government's decision to revoke kashmir‘s autonomy as a major achievement. in a speech to mark india's independence day, he said the kashmir decision had been pending for 70 years. the disputed territory has been in lockdown since delhi's decision was announced. scientists have found high levels of plastic contamination in the arctic, previously seen as one of the world's last pristine environments. a study showed a litre of melted snow could contain tens of thousands of plastic particles, probably carried on the wind from thousands of miles away. global stock markets have fallen amid growing fears about recession. markets in asia opened sharply lower, hours after the main us stock markets closed 3% down on the day. the falls follow data from the us, germany and china suggesting economic growth is slowing down. now on bbc news, it's hardtalk.

stephen sackur interviews the president of the jammu and kashmir people's movement shah faesal. since recording this interview yesterday, there are reports today that mr shah has been detained by the authorities in delhi and prevented from leaving the country. welcome to hardtalk, i'm stephen sackur. when the indian government revoked the special autonomous status of jammu 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. —— markets. 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 leadership of kashmir are injail and all eight million people 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 to 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, maybe people could not communicate to their higher—ups about my escape from the airport. but i am very much apprehensive that soon after i leave from here i may 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 both 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, the entire political mainstream, people like me who believed 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 last one 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 all entire leadership in kashmir, i'm not sure if anybody‘s call is going to be heeded or listened to. it seems you are calling for calm, because i saw this quote from you just the other day, you say, "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, for right now, you're telling people to stay home? i think this is a sign of the majority of the people. 200,000 security forces out to kill anybody who is going to raise a voice of dissent. so i think this is a sign of majority that people are not reacting that way. but i'm sure that kashmiris will give a more calibrated, more seasoned, long—term, organic, sustainable response to what has been done by the indian state. this act of indignation which 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, to end 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 in the last election it was speculated by many that this

time they have a mandate to do it. the surprise is that india claims to be in itself 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. so 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 the narrative around 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, that is something that surprised us.

otherwise, we always knew that bjp wanted to abolish these protections as part of the larger agent of akhand bharat or maybe having a hindutva kind of philosophy in this country, but the way that it was done, broad daylight, constitution was murdered by these people, these two supermen who have come to rule this country, i think it is something that surprised everybody who had faith or who believed that india was the greatest democracy in the world. what about my point about a democratic mandate? after all, this jammu and kashmir reorganisation bill just sailed through the indian parliament. in the lower house, it won a majority of 370—72. and as you are a self—professed democrat, surely that does represent a mandate. that does represent a mandate, but parliament is not there to demolish the principles of democracy, parliamentarians cannot become a voice for the majority. that's our problem. who will then represent the minority populations of this country? it's like when you talk about diversity in india, it's tremendous.

it's 1.3 billion people being represented in that house of people. 0ur problem is that when parliament resorts to unconstitutional methods. what has been done to jammu and kashmir today can be done to any other state tomorrow, so if parliament is out to demolish the federal structure of this country, that is something which i believe the parliament doesn't have the mandate for. and you must also take notice that the supreme court of india has laid down a doctrine or basic structure of the constitution. there are certain things the parliament can also not change. we believe these articles, article 370, the supreme court has laid it down. these articles in itself 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 revocation decision, which are going to 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's not clear the court's going to be on your side. if the parliament represents the majoritarian sentiment, we hope the courts should represent the minority sentiment, that's our understanding. so it's not clear the court's going to be on your side. if the parliament represents the majoritarian sentiment, we hope the courts should represent the minority sentiment, that's our understanding. as of now, we are about to challenge these articles. some of the political parties have already filed their petitions. i know it's going to be a long battle. it's not going to be easy for the supreme court also to undo what the majoritarian government, a bully government, has done in this country. i know it will be hard for supreme courtjustices 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 which is much more pragmatic and technocratic? and 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'll be new investment in infrastructure, the people ofjammu and kashmir will have more opportunities, morejobs, and, in the long run, it will benefit the people. i think this is a completely mischievous narrative that has been built around the abolishing of article 370. if you look at india, which is now 28 states, jammu and kashmir state has developmental indicators better than many of such states. if you look at the levels of equality injammu and kashmir this time, if you look at at longevity, if you look at 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 residents 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's not right, and by imposing direct rule women will benefit. 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.

