NEW DELHI: Moderate Hurriyat Conference’s Chairman Mirwaiz Umar Farooq on Sunday accused New Delhi of being at war with people of Kashmir and said that Afzal Guru’s hanging has closed the prospects of dialogue process between New Delhi and Hurriyat.
Mirwaiz said that Hurriyat has been advocating for dialogue for over a decade and has been trying to take people along.
“But New Delhi is at war with the people of Kashmir. By hanging Afzal Guru, New Delhi has closed any prospects of future dialogue process,” said Mirwaiz, who has been currently put under house arrest in New Delhi.
He said that dialogue cannot take place alongside aggression. “I don’t see any hope for dialogue,” he added.
Mirwaiz said that he will be consulting rival Hurriyat Conference faction leader Chairman Syed Ali Geelani to chart a joint strategy to counter, what he called, New Delhi’s aggression on the people of Kashmir.
He said Afzal’s hanging will trigger widespread hatred against India among Kashmiri youth as it did after hanging of Maqbool Bhat in 1984. “It might trigger another armed struggle,” he warned.
Mirwaiz said politics of peace has received a jolt with the execution of Afzal Guru and leaders like Mirwaiz would face difficulty peddling peaceful ways among public.
“We spent years telling people that their aspirations will be addressed but by hanging Afzal and the total absence of justice in Kashmir has sealed any chances of engagement with New Delhi,” said Mirwaiz, who led three rounds of talks with New Delhi in the past one decade.
Mirwaiz said that new situation was likely to emerge following the execution of Afzal Guru in Jammu and Kashmir. “New forces may crop up and they will not listen to
us, this will be the security challenge to India. We too would be rendered irrelevant because the new forces would speak in a different language.”
Mirwaiz said, “the secret execution of Afzal Guru might radicalize the youth in Jammu and Kashmir. Once you push people to the wall they have no other way but to respond with equal aggression.”
He said they have written to the United States and other countries conveying how Indian “aggressive tactics is pushing youth of Jammu and Kashmir towards violence.”
Agencies
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