While paying rich tributes to Mohammad Maqbool Bhat — Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front founder– and Mohammad Afzal Guru on their death anniversaries, Hurriyat Conference chairman Syed Ali Geelani Thursday called for complete and state-wide shutdown on February 9 and 11 and appealed people to hold special prayers on the respective days.
While reiterating his demand for the return of the mortal remains of Bhat and Guru, who were hanged and buried in the Tihar Jail premises in New Delhi, Geelani said, “Although it is purely a human issue, New Delhi is reluctant to this demand violating all the principles of morality and constitution and in this way its claim of ‘largest democracy in the world’ is getting badly exposed.”
“Shaheed Mohammad Maqbool Bhat and Shaheed Mohammad Afzal Guru are heroes of the Kashmiri nation and we are proud on them. Kashmiri nation is resisting the forced and illegal occupation of India from last 68 years and during this period thousands of our valiant and bold people have sacrificed their precious lives for this cause but the Shaheed Mohammad Maqbool Bhat and Shaheed Mohammad Afzal Guru are two separate cases among these who were detained, executed and buried in the same jail and in same month,” he said.
The Hurriyat chairman said that Bhat has a special status in the freedom struggle of Kashmir and if he can be termed as the first solider of the struggle then Afzal Guru’s ‘last letter’ became a new milestone of the freedom struggle and set a new trend. “His (Afzal’s) last letter clearly depicts that he was an ideological person and his emotions were having the backing of faith, intellect and conscience. The best way to pay the tributes to the Shaheed Bhat and Shaheed Guru is that the nation should not forget these brave sons of the soil who had sacrificed their “present” for the future of the nation,” he said.
Geelani said that until the mortal remains of both is not returned back to their families, the whole nation will not let down this demand.
