“But withdrawal will give rise to a new thinking that our problem will be solved only by the gun.”
“To sit on hunger strike at Jantar Mantar on May 3”
SRINAGAR: Senior separatist leader Muhammad Yasin Malik has said he does not believe that the Taliban will shift their fighting front to Kashmir after the withdrawal of western troops from Afghanistan.
“I don’t think there’s any substance in such reports. Ours has been an indigenous movement and it will remain so. We don’t need them to come and liberate us,” Malik, who heads the pro-independence Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF) said at a press conference here today.
But the JKLF leader warned that the withdrawal of western troops from Afghanistan may vindicate the armed resistance as a means of struggle and result in its revival here in Kashmir.
He seemed to say that the Indian government and Indian civil society will be blamed if the armed conflict between militants and security forces, waning since a decade now, was indeed revived.
“They created graveyards in every village, disrespected each and every individual in Kashmir,” the JKLF leader said, adding “We had the gun and they persuaded us to leave it. But then they forgot everything. This gave us a sense of defeat.”
“The withdrawal will give rise to a new thinking that our problem will be solved only by the gun.”
Yasin Malik accused the Indian government of “deceitfully suppressing the non-violent movement” in Kashmir. He said protesters, mostly the youth were awarded hefty punishment and detained under Public Safety Act, which provides for detention without trial for six months.
The separatist leader said he will sit on a 48-hour hunger strike at Jantar Mantar in the country capital on May 3 to protest against the life imprisonment of several Kashmiri youth and to seek their release.
“I will also ask the Indian civil society in their capital that if they told us they will support our cause if we left the gun why didn’t they? Why are they maintaining criminal silence? ” Malik said.
