Srinagar, Mar 8 : “Jails and incarcerations can not deter leader Muhammad Yasin Malik and other Kashmiris from persuading the path of resistance and freedom,” said Jammu Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF) on Friday.
According to a JKLF statement issued, several of the party leaders on Friday addressed the protesting people at Budshah Chowk, said: “Arbitrary arrests, use of PSA like black laws against political dissent, ban on socio-religious organizations like Jamaat-e-Islami, attempts to fiddle with hereditary state subject law under the pretext of 35A and NIA raids on Kashmiris are all attempts to intimidate Kashmiris and stop our march towards freedom and right to self-determination and are bound to fail.”
The protest, according to the statement, was held on the call issued by the Joint Resistance Leadership (JRL).
The statement said that police on Friday arrested JKLF zonal vice president Muhammad Yasin Butt from his residence. Party’s vice chairman Showkat Ahmad Bakhshi, district presidents Bashir Ahmad Boya, Gulzar Pahalwan, senior members Mushtaq Ahmad Wani, Nadeem Ahmad of Pampore are also in police custody from last many weeks.
The JKLF leaders in their address said: “The manner in which JKLF chairman was manhandled by police at the orders of civil administration, denied to see his mother and sisters, deprived of a compulsory medical checkup and rushed to Kot Bhalwal jail, Jammu is shameful and condemnable.”
They said Yasin Malik is a known heart patient suffering from many other ailments too. “But shockingly at Kot Bhalwal jail, he has been put into solitary confinement. He has been locked inside a barrack and singled out from all other inmates. This revengeful act of so-called rulers and their authorities is a deliberate attempt to damage his health,” they said, adding, “We caution the so-called rulers to refrain from all such undemocratic and unethical acts.”
“Suppression of political dissent by police and military might and claims of being biggest democracy in the world are two poles apart and suppression unleashed by Indian state against Kashmiris is a glaring example of the fragility of its democracy in Jammu Kashmir,” the speakers said.
