Joint march in Srinagar on Kashmir Martyrs’ Day

Hurriyet leaders Syed Ali Gilani, Mirwaiz Umar Farooq and Muhammad Yasin Malik have announced to jointly lead a march from Jamia Masjid to Naqshband Sahib in Srinagar on Monday to mark the Kashmir Martyrs’ Day.

The decision for the joint programme was taken after mutual consultation in Srinagar, today. The people have been asked to converge at the Jamia Masjid after Zuhr prayers for onward march towards Naqshband Sahib. The leaders said that no strike would be held on that day in respect of the ongoing holy month of Ramadan. The leaders reiterated to continue the martyrs’ mission till its logical conclusion.

It was on July 13 in 1931 when the Dogra troops killed 22 Kashmiris, one after the other, outside the Central Jail in Srinagar. They had gathered in the jail premises to attend the court proceedings against one, Abdul Qadeer, who had asked the Kashmiri people to defy the Dogra rule.

The forum patronized by the veteran Hurriyet leader, Syed Ali Gilani, and the All Parties Hurriyet Conference in their separate statements welcomed the proposed meeting between the prime ministers of Pakistan and India on Friday on the sidelines of the 15th Shanghai Cooperation Organisation summit in Ufa, Russia. They expressed optimism that the meeting could pave the way for the resolution of the conflict over Jammu and Kashmir.

Meanwhile, a well-known human rights activist and an American researcher Christine Mehta in a media interview said that she was deported from India because of the report she was working on about human rights violations in Kashmir. She was part of Amnesty International’s team on the recently released Kashmir report mentioning India’s failure to hold accountable its troops for rights violations in the territory. In her interview, Christine Mehta said that despite the need for reform amongst the ranks, the Indian government remains extremely sensitive to the image of its army and other security forces