Ahead of official R-day celebrations in Jammu and Kashmir, the police launched a crackdown on the resistance camp and detained the Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front chairman Muhammad Yasin Malik and some other leaders in Srinagar.
At least half a dozen leaders were also placed under house arrest “as a precautionary measure,” a police official said.
The detentions come at a time when Kashmir is, according to officials, on a high alert amid stepped up security to ensure smooth R-day functions.
The Joint Resistance Leadership comprising Syed Ali Geelani, Mirwaiz Umar Farooq and Malik have urged people to observe a complete shutdown on January 26 across Kashmir.
Malik was detained by the police along with the organisation’s vice-chairman Mushtaq Ajmal from the JKLF office at Abi Guzar here. They were lodged in police station Kothibagh.
Talking to journalists before his detention, Malik said a nation that propagates to be the biggest democracy of the world “actually believes in putting its political opponents and freedom-seekers in jails, that too in the name of the same democracy”.
“New Delhi has no right to call itself a democratic country and thus defame and disgrace real democracy and human norms,” Malik said.
“The republic day of a nation that has snatched the freedom of Kashmiris and is constantly denying the rights of people, cannot be a day of happiness for the oppressed people of Kashmir,” he said.
People of Kashmir will observe a complete shutdown and “blackout” on January 26 as a mark of protest against the “travesty of democracy” in J&K, he said.
New Delhi and its leaders like Jawahar Lal Nehru pledged before the international community of giving Kashmiris the right of self-determination, “but today Kashmiris are being killed, maimed, arrested, raided, humiliated and suppressed for demanding the same right”, the JKLF chief said.
He alleged that New Delhi, “which is hell-bent upon ripping apart all democratic norms to suppress Kashmiris, can only be termed as dictatorial and despotic”.
Meanwhile, the police also detained Peoples Political Party chairman Hilal Ahmed War from the party’s Rajbagh office.
“War was taken to police station Maisuma and lodged there,” a spokesman of the party said.
The spokesman strongly condemned War’s arrest, saying “it amounts to state oppression and denial of the right to expression”.
The police also placed many resistance leaders under house detention, including Muhammad Ashraf Sehrai and Javaid Ahmed Mir, while Abdur Rashid Lone and Bashir Irfani were detained by the police.
A police official said here that a “few separatists have been taken into preventive custody” to prevent them from “disrupting the peaceful atmosphere. It’s a routine exercise ahead of January 26 and August 15. There is nothing new in it”.