“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to New Delhi’s infamous Tihar Jail on May 10, 2019, he had decided not to contest these fabricated cases and had withdrawn his defence lawyer in protest after observing and anticipating the unfair and biased court proceedings and the ill intentions of the Indian government.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
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