APHC thanks people for exemplary strike
Srinagar, February 09 (KMS): In Indian illegally occupied Jammu and Kashmir, normal life was crippled due to complete shutdown in Srinagar and other districts of the Valley on the eighth martyrdom anniversary of Kashmiri leader, Muhammad Afzal Guru, today.
Call for the strike was given by the All Parties Hurriyat Conference and Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front and supported by other pro-freedom leaders and organizations. Posters by APHC were pasted in many areas, praising the sacrifice of martyrs Afzal Guru and Maqbool Butt. All shops and business establishments were closed while traffic was largely off the road. Indian forces’ personnel were patrolling the deserted streets, which were only dotted by stray dogs. Police arrested several persons including a woman during house raids. Hurriyat leader Javed Ahmad Mir was put under house arrest. It was on this day in 2013 that Muhammad Afzal Guru was hanged in New Delhi’s Tihar jail for his role in the liberation movement.
Human rights defender Muhammad Ahsan Untoo along with other activists tied a noose around neck at Press Club in Srinagar, today, to register their protest against unjust hanging of the Kashmiri leaders, Muhammad Afzal Guru and Muhammad Maqbool Butt. However, police personnel present there immediately snatched the rope from them.
APHC working Vice Chairman Ghulam Ahmad Gulzar in a statement issued in Srinagar, today, thanked the people of Kashmir for observing the exemplary shutdown. He said that on this day in 2013, Shaheed Guru defeated Indian hegemony by accepting the gallows instead of surrendering to the occupier India.
India continues to draw ire, both at home and abroad, for registering a case under draconian laws against a father of one of the three Srinagar fake encounter victims for demanding the body of his martyred son. Saudi Arabia based English daily Arab News quoting human rights defenders said it had been a cruel decision to book the family under the brutal laws.
Hurriyat leaders Agha Syed Hassan Al-Moosvi Al-Safvi, Ghulam Muhammad Khan Sopori, Shabbir Ahmed Dar, Abdul Ahad Parra, Khawaja Firdous, Farida Bahenji, Democratic Freedom Party, National Front, Kashmir Tehreek-e-Khawateen and Islami Tanzeem-e-Azadi in their separate statements urged the international community and the United Nations to play a role in resolving the Kashmir dispute in accordance with UN resolutions.
APHC leaders including Ghulam Ahmad Gulzar, Molvi Bashir Ahmad and Farida Bahenji in their statements in Srinagar and APHC AJK chapter at a meeting in Islamabad expressed condolences with senior APHC leader Ghulam Nabi Sumjhi on the demise of his wife.
The participants of a rally taken out by Pasban-e-Hurriyat Jammu and Kashmir in Muzaffarabad, today, also paid tributes to Shaheed Afzal Guru.
The office-bearers of the National Press Club of the United States have urged India to release from prison Kashmiri journalist Aasif Sultan, who has been unjustly detained for two and a half years.