Islamabad
In occupied Kashmir, the All Parties Hurriyat Conference Chairman, Syed Ali Gilani has urged the international human rights organizations and the United Nations to put pressure on India to release all illegally detained Hurriyat leaders and activists and stop brutalities in the territory.
Syed Ali Gilani in a statement issued in Srinagar said that India had converted the entire occupied territory into a big jail. He maintained that New Delhi would fail to suppress the Kashmiris’ ongoing liberation movement through inhuman tactics.
The illegally detained Hurriyat leader, Abdul Samad Inqilabi, has announced to go on a hunger strike from March 23 against inhuman and immoral treatment of Kashmiri detainees in Indian jails. A statement issued by his party Islami Tanzeem-e-Azadi in Srinagar said that Inqilabi made the announcement against physical torture of the Kashmiri detainees and other violations of human rights by jail authorities. Samad Inqalabi is presently lodged in Srinagar Central jail.
Meanwhile, a team of Kashmir Press Club during a meeting with a three-member delegation of the Press Council of India informed them how local journalists were confronting the toughest time since the abrogation of Article 370. They said that the journalists were facing harassment, summons, intimidation and censorship. The journalists also raised questions about the conduct of the Press Council of India in the wake of the revocation of Kashmir’s special status and made a particular reference to the unethical stand taken by the Chairman of the Press Council wherein he had justified the imposition of restrictions by India in Kashmir. On the other hand, copies of false charges framed by a TADA court in Jammu against Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front Chairman, Muhammad Yasin Malik, and Showkat Bakhshi were sent to Tihar jail in New Delhi and Ambedkar Nagar jail in Uttar Pradesh where the two Kashmiri leaders are held. The court on Monday ridiculously charged Muhammad Yasin Malik and six others in connection with the killing of four Indian Air Force officials in 1990 in Srinagar. —KMS