Mujtaba Wani
SRINAGAR: Separatists, spearheading an ongoing campaign to demand the return of Afzal Guru’s body for burial in Kashmir, have cut down its weekly protest programme.
In its new programme issued Sunday, the Muttahida Majlis-e-Mashawarat (MMM) or a joint consultative committee has called for protests only after Friday prayers besides a ‘complete shutdown’ on Saturday.
It has asked for businesses, offices and schools to be kept open on Sunday.
The MMM was formed after Guru, a native of Kashmir, was hanged in Tihar jail and buried there on Feb 9. It would issue weekly protest programmes which included a shutdown on one day besides protests on other days of the week.
Last week, its protest programme called for protests after dusk on Monday besides asking students to hold demonstration in their college campuses on Tuesday. The shutdown call was for Thursday then.
The union government has refused to return the body despite a formal request by the chief minister Omar Abdullah and some other mainstream political leaders.
But the separatist committee says it will continue to protest till their demands are met. “In the future also the Majlis will issue programmes for the demand,” their statement read.
The MMM has also decided to launch an online campaign to press for the demand.
But the fresh programme has reduced protests from six days of the week to just two days. Observers say why the MMM has done this is not clear, but refuse to rule out the element of fatigue in view of the popular response.
Life in the valley has been badly affected for the past seven weeks either due to a curfew imposed by the authorities or by a shutdown called by the MMM.
At least six civilians have been killed in violence during this period. Hundreds others, including a large number of police and paramilitaries, have been wounded.
Most of the separatist leaders have either been put under house arrest or jailed.
