Geelani slams PDP for silence, media for shouting on JNU

Almost all the Kashmiri separatist groups express solidarity with SAR Geelani, JNU students

Ahmed Ali Fayyaz

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JAMMU, Feb 19: Senior separatist leader and Chairman of the hardline faction of Hurriyat Conference, Syed Ali Shah Geelani has castigated Mehbooba Mufti-led Peoples Democratic Party for its continued silence on the Delhi Police crackdown on the former professor of Delhi University Syed Abdul Rehman Geelani and students of the Jawahar Lal Nehru University (JNU) who on February organised a strong anti-India demonstration on the campus in New Delhi.

In a statement issued from New Delhi on Friday, Geelani said it was reprehensible that the PDP President Mehbooba Mufti was conveniently stitching the power alliance with the BJP General Secretary Ram Madhav at a time when Government of India had launched a crackdown and the “biased Indian media” a tirade on SAR Geelani and the JNU students. Joining hands, he said, both were “charging the atmosphere for hanging of SAR Geelani and other students the way Afzal Guru had been hanged”.

“Mehbooba Mufti Sahiba is busy with BJP General Secretary Ram Madhav in discussing the crown ceremony in the state”, he said

Geelani said although the PDP leader had made her way to the corridors of power “by wailing over the funerals of the martyrs” but now the real face of her party stood exposed before the public. Like National Conference, he said, PDP too had now fixed its achievement of power as its goal.

Hurriyat (G) spokesman Ayaz Akbar said in a statement that only to create justification for the government formation, PDP wanted to befool the people by talking about implementation of the ‘Agenda of Alliance’ while as everybody knew that “the fascist Hindu rulers of India are never ever going to give any kind of relaxation to the Kashmiris”. “It is just the jugglery of words which is being used to find a new justification to assume power”, he said.

Akbar said that expecting any favour from New Delhi for the Kashmiris was as impossible as expecting an apple from a thorny plant. Our nation has a bitter experience of this for the past 68 years now, he said. He said that from Sheikh Abdullah to Mufti, all the pro-India politicians had exploited the Kashmiri peoples’ sentiments for assumption of power. In turn Delhi gave them nothing, he said. “If this was the treatment with the founder of NC, then who is PDP and why would India relent and why would Ram Madhav agree on anything which would benefit the Kashmiri people or which could restore their pride and honour?”, Akbar asked.

While expressing its apprehension with regard to the safety of SAR Geelani and other Kashmiri students, Hurriyat (G) said: “Had NC-like and PDP-like people not been available to New Delhi in Kashmir, neither Maqbool Bhat nor Afzal Guru would had been hanged. These people act as the only link for India through which they continue their illegal control over Jammu & Kashmir”.

Hurriyat (G) warned that PDP and NC would be equally responsible if anything untoward happened with the Professor Geelani and other Kashmiri students in Delhi. “These people had played a criminal role at the time of hanging of Afzal Guru and this time too they are engaging in the power politics”, he added.

Hurriyat (G) also expressed its sorrow over the “extremely negative role of the Indian media houses who have now left Kanhaiya Kumar and the JNU and started a media trial against SAR Geelani and Kashmiri students. This is a sheer Hindu fascism and terrorism in the name of journalism”. The spokesman said that the Times Now anchor Arnab Goswami had started “a fanatic way of anchoring and now the anchors of other news channels have started following him and are seen beating their drums against Muslims and other lower castes of their own country. This situation has completely exposed India’s democracy and secularism”.

In a barrage of statements, other separatist groups too expressed their solidarity with SAR Geelani and the JNU students and warned invariably that the Delhi Police crackdown could only accentuate New Delhi’s trouble.

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