Harassment will push Kashmiri youth towards militancy: Yasin Malik

Chairman Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF) Muhammad Yasin Malik on Friday cautioned that continued harassment of Kashmiri students in outside states can push them towards militancy.

Addressing Friday gathering at Masjid-e-Bilal here, Malik said majority of people who participated in 2008 and 2010 agitations were youth.  “Those who picked up arms later were the youth who were subjected to harassment and torture. They didn’t go to Pakistan for arms training and still picked up guns to resist,” he said. “The way videos of harassment and torture of Kashmiri students and businessmen…are coming to fore; those images are striking young minds in Kashmir again. Those who are watching these videos and the victims themselves are being pushed to the wall and left with no option to pick up arms.”

   

Malik said “if any one among those who were harassed or beaten in outside states picks up gun tomorrow, who would be blamed for it.” For the past one week, reports have been pouring in about harassment Kashmir students and businessmen in different states, following the car-bomb attack on a CRPF convoy in Lethpora on February 14 in which 40 troopers were killed.   

“Will Government of India tomorrow accept that these boys joined militancy because of the oppression unleashed on them in various states?,” the JKLF chief asked. 

He said that in recent past many Ph.d scholars picked up arms and were killed in encounters. “They too had tales of oppression from the past,” Malik said. “When today career of our youth studying in various states is put at the stake by forcing them to flee after ruthless thrashing, these young students can take extreme step in desperation.”

Malik lashed out at various Indian news channels and accused them of “spewing venom” against Kashmiris. “The job of a journalist is to speak truth and present a true picture. But Indian media has its own interests,” he said.

Expressing concern over prevailing situation in south Kashmir over the past 10 days, Malik said all the villages across southern Kashmir have been converted into “hell” as people of all ages were being “subjected to harassment, commuters thrashed and properties damaged”.

“For all the oppression being unleashed on Kashmiris none other than the parties believing in electoral politics are responsible. It is these parties who ratified draconian laws like Armed Forces Special Powers Act, Public Safety Act and set up task force as well,” he said.

“Be it National Conference or Congress, all are responsible for peoples’ miseries. The PDP chief Mehbooba Mufti recently started visiting homes of slain militants, but she forgot that it was she who in 2016 said whether young boys killed in forces firing had gone to buy toffee or milk from forces’ camps,” Malik said.

He cautioned people to remain alert about people seeking votes. “Today, people are shouldering coffins of their loved ones and tomorrow they will be asked to vote. It is people who need to remember the blood of youth and not betray it,” he said.

The JKLF chief rued denial of successive regimes to slain Jamiat-e-Ahlihadith chief Moulana Showkat Ahmed’s proposal for opening Transworld Muslim University, Karwan-e-Islami’s project for setting up Sheikhul Alam University and Kashmiri doctor’s proposal for opening state-of the art hospital in Kashmir.

“All the previous regimes didn’t grant permission for these ambitious projects. Today, our youth would not have been dependent on outside universities and colleges,” he said.

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