur talks to shah faesal, president of the jammu and kashmir people's movement. welcome to hardtalk, i'm stephen sackur. when the indian government revoked the special autonomous status ofjammu and kashmir, it knew outrage would follow, which is why delhi has the muslim majority himalayan territory in a form of lockdown. troops patrol the streets, hundreds of local politicians and activists have been detained, and communication links have been cut. my guest today is shah faesal, leader of the jammu and kashmir people's movement. how will kashmiris channel their anger, and how much support will they get?

shah faesal in delhi, welcome to hardtalk. thank you very much. there you sit in india's capital, but i'm sure your thoughts are with the people of kashmir. what are the latest reports you are hearing of what is happening in your home territory in terms of the curfew and the lockdown? because indian authorities say they have begun to gradually ease it. it is the eighth day of curfew, and the news that i am getting from kashmir is that it continues to be the same — around 8 million people continue to be under incarceration, roads are deserted, mosques are closed. it is very hard to move around, the communication

system is completely down. telephone lines are not working, mobile phones. people living outside kashmir have been unable to talk to their families for the past eight days. there is a shortage of food materials, people are unable to figure out what is happening. there has been an absolute clampdown on the protests, and the presence of security forces has been unprecedented. people are unable to reach out to their political leaders. all political leaders — the surprising side of this crackdown has been that all of them are under arrest at this time. it is a scene out of a partition novel. you say all local politicians in kashmir are under arrest orfacing intimidation, and yet you are speaking to me from delhi, and i happen to know that in the last week you have been able to go to srinagar

and attend political meetings. it suggests to me that perhaps you are exaggerating the extent of the control from india just a little bit. most of the political leaders who belong to my political party, and all other political parties, have been detained. i am the only person from my own party meeting which met in srinagar on august the fourth, who is free and freely speaking. i am ashamed of myself that i am free at a time where the entire administration of kashmir are in jail and have been imprisoned. do you think in all honesty when this interview was done and perhaps over the next few days that you will try to go back kashmir, do you think you will be free for long? police have come to my home a couple of times after i left, and it is also a story in itself that we reached

the airport and came to delhi. because of communication breakdown, people could not communicate to their higher—ups about my escape from the airport. i am very much apprehensive that soon after i leave from here i will be detained like anyone else. you are the leader of the jammu and kashmir people's movement. obviously one of quite a number of different political parties in kashmir. what is your message to your own party supporters and to the wider public? do you want to see people take to the streets and try to resist what you have called india's occupation? if you look at what has happened on the fifth of august is that the entire political mainstream, people like me who believe in electoral politics and who saw some sort of resolution coming within the framework of the indian constitution, we people have been rendered without an argument. most of the leaders, including two former chief ministers

are under arrest at this time. when you talk about the mobilisation, it has been impossible for people to mobilise protests in the past week, because of unprecedented security presence in kashmir. but i am aware that there are going to be spontaneous eruptions in kashmir the moment restrictions are relaxed a little bit and people like me and the entire leadership in kashmir, i'm not sure if anybody‘s call will be heeded or listened to. it seems you are calling for calm, because i saw this quote from you just the other day — you said "the government seems to be preparing for casualties numbering 8,000—10,000. sanity demands that we don't give anyone a chance for a massacre. my appeal is that we should all stay alive and then we shall fight back." so, right now you are telling people to stay home? i think this is a sign of the majority of the people.

200,000 security forces, who is going to raise a voice of dissent? i'm sure there will be a more calibrated, more seasoned, long—term organic sustainable response to what has been done by the state. this act of indignation that has been done to the people of kashmir, i'm sure this will not go unprotested. this decision by the indian government to revoke article 370, too, and the special autonomous status of kashmir, it can hardly have been a surprise to you. after all, mr modi's bjp party has put it into their manifesto for many elections, and after their thumping win for the last election there was speculation that this time they have a mandate to do it. the surprises that india claims to be the greatest democracy in the world. in spite of mr modi being

there in the country, we believe there are institutions of democracy that will protect the constitution. the biggest surprise this time is the way it has been done. if you look at the constitutional history of the state, if you look at how article 370 has developed in the past 70 years, i think all the jurists in this country have been of one opinion — that it is impossible to revoke these guarantees following the constitutional procedure. so today, what has been done is by resorting to complete illegality, by completely murdering the constitution in the house of people of this country, which is something that surprised us. otherwise, we always knew that bjp wanted to abolish these protections as part of the law, but the way that it was done brought to light how the constitution was murdered by these people. the men who are ruling this country,

