Prime Minister Azad Jammu and Kashmir (AJK), Sardar Tanveer Ilyas Khan while strongly condemning the unilateral trial by Indian special court against prominent Kashmiri liberation leader Yasin Malik has termed the Indian judiciary’s act as immoral and unjustified. Terming the court proceedings as lopsided the PM said that the charges levelled against the JKLF chairman were baseless and unfounded.
In a statement issued on Wednesday, he said that the JKLF chief has spent his entire life in the resistance movement against India’s occupation forces. Yasin Malik was being subjected to political vengeance and religious hatred in India, he added.
“The Modi government has started proceedings in the court on a false and fabricated case, which is politically motivated”, Sardar Tanveer Ilyas said, adding that the motive behind this case was to punish the JKLF chairman who has refused to accept India’s illegal control over Kashmir.
He said, “After their absolute failure to break Malik’s political will by subjecting him to imprisonments, the Indian authorities started to implicate him in false and fabricated cases.” A number of cases were registered against the JKLF chief but during the trial Malik was neither allowed to defend his case effectively nor was he given ample opportunity to present his arguments in the court of law, he added.
The AJK PM said that during the court proceedings Yasin Malik was presented from Tihar Jail through video link only for attendance. “Malik was not heard by the court on any occasion”, the PM said, adding that the court had time and again rejected Malik’s demand for cross-examination of witnesses and given the Indian court’s prejudice and lopsided approach, the JKLF chairman as a mark of protest decided not to go for a Defence lawyer. The Indian media, the PM said, was pedaling a false propaganda campaign against Yasin Malik and portraying his refusal to contest charges as a confession.
Sardar Tanveer Ilyas Khan further said, “Yasin Malik is a political prisoner, a liberation leader who has been peacefully championing the Kashmiris’ just cause of freedom the way Mahatma Gandhi and Nehru fought against the British. He feared that the Indian apartheid regime might yet again subject Yasin Malik to political vendetta to appease right wing extremists and its Hindu vote bank before the next elections. He said that the propaganda campaign against the JKLF chief was part of this plan to shape up public opinion in this regard.
“A befitting response was needed to counter the negative propaganda of Indian media”, he said adding that social media activists on this side of the line of control should refrain from “copy and paste” practice of the news of the Indian media. Copy-paste Indian version of the news on social media, he said, was tantamount to becoming a part of the Indian propaganda campaign. Voicing his serious concern over the issue, the Prime Minister said that he would raise the issue with other political stakeholders including Hurriyat Conference and other international organizations working for human rights.
He pointed out that the Indian court has framed similar cases against Hurriyat leaders including Musarrat Alam Butt, Shabir Ahmed Shah, Naeem Ahmed Khan, Farooq Ahmed Dar, Shahidul Islam, Altaf Ahmed Shah, Ayaz Muhammad Akbar, Mehraj u din Kalwal, Pir Saifullah, Dr. Abdul Hameed Fayyaz, Ms. Asiya Andarabi and others. Indian apartheid regime, he said, wanted to silence all political leaders, civil society activists, human rights activists and journalists by keeping them in jails for long periods of time.
Terming Kashmiris’ ongoing struggle as a legitimate political movement, Sardar Tanveer Ilyas said that it was incumbent on the United Nations to take serious notice of the matter and play its much-needed role to stop persecution of Kashmiri prisoners who were being punished for raising their voice for the voiceless Kashmiris.
