Srinagar: Lauding the resolve and commitment of the people for not participating in the election drama under the heavy army siege, ailing chairman All Parties Hurriyat Conference, Syed Ali Geelani said that despite the armed crackdown, suffocating and obnoxious environment, Indian military might has miserably failed to convince people of the state to repose faith in its “democratic institutions”.
Terming the ‘exemplary election boycott observed by the people of Kashmir as a symbolic referendum against Indian subjugation’, the veteran Hurriyat leader said that it is highly ridiculous on the part of India to make vain efforts to prove a military operation as a peaceful political exercise.
Citing undeclared emergency and martial law on the eve of so-called parliamentary elections in Jammu and Kashmir, Hurriyat leader strongly condemned the barbaric attitude of India to strangulate the popular voice of right to self-determination by banning the political and religious organizations including Jamaat-e-Islami Jammu and Kashmir and Jammu Kashmir Liberation Front.
Geelani also castigated the “despotic and imperialistic approach adopted by India to turn Jammu and Kashmir into a hell like prison where innocent people not only get killed, maimed, blinded, ruthlessly beaten like animals, but also incarcerated randomly”.
Taking a strong note of the India stubbornness and turning its blind eye to the ground situation in Jammu and Kashmir, the Hurriyat leader said it is regrettable that India is trying to let loose a reign of terror in the nook and corner of the state by engaging its ‘so-called investigative agencies like NIA and ED to malign the pious image of freedom movement’.
Hurriyat chairman also condemned repeated summons by NIA to his grandson Anees-ul-Islam, whose father is in Tihar jail for the last 2 years.
He said that Indian rulers have used its agencies as a war weapon to threaten and humiliate pro-freedom activists and their families.
“Delhi rulers have tarnished every fabric of decency, fair play and justice and to punish Kashmiris, they don’t even spare their innocent kids,” he added.
Stressing on the early resolution of the Kashmir dispute in accordance in accordance with right to self-determination, the Hurriyat chairman expressed hope that India will shun its rigid stand and show its willingness to resolve this dispute at the earliest.
