The Joint Resistance Leadership comprising Syed Ali Geelani, Mirwaiz Umar Farooq and Muhammad Yasin Malik Tuesday called for a complete shutdown on January 26.
In a statement, the JRL asked the people of Kashmir to register their strong protest against the government of India’s “policy of non-resolution of Kashmir issue” by observing January 26 as a “black day”.
For the past 71 years, people of J&K are demanding the right to self-determination that the leadership of India promised to them not only in the UN or the parliament but reiterated at Lal Chowk in Srinagar by none other than Prime Minister Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, the JRL statement read, adding: “However, till this day not only has that commitment not been fulfilled.”
“Lakhs of armed forces are deployed to suppress the aspirations of people and draconian laws like AFSPA and PSA are invoked to ensure people’s sentiments do not get out of hand. Hundreds of people are lodged and languishing in jails in J&K and outside whose only crime is their demand for restoration of basic human and political rights the fundamental right to decide their destiny,” the statement read. “Every voice raised for it is muzzled through military might. Our youth are targeted and killed whether armed to resist forcible control or unarmed. Our homes are blown up by explosives, our orchards and crops destroyed. Even our toddlers are not spared the bullets and pellets. All means of protest are barred and curbed for us.”
The JRL also paid tributes to six militants killed in Hapatnar (Budgam) and Shopian.
The JRL strongly condemned a police raid in Kotbalwal jail where Kashmiri inmates were allegedly thrashed without any justification and termed the act as “grossly inhuman and against jail manual”.
The leadership also denounced lodging of Kashmiri prisoners “with dreaded criminals which is against the jail rules”, stating that “this move can result in great risk to the lives of Kashmiri prisoners”.
“We urge the world bodies including ICRC, Amnesty International and other bodies to take strong note of this inhuman measure and ill-treatment meted out to Kashmiri prisoners lodged in various prisons in and outside the state,” the JRL said.