JKLF terms "confession" by Yasin Malik as untrue Indian propaganda

Jammu Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF) has strongly condemned the Indian act of impleading its incarcerated chairman Muhammad Yasin Malik in a concocted, fabricated and politically motivated case of terrorism filed by India’s notorious National Investigation Agency (NIA) in a New Delhi court.

“This act is immoral, illegal and reflection of political vendetta against the JKLF chief and has been done on the dictates of India’s [Narendra] Modi led Hindutva regime to silence a popular and the most powerful voice of people’s right for independence of the internationally disputed State of Jammu Kashmir,” said Malik’s special representative and JKLF chief spokesperson Rafiq Dar in a statement.

He also refuted reports in Indian media about his alleged confession of charges and termed it as “untrue and malicious and one-sided.”

Dar noted that ever since Malik’s arrest on February 22, 2019 and particularly after his transfer to New Delhi’s infamous Tihar Jail on May 10, 2019, he had decided not to contest these fabricated cases and had withdrawn his defence lawyer in protest after observing and anticipating the unfair and biased court proceedings and the ill intentions of the Indian government. 

The JKLF chief, he said, had always refuted and rubbished the charges of terrorism and terror funding levelled against him by infamous NIA and had been terming the court process arbitrary and an act of political victimization.

The court had turned down Malik’s repeated demands for a fair trial apart from asking it to look into the history of JKLF and his role in the promotion of religious harmony, nonviolence and peaceful settlement of Kashmir conflict, but to no avail, he added.

On May 10, during the course of hearing, Malik once again repeated the same argument and asked the judge that if his demand for freedom was a crime then he was ready to face the consequences.

 Thereby, terming his demand for freedom as a “confession of the charges” levelled in the concocted cases against him, the judge illegally and unfairly pleaded him guilty, Dar said.

He pointed out that for the last three years Malik had been languishing in solitary confinement in Tihar Jail and was out of contact even with his immediate family. 

“So, such stories coming out from the Indian side, like his confession of charges levelled in the concocted cases against him, are untrue, malicious, one sided and biased.”

The spokesman also condemned “all those propagandists who at the behest of Indian agencies were busy in maligning Malik on social media” and asked the Kashmiri people not to fall prey to false propaganda by India and its well-known stooges living in and outside the disputed Himalayan region.

“The Kashmiri nation living from across the ceasefire line have already rejected these stooges as they are the paid agents of Indian agencies working for India and against our freedom movement,” Dar said, without naming anyone. 

Meanwhile, separately, Azad Jammu and Kashmir (AJK) Prime Minister Sardar Tanveer Ilyas has also strongly condemned the unilateral trial by India’s special court against the prominent pro-freedom leader Yasin Malik, terming it immoral and unjustified.

He said Malik had spent his entire life in the resistance movement against India’s occupation forces and he was being subjected to political vengeance and religious hatred in India.

“Yasin Malik is a political prisoner, a liberation [movement] leader who has been peacefully championing the Kashmiris’ just cause of freedom the way Mahatma Gandhi and Nehru fought against the British rule,” he said.

Calling for a befitting response to counter Indian media’s negative propaganda the AJK premier asked the social media activists on this side of the Line of Control should refrain from “copy and paste” practice of the news run by the Indian media. 

“Copy-pasting Indian version of the news on social media is tantamount to becoming the part of the Indian propaganda campaign,” he said. 

Ilyas vowed that he would raise this issue with other political stakeholders including the Hurriyat Conference and other international organizations working for human rights.

Naming several prominent Kashmiri detainees, he said India’s apartheid regime wanted to silence all political leaders, civil society and human rights activists and media persons by keeping them in jails for longer durations.

He called upon the Kashmiri diaspora to mobilize the US Congress, the British and European parliaments and the UN Human Rights Council on this issue.

Tariq Naqash

JKLF regrets Pakistan's "failure to engage UN after India's Aug 5, 2019 move"

Jammu Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF), an organisation advocating reunification and complete independence of the divided state of Jammu and Kashmir, on Saturday called upon Islamabad to have a “serious review” of its policy on the disputed Himalayan region in the wake of India’s unilateral August 5, 2019 move.

“Pakistan should formally rescind the Simla Accord of 1972 with India to free itself as well as the Kashmiris from the futility of bilateralism and take the issue of Kashmir to the United Nations Security Council (UNSC),” said the JKLF in an ‘open letter’ to Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, a copy of which was also emailed to Dawn. 

Pakistan’s failure to engage with the UN has enabled India to continue her aggression against the Kashmiris, maintained the organisation in the more than 2200 words letter, signed by its acting chairman Raja Muhammed Haq Nawaz Khan.

The JKLF asserted that the “lack of meaningful political and diplomatic measures on the part of Pakistan” to counter India’s illegal unilateral action of August 5, 2019 had subsequently intensified “serious apprehensions among the Kashmiris about Pakistan’s Kashmir policy, and policy on the status of Azad Jammu and Kashmir (AJK) and Gilgit-Baltistan (GB).”

“For almost 75 years, the Kashmiris have come to expect Pakistan’s ardent support for their right to freely decide on the status of their internationally disputed homeland. There is a painful realization, especially since August 2019, that Pakistan's stated policy of support for the struggle and territorial integrity of Kashmir within the UN Charter and relevant UNSC resolutions has changed.”

 The JKLF maintained that India’s August 5, 2019 move was a fundamental departure from the historic context of the issue which required a “robust political and diplomatic response” from Pakistan. "But Islamabad’s response can hardly be considered appropriate, let alone robust." 

“Far from having to explain her aggression against Kashmir to the UNSC, the Indian government has been emboldened, despite having defied the UN resolutions 38, 91, and 122 with Kashmir’s annexation,” it added.

While urging Islamabad “not to proceed with its policy of absorbing either GB or AJK into its federation or extending AJK’s representation in the National Assembly,” it went on to demand the repeal and dissolution of the Karachi Agreement of April 28, 1949, whereby the administrative control of GB was handed over by the AJK government to the government of Pakistan.

Islamabad should instead support the formation of a democratically elected and fully empowered national revolutionary representative government of AJK and GB as one political entity, with an “Independent Joint Council” (IJC) representing both the regions, as its upper house, it suggested.

It also called upon Islamabad to enter into a “constructive dialogue” with the Kashmiri leadership on the existing policy as well as the one warranted by the situation in the wake of India’s actions on and after August 5, 2019. 

 Elaborating its ICJ formation proposal, the JKLF said that Islamabad should allow both AJK and GB to have their separate democratically elected assemblies and fully empowered governments and let them form the IJC comprising members appointed by both governments. 

The IJC would not only act as a constitutional bridge between the people of AJK and GB but would also ensure a formal relationship with the government and the state of Pakistan within the framework of the UNCIP resolutions as well as the mutual interests of both sides, it added.

The JKLF also urged Islamabad to enable the current governments in Muzaffarabad and Gilgit to formally open a dialogue between them with reference to its recommendations, with participation in the process from the parties that had no representation in either of the assemblies.

Tariq Naqash