i think it is something that surprised everybody who had faith or belief that india is the greatest democracy in the world. what about my point about a democratic mandate? this jammu and kashmir reorganisation bill sailed through the indian parliament. in the lower house it won a majority of 370—72. as you are a confessed democrat, surely that represents a mandate. it does represent a mandate, but parliament is not there to demolish the principles of democracy, it must be a voice of majority. who will then represent the minority populations? when you talk about diversity in india, it is tremendous. it is 1.3 billion people being represented in that house. what has been done to jammu and kashmir today can be done to any other state tomorrow, so if parliament is up to demolish the federal structure of this country, that is something which i believe the parliament doesn't have the mandate for, and even also we must take notice

that the supreme court of india has laid down a a basic structure of the constitution. there are seven things the parliament can also not change. we believe these articles, article 370, the supreme court has laid it down. we believe they are part of that basic structure that the parliament cannot change. i suppose the logic of the opposition is that this will end up in the supreme court and i know there are various legal challenges to the re— invocation decision that will head towards the supreme court, but let's face it, the court today has issued a ruling saying it won't intervene in the decision of the curfew and the lockdown, saying that the government has every right to impose this policy and let things stabilise. it is not clear the court is going to be on your side. if the parliament represents

the majoritarian sentiment, then courts should represent them, that is our understanding. as of now we are about to challenge these articles. some political parties have already filed petitions. i know it is going to be a long battle. it won't be easy for the supreme court also to undo what the majoritarian government, the bullying government, has done in this country. i know it will be hard for supreme court justices to stand for the cause of truth. you make your passionate points about the constitution, but is there not a way of looking at this that is much more pragmatic and technocratic? you yourself i think pride yourself on being something of a technocrat. mr modi makes the point that by imposing a form of direct rule — let's face it, direct rule from delhi to jammu and kashmir — he says there will be a lot more development.

all citizens will be guaranteed their rights but he says there will be new investment in infrastructure, the people ofjabiru in kashmir will have more opportunities, morejobs, and in the long run it will benefit the people. i think this is a completely mischievous attitude that has been built around abolishing article 370. if you look at india, which is now 28 states, jammu and kashmir has developmental indicators better than many other states. if you look at the levels of equality injammu and kashmir, at longevity, at the gdp per capita, if you look at the total fertility rates and other demographic indicators, it might surprise the people that jammu and kashmir has better indicators than all many such states that do not have such protections. article 370 was responsible — it was the protection, basically, for very successful land reforms that took place in the state of jammu and kashmir, and such land reforms have not been done anywhere else in the country. if i may also say, sorry

to interrupt, but article 370 also in a sense ring—fenced some deeply sexist policies and constitutional realities injammu and kashmir, and as mr modi has said he hopes that people will see that for example the kashmir permanent residence law, which jammu and kashmir state had imposed, bars female residents from property rights in the event that they marry a person from outside the state. mr modi makes the point that that is not right, and by imposing direct rule... that has been an evolving law, and there has been a conscious, constant debate that we need to give those protections and rights to women, and the high court ofjammu and kashmir has settled that matter. those protections and rights have been extended to women who marry nonstate subjects from jammu and kashmir. i can guarantee that we have been telling the government of india to leave it to the government

of jammu and kashmir, to the state assembly. the state assembly will correct all of those anomalies if they are there. i can tell you with confidence that all of these excuses are being now raised, because changing the demographics of the state, attacking the constitutional protections, which were always part of the bjp‘s idea, which is that we only want one president, one prime minister, one constitution in the country. that is an idea of monochromatic lack of diversity of the bjp, where it doesn't respect minorities or multiple cultures. it mainly has extreme contempt for anything that is related to muslims. i think that is something that was being used. my question then is where

do you go from here? as i say, you had a reputation that when you formed your party of being a pragmatist, a technocrat, you had worked as a senior member of the indian civil service. you argued against separatism and in creating a space for dialogue. that space seems to have disappeared. that space has disappeared not for us but for everybody else. and people like me, who wanted to find some meaning in electoral politics, who believed some sort of resolution to this dispute is still available within the framing of the constitution, i think all those people have been slapped on the fifth of august. and people like me now understand there's only two ways to do politics in kashmir — you will either have to be a stooge or you will have to be a separatist. everybody who now wants to champion the larger political rights of kashmiri people, i'm

