JRL calls for shutdown, protest rallies on human rights day on Dec 10

Srinagar: On the eve of world human rights day, December 10, Joint Resistance Leadership (JRL) comprising Syed Ali Geelani, Mirwaiz Umar Farooq and Muhammad Yasin Malik has called for shutdown and protest rallies.The leadership has 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.
In a statement issued here on Saturday the Joint Resistance Leadership (JRL) said the people of Kashmir will observe complete protest strike on December 10 to highlight the gruesome human right situation in the call and also to register their regret at the apathy of international community and rights organisations towards the plight of people of Kashmir.
The leadership said that as December 10 would witness mass rallies of people and activists across the globe, where in 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.
The leadership said that 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.
With complete impunity to forces from accountability and centralized rule the graph of human rights violations keeps rising. All political and religious rights of people are also suspended.
Leadership said that Kashmir being the world’s highest militarized zone even 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. 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 that the criminal silence adopted by international human rights bodies and activists over the ever deteriorating situation in Kashmir is extremely sad.
Leadership said that 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, transporter 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!
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 violation forthwith.