Srinagar: Joint resistance leadership comprising Syed Ali Geelani, Mirwaiz Umar Farooq and Mohammad Yasin Malik on Sunday called for a complete shutdown on August 15.
In a statement, the leaders called upon people to observe complete shutdown on the day, marking India’s Independence Day and appealed teachers, students and their parents to boycott all functions related to the event.
The leaders also warned the government not to force teachers, students and their parents to participate in these functions, according to a statement issued here.
“We are not against the freedom of any country and will provide them a chance to decide the future by allowing independent plebiscite in Jammu and Kashmir, till then it doesn’t have any moral and constitutional right to organize the freedom celebrations on the soil of this state,” the leaders said.
“India itself attained freedom from British rule on 15 August 1947 and became an independent country but only after 72 days of this freedom, this country snatched the freedom rights of the Kashmiri people and forcibly occupied this region by landing its troops on 27 October and since then this occupation continues,” JRL said, adding, “This country merely on the bases of its military might is riding on the shoulders of the Kashmiri people and have snatched the freedom of millions of the people of this region.”
They said Kashmir was an internationally acknowledged dispute and “Delhi can neither succeed in changing the status and nature of this state by its rigid and stubborn policy nor can be this region kept permanently under the forced control,”
They said that any tinkering or fiddling in Article 35A, protecting the special status within Indian constitution, will be tolerated.
“New Delhi is desperate to tamper with the Muslim majority character of Jammu and Kashmir,” they said, cautioning people against the “nefarious designs.”
They said that people in state won’t allow anyone to alter or interfere with the integrity and special status of the state and will safeguard it at all costs.
“Our demand for right to self determination is purely a democratic demand and India has also promised to fulfil that demand on national as well as international levels but this country backtracked from its promises and is now busy in suppressing the genuine and just voices of the Kashmiri nation,” they added.
The leaders also paid glorious tributes to slain youth in Awenera Shopian gunfight and said that they are laying their precious lives for “sacred cause”.
Extending their condolences with grieved families, they said, “our youth are left with no option other than to resist this forced occupation.”
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