Srinagar, March 08 (KNO) : JKLF leaders and activists on Friday staged a protest near Budshah Chowk here against detention of its chairman Muhammad Yasin Malik and hundreds of others in recent days.
According to a statement issued to KNO, JKLF spokesman said that despite heavy restrictions, barricades and deployment in and around Lal Chowk area especially Maisuma, Budshah Chowk, Madina Chowk, Gaw-Kadal, Basant Bagh etc, JKLF leaders and activists including Zonal president Noor Muhammad Kalwal, Sheikh Abdul Rashid, Muhammad Sideeq Shah, Professor Javed, Ashraf bin Salam, GM Dar, Javed Ahmad Butt, Meraj-ud-Din and others along with people from many walks of life gathered at Madina Chowk and staged a peaceful protest against detention of JKLF chairman Muhammad Yasin Malik and others in recent days.
Raising slogans and holding posters and placards in hands, protesters condemned the ongoing spree of arrests, ban on Jamat-I-Islami, attempts to tinker with hereditary state subject law under the pretext of 35 A and intimidating NIA raids on Kashmiris.
Protest was addressed by various leaders who while condemning the ‘undemocratic oppression’ of the rulers said that “arbitrary arrest and detention of chairman JKLF Muhammad Yasin Malik and many others under draconian PSA, shifting of Yasin to Kot-balwal jail Jammu, spree of arrests, ban on Jamat-i-Islami, attempts to tinker with hereditary state subject law under the pretext of 35(A) and Intimidating NIA raids on Kashmiris merit a firm protest and struggle from Kashmiri nation.”
Speakers said that the manner in which JKLF chairman was manhandled by police at the orders of civil administration, blocked to see his mother and sisters, deprived of a compulsory medical checkup and rushed to Kot-Balwal jail Jammu is shameful and condemnable.
They said that JKLF chairman is a known heart patient suffering from many other ailments too but shockingly at Kot-Balwal Jail he has been put into solitary confinement. “He has been locked inside a barrack and singled out from all other inmates. This revengeful act of so-called rulers and their authorities is a deliberate attempt to damage his health and we caution rulers to refrain from all such undemocratic and unethical acts, asserted the speakers,” he said.
He added that suppression of political dissent by police and military might and claims of being biggest democracy in the world are two poles apart and suppression unleashed by Indian state against Kashmiris is a glaring example of the fragility of its democracy in Jammu Kashmir, added the speakers.(KNO)