Rakib Altaf
SRINAGAR, Nov 22: A pro-Independence leader in Kashmir has warned New Delhi that hanging of parliament-attack accused Afzal Guru will revive armed violence in the region, where a 23-year-conflict which has killed tens of thousands of people is gradually waning.
Guru, a resident of Kashmir, was convicted for attacking the parliament in 2001 and has been awarded death sentence.
Muhammad Yasin Malik, who heads a faction of the Jammu and Kashmir Liberation front, said he was concerned after the 2008 Mumbai attacker, Ajmal Kasab was hanged early on Wednesday.
Kasab’s petition for mercy had been rejected by the president while Guru’s is still pending.
“After the hanging of Mohammad Ajmal Kasab,the (Hindu-nationalist) BJP has increased its rhetoric demanding hanging of Afzal Guru. Even some congress leaders are toeing this rhetoric,” a spokesman for Malik’s party said.
He said the hanging has triggered a “wave of concern through the minds and thoughts” in Kashmir, where Guru enjoys full public sympathy.
Even Chief Minister Omar Abdullah has in the past come in favor of the mercy petition for him after legislators in South Indian state of Tamil Nadu passed a resolution seeking clemency for Former Indian President Rajiv Gandhi’s assassins.
‘Transformation to peace’
Malik, a former militant commander who crossed over to the other side of Kashmir in late eighties for arms training, fought security forces until his arrest in 1994. His party advocates for Independence from India and Pakistan, both of which rule the region in parts but claim it in full.
He says Guru’s hanging will bring back an era of violence in the region which he said has “transformed from violence to non violence”.
Militancy-related violence has been on a steep decline since India and Pakistan agreed to a peace process in 2004, authorities say.
But a mass public uprising in 2008, when anger over transfer of forest land to a Hindu shrine snowballed into mammoth anti-India demonstrations, signalled a paradigm shift to a new way of exhibiting popular sentiment.
More than 60 people died in police and paramilitary firing on anti-India protesters. Again in 2010, at least 111 unarmed people, most young men and children, were killed during a series of protests which lasted for months.
“Any wrong decision to hang Afzal Guru will cast a serious dent in this process of positive transformation,” Malik’s spokesperson quoted him as saying.
He said political parties were demanding Guru’s hanging only to score an edge in the forthcoming elections.
“We will only advise them to apply their minds and shun the path of poisoning the public sentiment regarding such sensitive issues.”
