A Canadian MP from prime minister Justin Trudeau\u2019s ruling Liberal Party caucus is facing criticism over his use of the term \u201cAzad Kashmir\u201d to refer to Pakistan-occupied Kashmir.<\/p>\n
Rob Oliphant, a member of the House of Commons, described visiting Pakistani leader Masood Khan as the \u201cPresident of Azad Jammu & Kashmir\u201d in a tweet, which immediately attracted brickbats.<\/p>\n
Among those to counter it was Indo-Canadian entrepreneur Vijay Sappani, who tweeted back: \u201cThere is no country called \u2018Azad Jammu & Kashmir\u2019 Mr. @Rob_Oliphant , like there is no country called Quebec.\u201d<\/p>\n
The latter reference was to the Canadian province that has been plagued by a decades-long separatist movement.<\/p>\n
Oliphant\u2019s tweet came after a meeting with Khan, who he described as a \u201cformer senior diplomat\u201d who \u201cbrings insight and compassion to a difficult situation in the region\u201d. Oliphant later deleted his tweet and, in an emailed response to Hindustan Times, said, \u201cI recognise that the more neutral term would be Pakistan Administered Kashmir. I have used that term in my Facebook post and will use it in the future.\u201d<\/p>\n
He explained his \u201cnormal practice is to use the name of the territory used by the people who live there and by those who invited me to have dinner with them\u201d and that he understood \u201cthere are sensitivities related to Kashmir\u201d.<\/p>\n
Oliphant is co-chair of the Canada-Pakistan Friendship Association, though he is also close to the Indo-Canadian community.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A Canadian MP from prime minister Justin Trudeau\u2019s ruling Liberal Party caucus is facing criticism over his use of the term \u201cAzad Kashmir\u201d to refer to Pakistan-occupied Kashmir. Rob Oliphant, a member of the House of Commons, described visiting Pakistani leader Masood Khan as the \u201cPresident of Azad Jammu & Kashmir\u201d in a tweet, which […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":36787,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[87],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-36786","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36786","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36786"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36786\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":36788,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36786\/revisions\/36788"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/36787"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36786"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36786"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36786"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}