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Journalism of Courage
The FBIs arrest of Ghulam Nabi Fai in the United States for allegedly using ISI funds to lobby for Kashmir has turned the spotlight on two other individuals from the Valley who run similar influential centres in Brussels and the United Kingdom: Abdul Majeed Tramboo and Nazir Shawl.
Both are from the Kashmir Valley,one a lawyer and the other a scientific researcher,and both worked in close coordination with Fai,Islamabad,and with each other.
Their activities pushing the Pakistan establishments line on Kashmir and their source of funding,sources say,are very similar to that of Fais Kashmir American Centre and the Kashmir Centre in Washington.
In fact,Tramboo has been very active especially because his office in Brussels is next to the European Union headquarters.
A successful immigration lawyer in the UK,Tramboo comes from an affluent Kashmiri family that was traditionally close to the National Conference and,especially,its founder Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah. Unlike Fai,though,Tramboos immigration to Europe didnt happen because of his personal or his familys separatist credentials.
After graduating from the University of Kashmir,Tramboo got an LLB from the University of Bombay. In the early 80s,he began practising as a lawyer in the Jammu and Kashmir High Court and later moved to the UK where he took the London Council of Legal Education exams. In 1988,he served as in-house Counsel for immigration,asylum and nationality matters.
In 1990,just when militancy began in the Valley,Tramboo joined the United Kingdom Immigration Advisory Service (UKIAS),London,as a Tribunal Counsellor. Initially,he was close to the JKLF but as he began getting closer to the Pakistan establishment,he snapped ties with the pro-independence separatists.
In 1996,he set up a law firm in London,Tramboo Partnership,with an exclusive focus on immigration,asylum,nationality and human rights matters.
When the Hurriyat split and Kashmir centres were set up to boost the separatist campaign in Europe and North America,Tramboo moved his base out of the UK and set up a Kashmir Centre in Brussels.
He hired local staff and lobbied with European lawmakers on the issues of the right of self-determination in accordance with the United Nations resolutions (a Pak position on Kashmir) and alleged human rights violations in Kashmir.
Tramboo organized dozens of international conferences and like Fai has been a permanent fixture in the annual UN conference on Human Rights at Geneva. His seminars have touched topics like rape as a war crime (1997),involuntary disappearances (1999),the first International Conference on the Right to Self-Determination and the United Nations in Geneva (2000) and Kashmir: A Nuclear Flashpoint in Brussels (2003).
Tramboo,a member of the General Bar Council of England & Wales and Lincolns Inn,was married to an Italian but was later divorced. Currently,hes married to an expatriate Indian and lives between UK and Belgium.
Parallel to Tramboos lobbying is that of Nazir Shawl who heads the London-based Justice Foundation and Kashmir Centre and was actively involved with separatist politics in PoK for years before heading to UK.
Born on October 10,1946,in Mollah Jadeed in Baramulla,Shawl went to Baramulla Degree College. His family was close to the Jamat-e-Islami and he,too,was groomed in the Jamat culture. He migrated to Pakistan Occupied Kashmir (PoK) soon after militancy started in the Valley in 1990.
After the death of Ayoub Thakur in 2004,a nuclear scientist who left Kashmir with Fai in 1980 to avoid arrest and set up the World Kashmir Freedom Movement and Justice Foundation in United Kingdom,Shawl was sent to take over the operations of these two organisations. Fai moved from Saudi Arabia to the United States and set up the Kashmir American Centre and the Kashmir Centre.
Thakur,a PhD in nuclear physics,did a brief stint at the Bhaba Atomic Research Centre and later became a lecturer in the Department of Physics in Kashmir University. Thakur was active with Jamats student wing Jamiat-e-Tulba. He was dismissed from government service and arrested under the Public Safety Act (PSA) for five months. In 1981,he shifted to Saudi Arabia where he taught nuclear physics till 1984. He set up the Justice Foundation in 2003 which was taken over by Shawl after his death in 2004.
With a Masters in Science and Education,Shawl worked as a research officer in Kashmir. From 1989 to 1992, he was a field adviser in charge of science education and a coordinator for a UNICEF-assisted project in education. At the peak of militancy in 1992,Shawl migrated to Pakistan where he was active with the separatist conglomerate,especially Jamat. After Thakurs death,he was assigned to move to the UK to take over the Justice Foundation and Kashmir Centre in London.