and those protections, those 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, leave it to the state assembly. the state assembly is going to correct all of those anomalies if they are there. i can tell you with complete confidence that all these excuses are being now raised, because of the larger agenda of assailing the special identity of the state, 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 constitution, one flag, one symbol, one president, one prime minister in this 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. well, my question then is where do you go from here, mr faesal? as i say, you had a reputation that when you formed your party of being a pragmatist, a technocrat, you'd 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 5th 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 5th 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 5th 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 into kashmir without caring for what kashmiris would think about this. so what's it going to be now, mr faesal? if you're no longer 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 resolutionists and those who want to be... 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 19805 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 powder keg, 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.

hello. for many of you, wednesday was a bit of a washout, to say the least. thursday, however, looking much, much better. the bulk of you will spend if not all but certainly most of the day dry and a lot brighter and feeling a little bit warmer as well. we are sort of between weather systems on thursday, this weather system which brought the rain on wednesday, some heavy showers through the night and into thursday morning, more persistent rain around shetland, this is the next weather system for friday so in between those two, we've got a fair bit of cloud to begin with. nowhere near as chilly for the thursday morning commute as it was on the wednesday morning commute but a few showers here and there, scotland, parts of northern ireland northern england and north wales, more persistent rain in shetland with showers pushing the way eastwards and largely fade in intensity and number as they go, leaving most places under mostly sunny skies during thursday afternoon and with a lot more sunshine around, slightly lighter winds, of course it will feel warmer than it did on wednesday

and that sunshine of course, a bit stronger as well this time of year. we finish the day with sunshine hazy across northern ireland, could be a bit of evening rain here but through the night, cloud and rain and wind start to push in from the north and west. parts of the midlands, eastern england will stay dry with some clearer skies and the coolest conditions down into single figures once again, but the temperatures here but mostly in the teens as we start friday morning but as you can see, it's going to be a day for the umbrella but also to really have a tight grip on it because this area of low pressure also brings with it strong winds. it's out at the atlantic at the moment but it pushes this weather front on its forward edge, bringing rain to most parts of the day on friday, scotland, northern ireland, northern england and wales, the wettest part will be likely be during the morning as rain spreads its way southwards and eastwards and after a bright start in the south—east corner, it will turn here wetter into the afternoon, and more persistent rain across southern counties of south wales through the afternoon with scotland and northern ireland seeing more sunshine but across the board it will be a blustery day with winds topping out around gale—force around

many coasts and hills. that same area of low pressure will be with us into the start of the weekend, keeping things like friday a little on the cool side. we have winds coming down from the north atlantic around it and they will continue to feed their way in, feeding showers. the more persistent rain linked to this weather front will be just about clearing for saturday morning. early risers across the south—east may be still on the wet side but sunshine will come out for a time before that weather front inches northwards once again, turning the sunshine hazy across the south and turning things wetter in the channel islands. vast majority, though, saturday, the story of sunshine and showers. showers more frequent around scotland, northern ireland, northern england and some of those happy with hail and thunder. stays cool as it will do on sunday with the chance of some more persistent rain, close to the south coast. most will stick with that sunshine and showers theme and quite a windy one this weekend too.

this is the briefing. i'm sally bundock. our top story: in his independence day speech, india's prime minister defends his much—criticised decision to revoke kashmir‘s special status. an italian court says a migrant rescue ship can dock in the country's ports, but the right—wing interior minister says he'll still block it. britain's opposition leader calls for a temporary government of national unity and a general election to stop a no—deal brexit. battle of the retailers — chinese ecommerce giant alibaba is set to unveil its latest results just hours before walmart. all this in the shadow of the trade war between washington and beijing.