‘NIA should keep doors of jails open’.
Joint resistance leadership while strongly reacting to ongoing NIA raids in Valley said that Mirwaiz Umar Farooq, Yasin Malik and Syed Ali Shah Geelani would protest outside probe agency’s headquarters in Delhion Saturday and present themselves for arrest.
Addressing a press conference at Jama Masjid Srinagar, the joint resistance leadership said Government of India is following a policy of coercion defamation and intimidation in Kashmir as it does not want to address the actual issue. They said that an atmosphere of fear has been created in entire Kashmir through the NIA raids and Kashmiris are being demonized.
“It wants to change the whole narrative, so diversionary tactics and propaganda is being used it’s a multi pronged approach: defame and malign the leadership, through personal attack on their integrity by spreading viscous lies about them and distorting and manipulating facts in order to create disillusionment among the masses regarding them and hence demoralize the Kashmiri masses from their just political struggle recognized by the world.
“Viscous and consistent propaganda through media especially electronic and social is being carried out each day media trials are conducted on prime time television and Kashmiri movement ridiculed leadership abused and Kashmiris humiliated. People of India are being fed lies and propaganda,” the leaders said.
They said that “intimidation and harassment of our family members associates friends acquaintances party cadres organizations associated with us or any and everyone they can lay their hands on is done through sending of so called notices of NIA”. “Using fear as a tool of intimidation against these people and psychologically tormenting them to put pressure on us,” the leaders said.
The joint leadership said that even social and educational and legal institutions be it Anjuman Nustarulislam, Auqaf Jama Masjid or Bar Association associated with leadership or the movement are being targeted and those working there harassed by sending them notices. “Members of Business community and now press and media fraternity and youth are also being targeted, harassed and jailed while writer’s intellectual’s artists respected members of civil society or anyone who raises a voice against oppression and for resolution of Kashmir dispute is intimidated by sending of the notices,” they said.
The leaders alleged that the narrative of the Kashmir dispute and our struggle for self determination is being deliberately distorted and it is projected as a sponsored movement from across the border where money is the motivation and the end. “While killings oppression and harassment continues the judicial route is now also being used to launch another offensive against the people of jk through ways to abrogate article 35 A and Article 370.
“The move aimed at settling outsiders in J&K in order to change the demography of the state is being pursued to render Kashmiris powerless and irrelevant and hence dilute the disputed nature of Kashmir. This move has a direct bearing on our Right to self determination guaranteed by the Indian state at the UN and ratified by the world body itself,” they said.
The resistance leaders said that “first leadership was labeled as anti national then separatist and now terrorists for demanding the honoring of the commitments made to us by GOI at the UN and resolution of the dispute”. The resistance leaders said “Kashmir’s political movement regarding our permanent future dispensation is a globally acknowledged and endorsed issue ratified by the world community at UN through various resolutions regarding it”.
“Both India and Pakistan are a party to the dispute but the primary party is the people of J&K. Unless the dispute is resolved in accordance with the wishes and aspirations of the people of J&K our just struggle will continue,” they said, and asked the NIA to keep doors of jails open. “We are coming,” they said. (GNS)