Senior leader All Party Hurriyat Conference and Chairman of the Jammu Kashmir National Front (JKNF) Nayeem Ahmed Khan has completed five years of his continuous incarceration in India’s notorious Tihar jail.
In a statement issued here on Sunday, the JKNF spokesman Shafiq-ur-Rehman, while voicing his serious concerns over the illegal detention of the party chairman, said, “On this day in 2017, Nayeem Ahmed Khan was arrested by the Indian authorities from his Srinagar residence and then hurriedly rushed to New Delhi’s Tihar jail where he has been languishing for the past five years.”
Terming abduction-style arrest of the APHC leader as a flagrant violation of the basic human rights Rehman said, “Imprisonment of key Kashmiri political leaders including Nayeem Khan was part of Modi government’s massive clamp down policy to suppress dissent in the region.”
Hailing the party chairman’s commitment to Kashmir cause, the spokesman said, “Nayeem Ahmed Khan is creating a history of patience, perseverance and determination by enduring the unendurable in the notorious prison.”
“Khan has spent most of his life in different jails and all the baseless cases filed against him have not been proved in any court”, the spokesman said, adding that despite the passage of five years, the NIA and ED authorities could not produce a single-evidence against Khan in the court of law.
He said that Kashmiri leaders like Nayeem Ahmed Khan, Shabir Ahmed Shah , Massrat Alam Butt, Muhammad Yasin Malik , Mtr. Asiya Andrabi and others were being punished for their indomitable role in the ongoing liberation struggle and their persistent demand for holding referendum in Kashmir so that Kashmiris could peacefully determine their political future.
Reiterating Kashmiris’ pledge to take the ongoing struggle to its logical conclusion, the JKNF leader said, “The entire Kashmiri nation stands firm on its demand for holding a referendum to allow people of the region to decide their political future.” He said that Indian government’s policy of oppression and suppression could not deter Kashmiris from pursuing their collective cause for which they had been rendering matchless services and sacrifices.
Expressing solidarity with its jailed leader and other Kashmiri prisoners, the JKNF spokesman appealed to the United Nations and other international organizations to put pressure on New Delhi to restore the political rights of Kashmiris.
Terming continuous detention as a grave threat to life of Kashmiri leaders, he said that it was high time that the global community should take effective cognizance of the matter and play its role in the release detained Kashmiri prisoners, who were unlawfully detained by Indian occupation authorities before and after August 2019.
He said that the UNSC must take practical steps to hold a free referendum in disputed Jammu and Kashmir. Stressing the need for a peaceful resolution of Kashmir dispute, he said, “Peace and stability in south Asia was inescapably linked to an early and amicable resolution of the lingering dispute.”
