Srinagar: Joint Resistance Leadership – JRL comprising Syed Ali Geelani, Mirwaiz Umar Farooq and Mohd Yasin Malik have asked people of Kashmir to register their strong protest against Govt. of India’s Policy of non-resolution of the Kashmir dispute and the subsequent severe repression unleashed on people of J&K, by observing 26th January as a black day. JRL said that for past 71 years people of J&K are demanding the Right to self-determination that Indian leadership promised to them not only in the United Nations or the Indian Parliament, but reiterated at Lal Chowk in Srinagar by none other than Prime Minister of India, Pandit Jawhar Lal Nehru. However, till this day not only has that commitment not been fulfilled but those that remind them of it are rewarded with bullets and pellets are incarcerated and gagged.
In a statement to Valley Media Service, JRL said that a nation that prides itself on being a representative democracy chosen by the free will of its people, a republic, is executing tyranny and suppression to forcibly exert its will over the people of Kashmir. Lakhs of armed forces are deployed to suppress the aspirations of people and draconian laws like AFSPA and PSA are invoked to ensure people’s sentiments do not get out of hand. Hundreds of people are lodged and languishing in jails in JK and outside whose only crime is their demand for restoration of basic human and political rights the fundamental right to decide their destiny. Every voice raised for it is muzzled through military might. Our youth are targeted and killed whether armed to resist forcible control or unarmed. Our homes are blown-up by explosives, our orchards and crops destroyed. Even our toddlers are not spared the bullets and pellets. All means of protest are barred and curbed for us.
The Leadership while paying tributes to the six militants martyred in Hapatnar and Shopian that include Zahid Ahmed, Touseef Ahmed, and Muhammad Rabani, Shamsul Haq Mengnoo along with his two associates, stating that each day we are shouldering the coffins of our loved ones a consequence of the simmering dispute. Our grief and pain has no effect on those who while they celebrate their own struggle for independence with independence and republic days trample upon ours with jackboots and military might and are getting away with it as the world watches indifferently.
The Leadership strongly condemned the police raid in the notorious prison Kotbalwal where Kashmiri inmates were thrashed without any justification, JRL termed the act as grossly inhuman and against jail manual. The leadership also denounced the lodging of Kashmiri prisoners with dreaded criminals which is against the jail rules stating that this move can result in a great risk to life of Kashmiri prisoners. It urged the world bodies including ICRC, Amnesty International and other bodies to take strong note of this inhuman measure and ill treatment meted out to Kashmiri prisoners lodged in various prison in and outside the State.(VMS)
