Srinagar: Joint Resistance Leadership (JRL) has called for peaceful protests after Friday prayers to protest against the suspension of life sentences of army men accused of extrajudicial killing of three Kashmiri civilians near the Line of Control (LoC) in Machhil sector.
“JRL urged people to peacefully protest the murder of justice by suspension of sentence to the charged army men involved in Machil fake encounter after Friday prayers on the 28th. They said people will also protest the persecution and arrest of resistance leaders by GOI through its agencies,” said a statement, issued here Wednesday.
A military court has suspended the life sentences of five army men accused of killing three unemployed Kashmiri youths and then trying to pass them off as Pakistani militants in a stage-managed gunfight in Machhil sector along the Line of Control in April 2010.
The armed forces tribunal also granted them bail in the case related to the death of three civilians in Kashmir Valley in 2010 where the accused were dismissed from service and given jail terms.
JRL comprising Syed Ali Shah Geelani, Mirwaiz Umar Farooq and Mohammad Yaseen Malik said the BJP led Government is working on pushing from all ends to crush the people’s movement towards what they term the “final solution.”
They said an ensuing crackdown against resistance leadership has been adopted and there is a propaganda blitzkrieg to target the leadership and their activists to malign them and link them to subversive activities in order to implicate them in fabricated criminal cases, while defaming and undermining the people’s movement as “sponsored Islamic terrorism abetted by Pakistan.”
“This major ploy aimed at strengthening and institutionalizing New Delhi’s illegal occupation of Jammu and Kashmir is being quietly aided and facilitated by chief minister Mehbooba Mufti who was once a great votary of facilitating dialogue with GOI for the resolution of Kashmir dispute,” said the statement.
Condemning the arrest of resistance leader Shabir Ahmed Shah by the Enforcement Directorate and subsequently taking him to Delhi for questioning and the arrest of other Hurriyat leaders by NIA and lodging them in Delhi tantamount to kidnapping of these leaders, said the leadership.
The suspension of life imprisonment to soldiers involved in the Machil fake encounter case was the murder of justice, they said.
“Time is witness that despite thousands of incidents of grave human rights violations committed by the forces, not a single soldier was punished.”
The leadership said suspending the punishment to soldiers involved in the Machil fake encounter clarifies “how a system is working hard to ensure clean chit and high morale to those involved in the genocide of Kashmiri people and encouraging them to do so with impunity.”
The leadership said that seventy years of people’s movement to self determination has been nourished by the blood and supreme sacrifices of life and honor of lakhs of people of Jammu and Kashmir and now our younger generation keenly conscious of this are also struggling to seek this fundamental right.
“And like every political movement of this nature, it is vibrant and dynamic constantly adapting to changing times with the values of justice and right to sovereignty at its core. And as long as these values are dear to us we can never be defeated.”