sure the trajectory, the path for them has changed, and the methodology has changed. now i think if people have been asking for the right to self—determination, that framework is the only framework people will be ready to listen to. they will not be ready to listen to anything within the framework of the constitution. so which is it for you, mr faesal, are you going to be stooge or separatist? i think it's too early for all of us. i'm not going to be a stooge. i think one clarity which this has brought to all of us is those people who believed india would not betray this generation of kashmiris... you know, my grandfather's generation in 1953, the prime minister of jammu and kashmir was handcuffed by a very small—level police constable. my grandfather's generation got alienated and got betrayed. and my father's generation in 1987,

when elections were held in the jammu and kashmir state, and the elections were rigged, my father's generation, they got betrayed that time, and that demolished the democratic institutions and the democratic methodology, and we saw an eruption of militancy in kashmir in 1988. this new insult, this new phase of indignation began on the fifth of august, 2019, and it's my generation that has now got the taste of betrayal. i don't know how this is going to play out in the next 50—70 years. it's going to be a new phase... yeah. you said something very interesting earlier, you said you felt something of a sense of shame that you were not arrested, you're still free when so many of your fellow kashmiris, certainly in politics, have been detained. do you also feel a sense of shame that for so many years you were an insider inside the indian civil service

arguing it was less important to pursue a path of separatism and more important to concentrate on things like supplying clean water, infrastructure, development. do you think you got it wrong? do you think ultimately you're part of the problem? i do. i have to confess today before the world that we were trying to sell a wrong product to people of kashmir, and we have been snubbed on the fifth of august, 2019 when this unilateral assault on the constitutional identity of the state was done without taking any of the stakeholders on board, by resorting to complete military might and suppressing the voices of the people in kashmir. and, you know, modi just got his way through... just bulldozed his way through in kashmir without caring for what kashmiris would think about this. what's it going to be now, mr faesal? if you're going to be prepared to be, in your own word, "a stooge", and moderation appears

to be impossible in the kashmir of today, are you going to back the militants? we've already seen key militant players who have strong links in pakistan. i'm thinking of maulana abdul aziz, the guy who was a prayer leader in the red mosque in islamabad, he's now said "jihad is obligatory for muslims in pakistan because our kashmiri brothers and sisters are waiting for our help." is that the sort of language you can now identify with? the way voices of political moderation have been silenced in kashmir, i'm extremely worried it will give credence to the extremist elements and extreme ideologies are going to flourish in our part of the world. but when it comes to myself, i believe that a sustained non—violent political mass movement will have to be lodged in kashmir. it may take a lot of time, but my belief in non—violence stems from the fact most of the political

movements in the rest of the world have succeeded as long as they've been non—violent, and i believe that we are going to fight for the rights of the people. it's going to take time, but kashmiris have now found clarity in their politics, and i think we're going to make it one day. butjust to be clear with me, would you today, despite everything we've discussed of your history, describe yourself as a kashmiri separatist? i think i would not like myself to be boxed in these terminologies, because finally it has been the government of india, or the indian narrative of kashmir, that these are mainstream people and these are separatist people. if you talk about legitimacies, who are the people who have the people's legitimacy? even until now, separatists are those people who do not want to be boxed within the frame of the indian constitution. they have the larger number

of people with them. so effectively they were the political mainstream and people like us were not the political mainstream. so this entire vocabulary of politics i think has now changed in kashmir. there will be a vocabulary like revolutionists and those who want to be stats ghosts. i think i would want to be identified with the revolutionists, people who want to see peace in kashmir. if i may say so, that's a bit abstract, but let me make it deeply personal. i believe i'm right in saying your own father was killed by militants, separatist militants, because he refused to help them at a particular point. you, therefore, and yourfamily, have reasons to be suspicious of the separatist militant movement, but do you fear that kashmir may return to the bloodsoaked area of the 1980s and 1990s, where we saw so much violence inside kashmir? more than 100,000 people have died

in kashmir in the last 30 years. thousands got displaced, including minority kashmiri pandits. my worry is that if kashmir slips back to early ‘90s, we will see another phase of bloodshed. three generations have already got destroyed. i don't want to see more generations get destroyed. ijust hope like the japanese, kashmiris will also go back to their resiliency, stand up, rebuild their houses, their ideas, rebuild their hearts and minds and rebuild whatever‘s been lost and lost. this has been more like a nuclear catastrophe for all of us. sorry, but we don't have much time, let me end with thoughts about the international arena. imran khan, prime minister of pakistan, has compared what the indians have done to nazism. we've heard less from the international community — the us, the uk, other countries have been remarkably silent about what india has done.

