SRINAGAR: In Indian-occupied Jammu and Kashmir (IOJK), the All Parties Hurriyat Conference (APHC) and other Hurriyat leaders and organisations have strongly denounced the sentence of life imprisonment awarded to Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF) Chairman Mohammad Yasin Malik by a court in New Delhi.
According to Kashmir Media Service, an Indian court had sentenced Malik to life imprisonment after an unfair trial in concocted cases registered against him over three decades ago.
Senior APHC leader Mirwaiz Umar Farooq in a statement issued in Srinagar said that Yasin Malik pursued peaceful and democratic means of conflict resolution since 1994. A strong votary of dialogue and negotiations between the concerned parties to the Kashmir dispute, he has been relentlessly and selflessly seeking its resolution, he added.
He said the protest strikes being observed by people despite state coercion and pressure not to allow it, shows peoples’ commitment to resistance leadership in jails and under house detention.
Farooq urged the Indian government to release all political prisoners and resolve the lingering Kashmir dispute peacefully through deliberations among the parties to the dispute keeping in view the will of the people of Kashmir as imprisonment and incarceration cannot change that reality.
APHC leaders Syed Bashir Andrabi and Khawaja Firdous in a joint statement in Srinagar termed the sentencing of Yasin Malik by the court a judicial murder.
They said that Yasin Malik’s punishment is a manifestation of the Modi regime’s oppressive aggressive thinking on which the Kashmiri people are protesting. They added that with the punishment of Yasin Malik, the freedom movement would not be suppressed but a new enthusiasm would be created in it.
In IOJK, shutdown was observed for the second consecutive day on Thursday in Srinagar city and Tral area of Pulwama against the Indian court’s verdict.
Shops and other business establishments were closed in Maisuma, Abi Guzar, Lal Chowk, downtown areas of Srinagar and in Tral town.
On Wednesday, the Indian police had used force and fired shells on anti-India and pro-freedom demonstrations in Maisuma and other areas of Srinagar.
Scores of people, including women, had assembled at Yasin Malik’s residence in Maisuma and raised slogans in support of the Hurriyat leader.
