A posse of policemen bundled slogan-shouting separatist leaders in a truck parked a few metres away from landmark Clock Tower in capital Srinagar moments after they emerged from a State-owned hotel. The leaders of the third and newest faction of separatist Hurriyat Conference had assembled at a seminar in the wake of commemorating anniversaries of two Kashmiris — Muhammad Maqbool Bhat and Afzal Guru — who have been hanged on charges of treason in Delhi’s Tihar Jail in 1984 and 2013 respectively.
Pakistan’s Federal Minister for Kashmir affairs and Gilgit-Baltistan Barjees Tahir, Pakistan-occupied Kashmir president Sardar Yaqoob Khan and Prime Minister Chaudhary Abdul Majid unprecedentedly addressed the seminar on telephone. The Hurriyat factions have called for three-day shutdown starting February 9 to protest on the death anniversaries of Bhat and Guru. While Bhat was executed on February 11, 1984, Guru was secretly put to gallows last year on February 9 without informing his relatives. His execution triggered widespread anger in Kashmir even as the authorities clamped curfew for many days to prevent protests.
A resolution demanding inclusion of “real representatives of the Kashmiri people” in dialogue process between India and Pakistan was passed in the seminar. Chairman of the breakaway faction Shabir Shah said that India is using carrot-and-stick policy to “suppress” people of Kashmir. “On one hand, they (India) are using force to suppress the pro-freedom people and on the other they are using economic packages to make people slaves”, he said.