are you therefore reliant on help from pakistan or do you believe you'll get support from the world? i'm extremely disappointed with the way international community has responded to this issue. people have to understand that kashmir is... you know, it's three nuclear powers claiming right to this territory. it's a nuclear flashpoint. it's a powderkeg, and this cannot be left unattended. any sort of aggression by any of these three states can lead to a nuclear war in this region. we just hope that the entire international community will rise up to the occasion and take notice of the human rights violations which are happening in kashmir due to this unprecedented curfew that's been placed, and the unconstitutional act that's been done in the parliament of india in recent times. 0n the specific point about pakistan, india of course consistently accuses

of the pakistani government of interfering, meddling and sponsoring terrorism in kashmir. do you believe that the climate is now right for pakistan to actually play more of a role inside kashmir? will there be kashmiris looking for pakistani help? i think pakistan has behaved like an international ngo about this entire issue, wringing its hands and showing tremendous amounts of helplessness when it comes to this issue. we are always hoping that india and pakistan can sit together and resolve this issue. india and pakistan have 70 years to figure this out among themselves, and now they've not i think it's the job of the international community to come in and help these two belligerent neighbours to make peace with each other, and, at the same time, recognise that the primary stakeholders of the dispute are the people of kashmir and the voices of kashmir need to be heard. it's always been that the narratives

of kashmir are mixed with the narratives about pakistan and india. i think it's about time people recognise kashmiris deserve to have agency over theirfuture and the voices of kashmiris need to be heard. shah faesal, we have to end there but i thank you very much indeed forjoining me from delhi. thank you very much. pretty cloudy day ahead of us on wednesday. rain on and off pretty much anywhere in the uk. there might even be one or two rumbles of thunder across the midlands, east anglia, lincolnshire as well.

by thursday, the weather will improve. but this is what it looks like right now. this is the weather system, this is all the cloud that's basically been heading our way through the course of the night. clearer skies for a time in the east, but i think from the morning onwards it's looking pretty damp if not wet across the south—west of england, wales, just about lancashire, the lake district. northern ireland getting a few spots of rain too, as well as the western isles. but it's not cold, it's quite mild in fact. these are south—westerly winds bringing some humid air, so temperatures early in the morning in plymouth about 1k. we'll match that in cardiff. but nippy in western and eastern scotland that is, in rural spots temperatures could be two or three degrees above freezing. but quickly it's going to cloud over. so look at all that — all of that cloud across the uk across wednesday. the uk on wednesday. on and off rain. it's not one solid area of rain that will be sweeping across the country, it's sort of like bits of rain, so it will come and go,

hit and miss really through the afternoon. and then actually later in the day, it looks as though some of these western areas could brighten up and that's because the weather front will be pulling away towards the east. then come thursday, we are inbetween weather systems, one out there in the atlantic ready for the weekend, but on thursday, before it arrives, the weather's looking absolutely fine. so after a cloudy, damp wednesday, thursday, more sunshine on the way. temperatures will get up to 23 degrees because there'll be more sun around, obviously, even nudging up to 20 or sojust about across northern england. i think for stornoway, no more than around 15. now, here's the low pressure that swings in off the atlantic on friday. a lot of isobars there, so, you guessed it, the winds will be pretty strong as well, gusting to around 40mph around these western and southern coasts. now the rain probably won't reach the east of the country until a lot later in the day, so that means places like say brighton, london, norwich, hull, may actually get away with a fairly decent first half to friday. the rain may not reach london until friday night, for example. but for wales and the south—west, it's looking pretty wet on friday and the temperatures only

around, say, 17—19 degrees at least for most of us. then friday night, that low pressure continues to make its journey towards the east and come saturday and sunday, it's going to turn very blustery in the uk. gusts of wind in some areas could be approaching 50mph. so another very windy weekend potentially on the way. bye— bye.

welcome to bbc news. i'm mike embley. our top stories: after days of violent protests and thousands of cancelled flights, calm descends upon hong kong airport, but can it last? but more ominous warnings from china as chinese troops manoeuvre near the hong kong border. president trump delays a 10% tariff on some chinese imports to avoid christmas shopping price hikes. and sailing to the summit, teenage climate change campaigner greta thunberg prepares to sail across the atlantic to attend a un summit in new york.