Srinagar: In occupied Kashmir, the joint resistance leadership comprising Syed Ali Gilani, Mirwaiz Umar Farooq and Muhammad Yasin Malik has strongly denounced the arrest of pro-freedom leaders by Indian National Investigation Agency (NIA).
The NIA arrested Hurriyat leaders including Altaf Ahmad Shah, Merajuddin Kalwal, Peer Saifullah, Ayaz Muhammad Akbar and Shahid-ul-Islam in Srinagar, yesterday, after implicating them in false cases. Later, they were taken to New Delhi.
The joint resistance leadership in a statement issued in Srinagar said, all these pro-movement political activists and leaders have been at the forefront of the people’s movement and have tirelessly supported the leadership and worked for people’s cause. They are being persecuted and targeted for their political ideology and principles, it said.
The resistance leaders expressed serious concern about the safety of these people after their sudden arrests as no one has been able to establish contact with them and their whereabouts are not known. They said that a drama was enacted by the Indian government through NIA of first raiding, then questioning and now arresting these people, giving an impression that law and procedures had been followed and then these people arrested on grounds of some evidence being found to link them to the alleged charges. The sensationalizing propagandist anti-Kashmir electronic media of India was also brought into play to aid and abet this drama and deceit, they said.
The joint resistance leadership said that absolutely no evidence was found against Altaf Ahmed Shah, Shahid-ul-Islam, Ayaz Muhammad Akbar, Merajuddin Kalwal and Peer Saifullah in connection with false cases registered against them and they had been arrested as per the plan of the Indian government. NIA officials had repeatedly told them that sooner or later they will be arrested as the Indian authorities had made up their mind to do so, it added.
Syed Ali Gilani, Mirwaiz Umar Farooq and Muhammad Yasin Malik said, the people of Kashmir know very well the central idea and aim behind this drama. They said, as international pressure is building up on India with regard to resolution of the Kashmir dispute and human rights situation in occupied Kashmir, New Delhi is constantly refusing to acknowledge the dispute and working hard to ward off this pressure by projecting the people’s political struggle in Kashmir as “Islamic terrorism†aided by Pakistan so that it does not have to engage with the political sentiments and aspirations of Kashmiris. “Implicating Hurriyat leaders in alleged funding is part of that plan and is also aimed at misleading the people of India,†they added.
The joint resistance leadership said, the political movement in Kashmir is a people’s movement based on the universal principles of justice and sovereignty of people and as long as people of Kashmir believe in it and support it no power and propaganda on earth can alter that reality however much the oppressor may try. It said that these intimidating and pressure tactics would neither weaken the ongoing freedom movement nor the resolve of the leadership in pursuing the just cause. Hardships, trials and persecution are a given in this path as the history of freedom struggles world over has witnessed, it said.
