Srinagar
Amid the devastating Covid-19 surge in India, the fascist Modi-led government is continuously ignoring calls for the release of approximately three thousand Hurriyat leaders, activists, youth, women and civil society members from Indian jails.
A report released by Kashmir Media Service deplored that despite the alarm repeatedly raised by the world rights bodies about the condition of Kashmiri prisoners in jails Indian government is paying no heed to these calls.
The worried families are asking whether the incarcerated Kashmiri prisoners are not humans that they are not set free despite Covid surge.
The illegally detained Hurriyat leaders and activists include Muhammad Yasin Malik, Muhammad Ashraf Sehrai, Shabbir Ahmed Shah, Masarrat Aalam Butt, Syeda Asiya Andrabi, Fehmeeda Sofi, Nahida Nasreen, Shazia Akhter, Haseena Begum, Dr Abdul Hameed Fayaz, Dr Muhammad Qasim Fakhtoo, Altaf Ahmed Shah, Nayeem Ahmed Khan, Peer Saifullah, Raja Marajuddin Kalwal, Ghulam Muhammad Butt,Ayaz Akbar, Farooq Ahmed Dar, Shahidul Islam, Zahoor Ahmed Watali, Syed Shahid Yousuf, Syed Shakeel Yousuf, Farooq Ahmad Tawheedi, Ameer Hamza, Imtiyaz Haider, Hayat Ahmad Butt, Muhammad Yousuf Mir, Muhammad Yosuf Falahi, Muhammad Rafiq Ganai, Shafi Shariati, Advocate Zahid Ali, and journalist Asif Sultan.
These detainees are languishing in different jails of IIOJK, in Indian Tihar and other jails under draconian laws like Public Safety Act (PSA) and Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA) to silence voice for freedom.
Most of the detainees are suffering from multiple ailments. All these detainees have been implicated in false cases.
The report said that families of the political prisoners have been running from pillar to post fighting for the release of their dear ones and now fear coronavirus has put them in jeopardy.
The report said that horrific tales of Kashmiri detainees emerge, now and then, from Indian jails where detained Hurriyat leaders are not allowed to even take part in the last rites of their loved ones in IIOJK.
Indian authorities didn’t release incarcerated APHC leader Ayaz Akbar from Tihar jail to attend funeral prayers of his wife who died of cancer recently.
Modi-led led Indian regime is turning a blind eye to the genuine demand for the release of Kashmiri prisoners amid spread of deadly coronavirus in jails.
New Delhi is deliberately prolonging unlawful detention of Kashmiris, imprisoned in faraway jails in India to make their plight invisible to the world at large for their political beliefs, the report added.
“By doing so Modi regime is openly violating Geneva Convention on prisoners’ rights, which needs intervention by the international community for the release of the detainees and also to punish India,” the report demanded.
The report cites Ruwa Shah who has been visiting her father, a prominent Hurriyet leader, Altaf Ahmed Shah in Tihar Jail in New Delhi since his arrest in 2017 but now worries that he faces a new threat to his health from the virus.
“He is a political prisoner who has been advocating Kashmir’s freedom movement,” Ruwa Shah told media.
“According to the Geneva Conventions, he is a prisoner of war and he has rights, but the Indian state deprives us of all of them.”
‘If there is an outbreak in the overcrowded prison without even basic medical facilities, it is going to be catastrophic,’ she added
Being diabetic and hypertensive, Altaf Shah has been insulin dependent for decades, leaving his daughter fearing that poor conditions in prison amid the pandemic make him more vulnerable to the novel coronavirus.
“When I visit the jail, I have to wait for hours in a stinky waiting area where rats and dogs roam around openly,” Ruwa Shah said.
“I wonder what the situation in the prison cells is like… A healthy person would get an infection in that complex.”
While she said her father had abstained from giving his family extensive details of his incarceration conditions in order not to worry them, Ruwa Shah said her father was being held in a two-by-three-metres cell with two other prisoners.
“I am scared and worried for them. If there is an outbreak in the overcrowded prison without even basic medical facilities, it is going to be catastrophic,” she said.
While as of now chances of Kashmiri political prisoners being released appeared slim, Ruwa Shah continues to hope against the hope.
“The justice system in India is part of an umbrella authority that works in only one way.
The system not only breaks you down but breaks down every ounce of hope and courage that is left in you,” she added.
Nuzhat Shahid, who lives with her two daughters in Srinagar city, says her husband Shahidul Islam’s condition in Tihar Jail has severely affected the mental health of her children.
“Last time we saw Shahid (during a family visit in prison), my daughter couldn’t look at him,” she said of her 13-year-old youngest child.
“She kept her eyes down throughout the conversation. ‘When we came back home, she told me: “I can’t look at my dad in this condition.”
How could I console her?’ Despite repeated appeals by relatives and human rights organisations to Indian administration for the release of prisoners amid the global emergency triggered by the coronavirus pandemic – the pleas have so far fallen flat on Modi regime’s deaf ears.—KMS
