Woke up in Dadyaal after not much sleep there. A lot of adrenaline prevented me from doing so. I spent a lot of important years in that very accommodating city.
I also caught a few hours in Kotli.
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Earlier this morning I completed a draft letter for diplomats, in reference to the plight of Yasin Malik, upon the request of a co-citizen. Here it is:
Your Excellencies,
Memorandum
In the background of a Jammu Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF) led armed struggle for independence and reunification of the territory of Jammu & Kashmir since 1988, the subsequently imprisoned chairman of the JKLF Yasin Malik, publicly renounced violence as a means of resolving political conflict in 1994.
This strategic step towards non violence was not only welcomed in India but was also encouraged by the ‘International Community’ in general, led by Britain and the United States of America (USA) in particular. Successive Indian governments since 1994 had regularly given a prominent audience to Yasin Malik and others who had adopted peaceful means of struggle for their political objectives. British and American diplomats had frequently praised this stance and repeatedly gave some assurance of a move towards resolution in such an environment. Facilitating Yasin Malik to address Harvard University and the US State Department became examples of this encouragement towards a peaceful resolution.
Conditions and opportunities for sustained dialogue continued till the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) led by Narendra Modi came into power in 2014. The various “gentleman’s agreements” lost substance as the aforementioned government began cracking down hard on what they identified as “Kashmiri Separatists” and all possibilities of continuing dialogue gradually evaporated. Post 2018 many a political activist was indefinitely incarcerated - including Yasin Malik - and this process was intensified upon revocation of what remained of a “Special Status” of Indian Administered Jammu & Kashmir on August the 5th 2019, whereby it is reported that over 4,000 citizens of the Kashmir Valley remain imprisoned, including human rights defenders and journalists simply documenting these changes.
In due course, the BJP led government disregarded all previous attempts at securing peace through peaceful means and re-opened over 3 decades old cases against Yasin Malik and others, sentencing the latter to life imprisonment.
Of late, India’s National Investigation Agency (NIA) has requested the Indian judiciary to convert Yasin Malik’s life sentence into the death penalty.
It is our informed opinion that if indeed Yasin Malik is hanged (like his leader Maqbool Bhat), hardliners within the freedom movement will revive what they would consider to be a dormant militant policy, abandoned since 1994. This would lead to the loss of yet another generation to violence and the world should do whatever is possible to avert repeating such a tragic scenario.
We thus appeal to the world’s conscience through their respective governments and other multilateral forums to utilise their good offices, to urge the prevailing government in India to return to a framework of peaceful dialogue and to help create a conducive environment for such.
An iron-hand policy may fulfil temporary objectives and present favourable optics in the short term but as some Indian policy analysts have admitted, every power has to ultimately return to dialogue to achieve a sustainable solution.
By releasing Yasin Malik and other political prisoners who originate from the conflict ridden Kashmir Valley, that conducive environment for result oriented dialogue may be revived.
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End of draft....
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