All Parties Hurriyat Conference senior leader Nayeem Ahmed Khan has completed five years of his illegal detention in India’s notorious Tihar jail.
All Parties Hurriyat Conference Azad Jammu and Kashmir chapter leader, Altaf Hussain Wani in a statement issued in Srinagar, while voicing serious concerns over the continued illegal detention of Nayeem Ahmad Khan, said, “On this day in 2017, Nayeem Ahmed Khan was arrested by the Indian authorities from his Srinagar residence and then rushed to New Delhi’s Tihar jail where he has been languishing for the past five years.”
Terming the abduction-style arrest of the APHC leader as a flagrant violation of the basic human rights, he said, “Imprisonment of key Kashmiri political leaders, including Nayeem Khan, was part of the Modi government’s massive clamp down policy to suppress dissent in the region.”
He said, “Nayeem Ahmed Khan is creating a history of patience, perseverance and determination by enduring the unendurable in the notorious prison.” “Khan has spent most of his life in different jails and all the baseless cases filed against him have not been proved in any court”, he said, adding, that despite the passage of five years the authorities of Indian National Investigation Agency (NIA) and Enforcement Directorate (ED) could not produce a single-evidence against Nayeem Ahmad Khan in the court of law.
Altaf Hussain Wani said Kashmiri leaders like Nayeem Ahmed Khan, Shabbir Ahmed Shah, Masarat Alam Butt, Muhammad Yasin Malik, Aasiya Andrabi and others were being punished for their indomitable role in the ongoing liberation struggle and their persistent demand for holding referendum in Kashmir so that Kashmiris could peacefully determine their political future.
Reiterating the Kashmiris’ pledge to take the ongoing struggle to its logical conclusion, he said, “The entire Kashmiri people stand firm on their demand for holding a referendum to allow people of the region to decide their political future”. He said that Indian government’s policy of oppression and suppression could not deter Kashmiris from pursuing their collective cause for which they had rendered matchless services.
Expressing solidarity with the jailed leader and other Kashmiri prisoners, the APHC-AJK leader appealed to the United Nations and other international organizations to put pressure on New Delhi to restore the political rights of the Kashmiris.
Terming continued detention as a grave threat to life of the Kashmiri leaders, he said that it was high time that the global community should take effective cognizance of the matter and play its role in the release of illegally detained Kashmiri Hurriyat leaders arrested by Indian authorities before and after August 2019.
Wani said that the UNSC must take practical steps to hold a free referendum in the disputed Jammu and Kashmir.
Stressing the need for a peaceful resolution of the Kashmir dispute, he said, “Peace and stability in south Asia is inescapably linked to an early and amicable resolution of the lingering Kashmir dispute.”—KMS
