ISLAMABAD: The Joint Resistance Leadership (JRL), comprising Syed Ali Gilani, Mirwaiz Umar Farooq and Muhammad Yasin Malik, while hailing the people of Kashmir for once again boycotting sham local bodies’ election, has urged India to pay heed to the clear message emanating from the rejection of the election drama.
The JRL in a statement issued in Srinagar said, “People once again rejected the forcibly thrust, sham and futile exercise of so-called election as there was a nearly total boycott,” KMS reported.
It said the people see this cosmetic attempt as another assault on them and hence are resisting it tooth and nail.
The leadership said, “It’s time that New Delhi should pay heed to the clear message emanating from the rejection of these elections by the people of Kashmir. People of Kashmir have no faith in them. They see this process as a deception played upon them by successive governments in New Delhi to hoodwink Indians for electoral gains and to mislead the international community.”
The statement said: “What the people of Kashmir want is to come out of the political uncertainty surrounding them for the past 71 years and the resultant distress, the killings and the repression, and the everyday pain of shouldering the coffins of our educated and budding youth.”
“They want the resolution of the Kashmir dispute once and for all and peace for them and the people of South Asia.
The resolution of the dispute as per internationally accepted norms of conflict resolution is through right to self-determination as was promised to the people of J&K, or through negotiated settlement among the stakeholders through dialogue and deliberations,” the leaders said.
The JRL said the policy of repression has not succeeded either in the resolution of the dispute or in dissuading people of Kashmir from pursuing it. “So reason and humanity demands that instead of going for cosmetic and iron handed measures to continue the status quo they should pay heed to the message from the people and resolve the dispute.”
Meanwhile, JRL paid rich tributes to the youth, Shabir Ahmad, who was martyred by troops during a cordon and search operation at Babagund in south Kashmir’s Pulwama district.
APP