Srinagar: People of Kashmir have been watching with dismay the treatment meted out to Kashmiri students, traders, shawl sellers and businessmen in a systematic manner, chairman Hurriyat Conference (M) Mirwaiz Umar Farooq said on Friday.
“In Jammu itself Kashmiri employees and families were targeted and dozens of vehicles torched by anti-Kashmir, anti-Muslim fanatics,” Mirwaiz said while addressing a Friday gathering.
He said that the anti-Kashmir hatred later spread to other states of India where Kashmiri students, were beaten harassed and in some cases rusticated from their respective colleges and Universities, while the goons targeting them were given a free hand.
Mirwaiz said that even the Governor of Mizoram called for boycotting of Kashmiri products and Kashmiris.
He demanded that authorities ensure safe passage of every single Kashmiri back to their home land.
Mirwaiz reminded the people of India how Kashmiri youth first saved non-state residents including forces personnel in the deadly deluge of 2014 while in 2008 Amarnath Land agitation, not a single Yatri or non-state resident was ever attacked despite provocation.
“Despite the fact that we are at the receiving end of repression and Kashmiris are killed brutally yet not even a single non-local has ever been harmed here or forced to flee.”
He said that it was because Kashmiri people do not believe in communal hatred or victimization and every non-local will always be as safe in Kashmir as the common Kashmiri.
“When the incident happened last week at Pulwama, Kashmiris regretted it as we believe that every human life is precious and every human has a right to live, yet our lives and human rights are not trampled and we are killed with impunity and incarcerated under draconian PSA.”
Mirwaiz said that Kashmir is a political issue and time and again “I have said that Kashmir has no military solution instead it needs political solution.”
Mirwaiz asked that didn’t Hurriyat talked to Atal Bihari Vajpayee, but the new dispensation never revisited his approach and instead resorted to use of sheer force.
“This force has forced our young generation towards arms,” Mirwaiz said, adding that people of India are being misled by a state narrative on Kashmir that obfuscates the fact of it being a dispute. “J&K is not Bihar, Himachal or any other state but an internationally accepted disputed territory divided between India and Pakistan”.
He said the state narrative to blame Hurriyat Conference for all the troubles was sheer propaganda as the fact remains that Kashmir movement is not associated to any individual or organisation but it a mass peoples’ movement for the realization of their genuine political aspirations.
“I want to tell New Delhi should that by removing security cover, booking resistance leaders by NIA and ED, incarcerating and caging and harassing them, leadership will not change its stance as our stand is was based on principles and truth that people of Kashmir have to be given their legitimate right, the right to resolution of dispute.”
Mirwaiz said he will continue to speak the same thing and advocate the same ideology that he told to Vajpayeeji and Manmohan Singh that resolution of Kashmir is either through right to self-determination or through tripartite dialogue for goodwill and friendship between the nuclear neighbors for the prosperity of their people.
Mirwaiz lauded all those who came to the aid of Kashmiris in this time of distress. He said the role of Sikh community in Punjab and Jammu especially Khalsa aid that helped Kashmiris by offering them vehicles, and lodging them in Gurduwaras and homes was highly appreciable. He said Kashmiri people acknowledge the role played by the Sikh community.
Mirwaiz also said that the talk of strikes against Pakistan and starting a war, will only lead to destruction in entire sub-continent as both nations are nuclear powers and achieve no solution as in the past. Kashmiris, Mirwaiz said, are against war and violence. “We are only asking for resolution of the dispute by peaceful means the most effective being dialogue. History is witness that nations even after fighting wars, have still to sit on a negotiating table to hammer out a solution.”
