Calling the killing of "our youth" and ongoing bloodshed in Kashmir deeply painful, the Joint Resistance Leadership said on Thursday that "Indian intransigence has pushed the youth to the wall".
"They (youth) spill their blood to resist India's illegal and forcible control while seeking their legitimate right of the right to self-determination," reads a statement issued by the JRL comprising Syed Ali Geelani, Mirwaiz Umar Farooq and Muhammad Yasin Malik.
The leaders paid homage to two militants, Mukhtar Ahmad Khan and Muhammad Amin Mir, who were killed in a gunfight with government forces in Zugoo, Arizal area of Budgam district on Thursday.
"It is because of the lingering Kashmir dispute besides New-Delhi's obduracy that Kashmir is witnessing bloodbath almost every day as the youth are selectively being martyred under a planned policy. Despite the large-scale killing of youth, voices to demand the exercise of their birth right of the right to self-determination are getting shriller with every passing day and the resolve of the people of Kashmir to fight the worst oppression unleashed on them by the rulers of Delhi is getting strengthened on the ground," the statement reads.
The JRL also expressed "deep anguish" over the prolonged and "illegal" detention of resistance leaders Shabir Ahmed Shah, advocate Shahid-ul-Islam, Altaf Ahmad Fantoosh, Ayaz Akbar, Peer Saifullah, Mehrajudin Kalwal, Nayeem Ahmed Khan, Farooq Ahmed Dar, Shahid Yousuf, businessman Zahoor Watali and women leaders Asiya Andrabi, Fehmeeda Sofi and Nahida Nasreen who have detained at New Delhi's Tihar Jail "under the fictitious charges framed by the NIA and ED."
"These leaders have even been deprived of the basic fundamental right of free trial as the hearing of the cases is being deliberately delayed and they not even presented before the courts with the sole intention of prolonging their illegal detention which is nothing but a pure political vendetta," the statement said.
"By using the delaying tactics the hearing of their cases has now been postponed to December 5, 2018," it adds.
The Leadership said: "The jail authorities are not treating these prisoners well and they are even denied the basic health care facilities including medicine etc."
They said, "It is regrettable that the internationally recognized rules of treatment with prisoners in jails are being trampled in a country which claims to be the largest democracy in the world."
The JRL urged the world forums, OHCHR, Amnesty International, International Red-Cross, Asia Watch, and others to take notice of the plight of Kashmiri prisoners lodged in various jails, including Tihar-Delhi, Kahtua, Udhampur, Kotbalwal, Central-jail Srinagar, and witness firsthand the "ill-treatment meted out to the prisoners".
The JRL urged these bodies to intervene and impress upon New Delhi to end the "unjustified and illegal" detention of Kashmiri inmates.
The Leadership also strongly denounced the NIA notices to Hurriyat leaders Aga Syed Al Hassan Al Mousvi, Ghulam Nabi Sumjhi and fresh raids on the Kashmiri businessmen, stating that "these tactics are a part of a continuous plan to defame the movement and put pressure on the resistance leadership".
Meanwhile, the leadership strongly condemned raids by government forces in Damhal-Khashipora in Anantnag district, where two 70-year-old men, and 20 students who were about to appear in the exams, were detained. The JRL said the students missed their exam because of their "illegal detention".
