The land that poets once described as “paradise on earth” has for decades been the world’s most densely militarised territory. Since the Indian subcontinent gained independence from the UK in 1947, Jammu and Kashmir, India’s only Muslim-majority state, has been mired in a long-running dispute between that country and neighbouring Pakistan. This is a long history where the ghosts of the subcontinent’s partition, the instrumentalisation of the conflict by Narendra Modi’s ultra-nationalist Hindu government, and the economic interests of three nuclear powers are intertwined. Since 5 August 2019, Kashmir has been undergoing a new phase of repression and suspension of rights and freedoms, aggravated by the Covid-19 pandemic, which some critics describe as a siege within a siege. Keep reading

The French National Assembly has passed a bill that opens the door to implement language immersion through the medium of minoritised languages in public schools, as well as to allow for better funding of immersive, community-run private schools. The approval has been described as “historic” by several organisations working in favour of those languages, such as Breton, Catalan, Occitan, Basque or Corsican. Keep reading

A pro-independence left-wing party has won the early election to the Parliament of Greenland held on 6 April and is set to lead the government of this self-governing island of Denmark. In total, 80% of the votes cast went to pro-independence candidates. Keep reading

The fourth election in two years in Israel has again left a fragmented parliamentary arc with no solid majority for either bloc. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud has again secured the Knesset’s main parliamentary group (30 seats out of 120 with almost all votes counted) but, combining with its usual partners, the party does not reach the 61 seats needed to form a government. Keep reading

Chief Prosecutor of Turkey’s Court of Cassation Bekir Şahin has launched a legal proceeding that could lead to the outlawing of the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP). In the lawsuit submitted to the Constitutional Court, Şahin blames the HDP for undermining the indivisibility of the Turkish state and for maintaining links with the PKK, according to reports published by Anadolu Agency. Keep reading

The survival of the United Kingdom is more contested than ever. As Scotland moves towards a second referendum and Irish reunification becomes a real possibility, pro-independence demands are rising in Wales to unprecedented levels. Historically the demand of a minority —some 10% of the population—, it has now boomed, with 1 in 3 Welsh citizens supporting it, along with an unprecedented popular mobilisation. This is how we have come to this point. Keep reading