Rejecting possibility of engagement with the Centre’s newly appointed interlocutors for Jammu & Kashmir, the separatists on Tuesday said that while the “repressive State militaristic approach continues in dealing with Kashmir”, talking about peace and dialogue was a ploy by the Government of India to strike a hard bargain that “people of Kashmir and leadership will never succumb to”.
The Center on August 28 appointed former Intelligence Bureau (IB) chief Dineshwar Sharma as representative to talk to stakeholders in Jammu & Kashmir, a development widely hailed by the mainstream political groups though several organisations including opposition National Conference and Congress expressed reservations over the appointment. The separatists were so far avoiding direct response to the initiative.
Joint Resistance leadership (JRl) comprising top separatist leader Syed Ali Geelani, Mirwaiz Umar Farooq and Yasin Malik, who led the anti-India uprising in Kashmir in the wake of killing of Burhan Wani last year, in a statement said that unless the Kashmir dispute was understood and addressed in its historical context and in the background of international commitments made over it, lasting peace can neither be achieved in J&K nor in the subcontinent.
“While the repressive State militaristic approach continues in dealing with Kashmir, to talk of peace and dialogue is also a ploy by the GOI to strike a hard bargain which people of Kashmir and leadership will never succumb to,” a joint statement of the leaders said. The leaders observed that for any Kashmiri to be part of this futile exercise will only undermine internationally acknowledged legitimate and just struggle.
“The use of unlimited force on common people, killings, torture of youth, imprisonment, intimidation propaganda, media trials, harassment of women and all such inhuman measures will not deter people or leadership to give up pursuing their legitimate demand for resolution of Kashmir issue as per our will and aspirations,” the statement added. They said the (separatist) leadership in principle has advocated and supported sincere and productive dialogue as a means of conflict resolution over Jammu & Kashmir but the basic premise for dialogue was acknowledgment of basic dispute that requires resolution.
“The Government of India continuously refuses to accept this basic premise and the reality on the ground.,” the statement added.
Referring to Prime Minister Narendra Modis outright dismissal of former Home minister P Chidambaram’s suggestion of restoration of autonomy for J&K , the separatist leaders said that if the government of India even rejects the demand of its co-political party for restoration of autonomy guaranteed by its own constitution, calling it a betrayal with soldiers and hence unacceptable, how will such a dispensation in New Delhi address or engage with the Kashmiri people's political will and aspiration of self-determination.
The leaders said that the appointment of interlocutor was nothing more than a tactic to buy time adopted under international pressures and regional compulsions and due to the abysmal failure of the state policy of military repression upon the people of Kashmir.
The leaders described Sharma’s recent comment that he will come to Kashmir to dissuade the youth from Islam and pursuing their legitimate political aspirations so that Kashmir does not become Syria as misleading. “To compare the internationally recognized 70-year-old political and humanitarian issue of Kashmir to that of the sectarian war and power struggle in Syria is deception and propaganda as there is no correlation between the two situations,” the statement said.