SRINAGAR: The All India Muslim Majlis-e Mushawarat (AIMMM), an umbrella body of Indian Muslim organisations, has expressed strong resentment over the killing of civilians in Shopian district of south Kashmir.
The AIMMM, which held a meeting in New Delhi on Thursday, discussed among other things matters pertaining to the Muslims of the country.
It passed a resolution demanding the revocation of the Armed Forces Special Powers Act from Jammu and Kashmir and also removal of the Army from inhabited parts.
The Muslim body said that the AFSPA encouraged security forces to continue killing Kashmiri people and said “their latest victims were the defenseless people of Shopian”.
“The AIMMM feels that the black law called AFPSA is a root cause of this goon-like behaviour by the soldiers in uniform,” a statement by the AIMMM said.
On VDC
The body also called for the disbanding of the Village Defence Committees – groups of civilians armed by the government to fight militants – whose role has come into question during the communal clashes in Kishtwar region that left two Muslims and a Hindu dead.
According to the AIMMM, the VDCs “show the biased approach of the powers that be in that this strategy has been used to arm a certain community which is terrorizing others using arms supplied by the state.”
The meeting was chaired by the AIMMM National President Dr Zafarul-Islam Khan and attended by various members.
Muslim Boycott in Ladakh
The Muslim body has also expressed concern over what it said was the social and commercial boycott of Muslims in the Buddhist-Majority Ladakh region.
“It all started with the conversion to Islam of four Buddhist families after which Buddhists attacked Muslims, looted and burnt their shops and homes injuring about a hundred persons. The J&K state government has failed to take any decisive action to end this boycott and rein in the Buddhist aggression.”
The AIMMM said the autonomous status to Ladakh was being misused to drive the Muslims out of their homes. It has asked the state government to withdraw the status should it help solve the problem.
The Indian Muslim body also took note of what it called erroneous step of the UPSC to drop Arabic and Persian as languages of choice for candidates.
“This runs against the interests of India as both these languages are living languages of large areas of the globe and our competence in them only serves our national interests,” it said.
It has demanded that the languages “which have a long presence in our country and have their imprint on all Indian languages” should be retained and nurtured for our own good.
