Kashmir gives a look of security state - Farooq Rehmani

Harassment of PFL workers and families continues

Islamabad, 30 Mar, 2012: Chairman Jammu and Kashmir People’s Freedom League, Muhammad Farooq Rehmani has strongly condemned intimidating of sympathizers and members of the J and K People’s Freedom League and killings by army. He said  army, police and their secret agents harass political workers on personal vendetta making their life miserable by not allowing them to move freely even for their personal problems; political activities of peaceful nature are already prohibited under 20 year old draconian laws.

Muhammad Farooq Rehmani pointed out that the Disturbed Areas Act and the Armed Forces Special Powers Act, were still in vogue, when the world community and India’s own human rights activists had termed them as inhuman and barbaric laws, mocking at India’s claim that the Kashmiris were at the back of the so-called accession of 1947, when Indian army’s first regiment was flown into Srinagar to suppress the basic right of the people to decide their future by free will.

Muhammad Farooq Rehmani said that the State continued to be a Security State since 1947 but the past 22 years had added dreadful dimensions: reinforced military power under inhuman laws; forcing disappearances, custodial killings, fake encounters, gang rapes, unmarked graves, surveillance of every able bodied man. He said thousands of people were still in jails inside and outside of Kashmir; many more lived exiled life outside Kashmir and a totalitarian Indian military system was the hallmark of democracy in the State.

Muhammad Farooq Rehmani said India talked of peace and peaceful dialogue with Pakistan but it was all to hoodwink the world opinion and tighten its brutal grip over the dispute region. He challenged if India was sincere it must abolish all inhuman laws and disband all local and foreign surveillance agencies allowing Kashmiris to express their will in an unfettered manner.

Muhammad Farooq Rehmani said that Kashmir was never a bilateral issue; it was always an international tripartite issue, not a question of land and forests and beautiful pastures for cows, buffaloes and goats of rich shepherds. Kashmir is the real question of over 13 million inhabitants of Jammu and Kashmir and there was no alternative except to acknowledge this fact of history and geography unconditionally and initiate such measures as to enable the Kashmiris of every region to decide their future without fear, favor or any religious and racial differences. This was the simple demand of the people of Kashmir neither less nor more. By turning Kashmir into a security state, creating a suffocating environment and depriving its inhabitants of their freedom and cultural identity, Kashmir would not be solved and region would not feel peaceful and prosperous.