Separatists back JNUSU chief

On expected lines, Kashmiri separatists and various like-minded groups, including the bar council., have strongly condemned the arrest of JNU Students’ Union president Kanhaiya Kumar and his comrades and registration of sedition charges against the Valley-born Prof. S.A.R. Geelani and some other students. They have also pledged “moral” support to what they alleged are victims of “intolerance” and “fascism”.

Kashmir’s chief Muslim cleric and chairman of his faction of the Hurriyat Conference, Mirwaiz Umar Farooq, termed the police action against Kumar and others as “uncalled for” and said, “It mirrors the negative policies and thinking of the people who claim to be saviours of the freedom of speech.” He added that the organisers of Tuesday’s event at JNU were not involved in any illegal activity and that the police action was “undemocratic”.

Earlier, hardline separatist leader Syed Ali Shah Geelani said the action taken against Kumar and others “is totally against the democratic claims of India and freedom of expression”, a “grave injustice”, and that “it has no constitutional and legal justification”. He said in a statement from Delhi, where he has been for the past one week for “health reasons”, that the JNU students held a peaceful protest demonstration “to express their solidarity with the Kashmiri nation and it is not any crime”. He added, “Many prominent leaders of India and human rights activists had raised questions over the secret hanging of (Parliament attack convict) Muhammad Afzal Guru and had termed it as a judicial murder. In this perspective, if the students in JNU also express their concern, then how can it be termed as a crime ”

Pro-independence Jammu Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF) leader Muhammad Yasin Malik, in a statement issued here, also termed the police action as “undemocratic” and “an incident of growing intolerance in India”. He said, “For the last many years suppressing voices of dissent, especially that of Kashmiris, is the worst kind of dictatorship.” He added, “Civil society movements and freedom of speech used to be very strong in India and the Kashmiris would be invited by activists to put their point of view before the Indian people. But for the last many years this has changed and Kashmir enmity and intolerance are increasing day by day.”

He alleged, “This act of the rulers is intended to ruin the future of these students and is a ploy to suppress voices of dissent with force.”

Independent legislator and leader of the regional Awami Ittehad Party (AIP) Sheikh Abdur Rashid, also known as Engineer Rashid, termed the police action and booking of the student leaders of JNU under sedition charges as “an eye-opener for those who have been giving illogical sermons to Kashmiris”. He said that if the government at the Centre cannot tolerate nominal peaceful protests by its own citizens in JNU, it needs no explanation about what would be happening to Kashmiris in every nook and corner of the state for fighting for their political rights.

Kashmir University Students’ Union (KUSU) in a statement said the “witch-hunt” launched by the government in New Delhi against the students in JNU who commemorated the “judicial hanging” of Guru “is yet another example of how insecure the Indian collective conscience becomes when the Kashmir issue is raised in Kashmir or in mainland India, that too on the campus of a university”. This university, it said, was established in the name of India’s first Prime Minister who, in the heart of Srinagar’s Lal Chowk, promised the people of J&K the right to self-determination...”