The All Parties Kashmir Parliamentary Group, La-bour Friends of UK, Kashmiri organizations Jammu and Kashmir Self Determination Movement Interna-tional and Jammu Kashmir Liberation Front pre-sented a memorandum to UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak for the release of Kashmiri Hurriyat leader Muhammad Yasin Malik.
According to Kashmir Media Service, the lead-ership of both the parliamentary groups and the two Kashmiri organizations reiterated their commitment to work with all Kashmiri and Pakistani humanitarian leaders to campaign for the release of the Hurriyat leader Yasin Malik.
Modi seeks death penalty for Kashmiri leader Yasin Malik. We the undersigned make this fervent appeal to seek British Government’s support, and an urgent intervention to save Mr Muhammed Yasin Malik’s life, as the Prime Minister Modi’s Indian Government seeks death penalty for the pro-peace jailed leader. Mr Malik was given a double life sen-tence in a politically motivated trial on 25 May 2022 by India’s National Security Agency’s (NIA) judge on ‘terror funding’ charges.
The NIA was specifically tasked by the BJP Government to concoct charges with the sole objec-tive to silence Kashmiri leadership opposed to Mr Modi’s oppressive Kashmir policy. Furthermore, on 29 May 2023 the NIA’s appeal to convert Mr Malik’s life sentence to death was heard by the Delhi High Court which has ordered Mr Malik to respond on 9 August 2023.
Britain and India enjoy a deep and cordial relationship, while Britain also has strong multifaceted historic ties with the wider South Asian region, including Kashmir (AKA Jammu & Kashmir-J&K), and its people.
Around 1.2 million British Kashmiris make this country their home as post war economic migrants, and continue to make a positive contribution in all facets of Britain’s collective endeavours. British Kashmiris, like millions of their compatriots on both sides of the ceasefire line – CfL – in Kashmir, and across the world, are shocked and deeply aggrieved at Mr Modi’s decision to seek Mr Malik’s death, in what Kashmiris consider as a means to justify judicial murder of a popular Kashmiri leader for electoral gains. We strongly urge you, therefore, to dissuade the Indian Prime Minister to withdraw the NIA appeal, and impress upon him to refrain from committing a grievous injustice against Mr Malik.
Mr Malik is the most prominent and revered popular leader who is part of a solution over the long-standing Kashmir issue. We call on the British Government therefore, to engage with Mr Modi for the release of Mr Malik, and other Kashmiri leaders, including Mr Shabir Shah, Ms Aasiya Andrabi, Dr Qasim Faktoo, Ms Nahida Nasreen, and Masarat Alam to begin the process for an equitable resolution of the seventy five year old conflict over Kashmir’s political status. As a permanent member of the UNSC and head of the BritishCommonwealth, Britain has an international responsibility to seek a just and equitable resolution of the Kashmir Issue.
Equally Britain has historic obligations to safe-guard the fundamental, political and human rights of the people of Kashmir and their political leaders like Mr Malik. Mr Modi’s Government has become ex-tremely intolerant of peaceful dissent in Kashmir to the extent, that human rights defenders like Mr Khurram Parvez, as well as journalists are under the so called terrorism laws that the UN High Commis-sion on Human Rights has quite rightly described as India’s “lawless laws” in its reports of June 2018 and July 2019 regarding the situation on both sides of the CfL in Kashmir.
Mr Malik is the Chairman of the Jammu Kashmir Liberation Front-JKLF, which is committed for a peaceful resolution of the Kashmir issue. He is im-prisoned at the Tihar Jail in Delhi where he has been held in solitary confinement since his removal from Kashmir (Jammu’s Kot Bhalwal jail) on 9 May 2019. He was arrested on 19 February 2019 under the notorious Public Safety Act-PSA- from his residence in Srinagar. Mr Malik renounced armed resistance in the 1990s to embark on a peaceful political resolution of the Kashmir issue.—KMS
