The veteran Hurriyet leader, Syed Ali Geelani has appealed for complete shutdown on 15th August, the Independence Day of India.
Syed Ali Gilani in a statement issued in Srinagar said: “We are not against the freedom of any country including India but until this country will accept the freedom right of the Kashmiri people and will provide them a chance to decide their future by allowing independent plebiscite in Kashmir, till then it doesn’t have any moral and constitutional right to organize the freedom celebrations on the soil of the territory.
Appealing the teachers, students and their parents for completely boycotting the August 15 functions, the veteran Hurriyet leader cautioned the authorities not to force the teachers and students of the educational institutions to participate in the functions.
He said that India itself attained freedom from British rule on 15th August, 1947 and became an independent country but only after 72 days of the freedom, the country snatched the freedom rights of the Kashmiri people and forcibly occupied the territory by landed its troops on 27th October and since then the occupation continued.
He said that Kashmiris had been continuously demanding for last 68 years that India should call back its forces from Kashmir and give us a chance to decide our future. It is purely a democratic demand and India has also promised to fulfill that demand on national as well as international levels but this country backtracked from its promises and is now busy in suppressing the genuine and just voices of the Kashmiris, he added.
Gilani said that organizing its freedom celebration functions on the soil of Kashmir in such situations was amounting to add salt to the injuries of the Kashmiri people. “India has no right to celebrate its freedom day on our land and if anything like conscience is present among the leaders of this country, then they should immediately stop this process and these functions should be limited to their own country”, he maintained.
Syed Ali Gilani also expressed dismay over the reports that in the name of the cultural programmes the students of the educational institutions are prepared to dance and sing in these functions to entertain the ministers and officers of the Indian armed forces. He appealed the parents that they should stop their children from participating in these functions because it is totally against our religious as well as social values that our daughters will dance in front of the unknown persons particularly in front of the men in uniform.