Joint Hurriyat calls for valley-wide shutdown

Srinagar, Apr 01: Joint Hurriyat Leadership on Sunday called for strike in Kashmir Valley on Sunday and Monday in view of militant and civilian killings in south Kashmir gunfights.

The trio Syed Ali Geelani, Mirwaiz Umar Farooq and Yasin Malik, has asked people to suspend business and other activities and offer funeral prayers in absentia at 4 pm across Kashmir valley.

Scores of people and Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front activists including JKLF Chief Yasin Malik offered funeral prayers in absentia at Sarai Balla Masjid for the militants who were killed in different gun battles.

However, Hurriyat Conference Chairperson Syed Ali Shah Geelani and Hurriyat Conference (M) chairman Mirwaiz Umar Farooq were put under house arrest.

Turning the sole responsibility on India for the gruesome incidents of bloodshed, Joint Hurriyat leadership made an appeal to observe 1st April as the black day of “our history of subjugation”.

In a statement, the joint Hurriyat regretted the authorities “stiffness and stubbornness to turn deaf ears towards the loud and clear voice of the people of Jammu and Kashmir with regard to peaceful, political and legitimate resistance movement, time and again millions and millions of people thronging on the roads and streets of their motherland and raising slogans for their freedom movement”.

Joint Hurriyat condemning the use of brute force against the peaceful public processions especially in the southern part of the Kashmir valley, Kachdooru, Shopian and Anantnag, said that these repressive measures can’t deter the freedom loving people from their sacred cause of right to self-determination.

Joint Hurriyat appealed for a two-day strike call and offering funeral prayers for the martyrs after Asar and Zohar prayers on 1st and 2nd April.

They also made a sincere appeal to the “freedom loving people to remain vigilant and cautious against the conspiracies to disintegrate the unity among the freedom loving people and the leadership”.