By Sardar Khan Niazi
The world cannot forget the judicial murder of many Kashmiri leaders like Muhammad Maqbool Butt and Muhammad Afzal Guru. Modi regime is repeating its shameful history to eliminate another popular leader Yasin Malik through courts.
India’s top anti-terrorism National Investigation Agency (NIA) has petitioned the high court in New Delhi again seeking a death sentence for Kashmiri leader Muhammad Yasin Malik, the former chief of Jammu Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF).
Earlier an Indian court ordered life imprisonment for Kashmiri leader Yasin Malik on charges of funding terrorist activities. He termed the charges as fabricated and politically motivated and refused to accept a government-appointed lawyer or defend himself. The court had also turned down a plea by the NIA for a death sentence, saying capital punishment was for a crime that shocks the collective consciousness of society.
The sentence of a veteran Kashmiri freedom fighter on fabricated charges reflects the panic within the Indian establishment concerning the Kashmiri freedom struggle. Malik’s wife Mushaal Hussein Mullick said the sentencing was illegitimate. “Verdict in minutes by an Indian kangaroo court,” she wrote on Twitter. “The iconic leader will never surrender.”
Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif and Foreign Minister Bilawal Bhutto Zardari strongly condemned the sentencing of the Kashmiri leader in a sham trial. PM Shehbaz called it a black day for the Indian justice system and said the life imprisonment for a valiant freedom fighter will provide fresh impetus to Kashmiris’ right to self-determination.
Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR) Director General (DG) Major General Babar Iftikhar condemned the life sentence awarded to Malik on “fabricated charges”.
“Such oppressive tactics cannot dampen the spirit of [the] people of Kashmir in their just struggle against illegal Indian occupation. We stand with them in a quest for self-determination as per United Nations Security Council resolutions,” he said.
The Senate also passed a resolution urging the international community to force India to drop all fabricated charges against all political leaders of occupied Kashmir, including Malik, and ensure their safety and well-being.
The JKLF is one of the first armed freedom-fighting groups to come into existence in occupied Kashmir. It supported an independent and united Kashmir. Led by Malik, the group gave up armed resistance in 1994. A resistance movement broke out in occupied Kashmir in 1989 with fighters demanding an independent Kashmir or its merger with Pakistan.
India accuses Pakistan of arming and training rebel groups to fight Indian forces, an allegation Pakistan vehemently opposes and denies. Islamabad says it provides only moral and diplomatic support to insurgents.
The fact is that such clumsy methods are unlikely to extinguish the Kashmiri desire for freedom. Malik is a respected figure in the Kashmiri freedom struggle and advocates independence for the disputed region, something that is not favored by this country’s establishment.
Mirwaiz Umar Farooq, another major Kashmiri leader, has also been in arbitrary detention for nearly three years. Instead of detaining and punishing the genuine Kashmiri leadership through dubious cases, India needs to open up channels with these leaders to help resolve the decades-old dispute.
Of course, this will mean the hard-liner BJP government that rules Delhi will have to admit that its actions of August 2019, in which the autonomous status of held Kashmir was brought to an end, were ill-advised.
In Yasin Malik’s case, the Indian government needs to revisit the false charges against him while also considering his ill health and release him so that he can return to his family.
The incarceration of Yasin Malik, his sham trial on concocted charges, his malicious sentence, and the attempt to portray the legitimate freedom struggle of the Kashmiris as terrorism illustrates India’s blatant disregard for its international legal obligations.
