On World Human Rights Day JRL calls for Shutdown across Kashmir Valley
The Joint Resistance Leadership (JRL) comprising both factions of Hurriyat Conference led respectively by Syed Ali Geelani and Mirwaiz Umar Farooq besides JKLF headed by Muhammad Yasin Malik has called for complete protest strike on December 10, Monday, to highlight the “gruesome human rights situation”. The leadership said people through shutdown will also register their regret at the apathy of international community and rights organisations towards the plight of the people of Kashmir.
A JRL statement issued said that on the eve of world human rights day on December 10, the JRL urged the international community, all nations respecting human rights and people of India to take a serious note of the “unending and unabated cycle of human rights abuses being committed by the lakhs of Indian forces deployed across Kashmir past over three decades”.
The leadership said that as December 10 would witness mass rallies of people and activists across the globe wherein people would highlight upholding and respect for human rights, Kashmir would be among the very few places in the world where people would not be allowed to register their resentment and protest the “worst kind of state oppression and terror” in recent times that they are facing and which has left behind “gory tales of rights violations”.
“Jammu and Kashmir has seen and continues to see the worst ever human rights violations as state repression goes from bad to worse with the increase in killings especially of youth to subvert the people movement,” the leaders said.
With complete impunity to forces from accountability and centralised rule, the graph of human rights violations keeps rising. All political and religious rights of people are also suspended, they added.
Leadership said that Kashmir being the world’s highest militarised zone, the basic right to life is always under threat. “Killings, torture arbitrary and illegal incarceration thrashing of youth, cordon and search military operation maiming and snatching the vision of people including infants has become an everyday affair,” they said, adding, “Force is used against the people irrespective of gender as elderly, women, young girls, boys, and even infants are vulnerable victims of state aggression.”
The leadership said the “criminal silence” adopted by international human rights bodies and activists over the “ever deteriorating situation” in Kashmir, is extremely sad.
“Such is the suffocating situation of repression in Kashmir that when JRL announced to observe December 3-9 as human rights week, even candlelight protests were disallowed by the authoritarian state and anyone participating in it lodged in jails! Apart from the pro-freedom activists who took part in peaceful candle light and torch processions, massive crackdown was launched on the traders, transporters and even businessmen who took out peaceful rallies against the grim human rights situation in Kashmir. Such is the antipathy of the authoritarian state to basic democratic principles!” JRL said.
The leadership once again urged the world peace organizations, international community, Amnesty International, Asia Watch, UNHRC and ICRC to take note of the Kashmir situation and put pressure on New Delhi to stop the “grave human rights violations” forthwith.
