Hurriyat chief Mirwaiz Umar Farooq on Friday spoke out against the alleged assaults on Kashmiris in the wake of the Pahalgam terror attack, reminding Delhi that such incidents would widen the gulf between the people and the State.
He said the events unfolding after the “horrendous Pahalgam incident” had once again shown that the people of Kashmir were always at the receiving end of violence and subsequent suffering whenever such attacks took place.
“Despite people’s unanimous condemnation of it, it is the people of Kashmir who are being held to account and targeted. Massive crackdowns are taking place,” the Mirwaiz said.
“Two persons — Altaf Lali and Ghulam Rasool Margay — have been killed, with their families claiming that they were extra-judicial killings and demanding a probe. They say they were innocent and were killed in custody. We also want a probe so that justice is delivered,” he said.
Lali was the brother of a jailed militant, while Magrey was the brother of a militant based in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir.
The chief cleric of Kashmir said thousands of people had been detained and dozens of houses demolished by explosions, rendering families homeless.
“The vilification of Kashmiris by large sections of the media has forced students and professionals to return in fear. How is all this helping in punishing the perpetrators if that is the aim?” the Mirwaiz asked.
“Another humanitarian issue coming up is the deportation of hundreds of people, which is leading to the division of families with mothers being separated from children and husbands from wives. One such incident led to the tragic death of paralysed octogenarian Abdul Waheed Bhat on a bus while being deported,” he said.
Bhat, in Srinagar since 1980, was among dozens of people living in Jammu and Kashmir who were taken to Attari for deportation to Pakistan. He died on April 30.
“Such measures will not create real peace nor stability. They will only widen the gulf,” he said. “It would be better to win over people than to intimidate them into submission.”
