New york: Syed Altaf Hussain Qadri, a senior leader of the Jammu Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF), originally from district Srinagar and currently residing in the United States, and a close associate of the party's imprisoned Chairman Muhammad Yasin Malik, who is being illegally detained in India's Tihar Jail, sent a letter addressed to the Chief Minister of Indian-occupied Jammu and Kashmir, Omar Abdullah.
In the letter he said, "Our position remains clear and unwavering: the people of Kashmir aspire to the restoration of a fully sovereign and independent nation that existed prior to 1947. Until this objective is realized, our political struggle will continue."
He said, "As a national representative and pioneering organization of the Kashmiri freedom movement, the Jammu Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF) recognizes that you, as a representative of the Indian state in Kashmir, also bear certain moral and political responsibilities toward the citizens of this land."
"In this context, we draw your attention to the ongoing, vindictive, and unfounded allegations being pursued against the most popular pro-freedom political leader from both the sides of the ceasefire line and the Chairman of JKLF, Muhammad Yasin Malik. The ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) appears determined to seek an unjust and disproportionate death sentence against him. Such an action would represent a grave miscarriage of justice and, to our knowledge, would be unprecedented in Indian judicial history, where an already imposed sentence is further escalated to a harsher and crueler form of capital punishment," he added.
"JKLF cannot forget the judicial execution of our late leader and national hero, Shaheed Muhammad Maqbool Bhat. It remains a painful historical irony that at the time of his hanging, your father, Dr. Farooq Abdullah, was serving as the Chief Minister of Jammu Kashmir and failed to intervene meaningfully to save his life," he remarked.
Today, history has once again placed your credentials, your political organization, and your personal conscience under scrutiny. Local people especially the Kashmiris across the political spectrum expect you to rise above political and ideological limitations and exert pressure on the Indian government to prevent the execution of Mr. Yasin Malik.
It lies within your constitutional authority to convene an assembly session and pass a resolution urging the Government of India not to undertake any misadventure. This is not a request for favor; it is a call for moral courage, political responsibility, and basic human conscience.
Failure to act at this critical moment will not be forgotten. History records silence as clearly as it records action.