Kashmir Diaspora Coalition (KDC), the international Kashmiri advocacy group, has strongly condemned the politically motivated move of India’s National Investigation Agency (NIA) demanding of the Delhi High Court to convert Kashmiri Hurriyat leader, Yasin Malik’s life imprisonment to death sentence.
The members of the KDC board in a statement simultaneously released from Srinagar, Washington DC, London, Ottawa, Istanbul, and Brussels ex-pressed deep concerns over the politically motivated developments on Muhammad Yasin Malik’s illegal incarceration in New Delhi’s Tihar jail.
The NIA has approached the Delhi High Court seeking to convert life imprisonment into the death penalty for a concocted ‘terror-funding’ case.
The statement said, Yasin Malik, one of Kash-mir’s most fearless, influential, and revered leaders, Chairman of the Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front, has spent most of his life resisting Indian state violence, torture, and multiple jail sentences under what have been called India’s ‘Lawless Laws’ by human rights defenders. It said Yasin Malik has traveled to India, Pakistan, the European Union, and the US, meeting with leaders of all political and ideological persuasions in search of a peaceful set-tlement to the Kashmir conflict. He sought and got assurance from influential political personalities from New Delhi, Islamabad, and the US supporting his commitment to non-violent resistance to end the conflict, it added.
The KDC members reported that NIA in Indian occupied Jammu and Kashmir is increasingly trying to legitimize its brutal suppression of any form of resistance to India’s illegal occupation. They said, with the brazen custodial murders of Syed Ali Gilani and Ashraf Sehrai, two prominent resistance leaders, India is continuing to silence any resistance to its illegal occupation of Kashmir by murdering yet another political leader/prisoner. “What is concerning is the exponential rise in political elimination in occupied Kashmir. Other jailed political leaders such as Masarrat Aalam Butt, Shabbir Ahmed Shah, Aasiya Andrabi, Dr Muhammad Qasim Fakhtoo, Naheeda Nasreen, and many others, including members of the civil society, journalists and civilians, are languishing in inhumane conditions in jails across India under the draconian neo-colonial laws, such as Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA) and Public Safety Act (PSA) without due process and fair judicial trials,” they said.—INP
