Army on Thursday urged the people of Jammu and Kashmir not to pay any heed to separatist leader Syed Ali Shah Geelani’s diktat to hold protests in front of its camps early next week as part of the “Quit Kashmir” campaign being spearheaded by him.
“Hurriyat Conference has been issuing regular protest calendars which have already caused untold hardships to the peace loving people of Jammu and Kashmir. It has asked the people to step up violence by staging sit-in protests outside Army camps and preventing move of Army convoys on September 21 which is a deliberate attempt to embroil the Army in the ongoing agitation and distract it from its primary role,” said a statement issued by the Army here.
However, the octogenarian separatist leader reiterated at a press conference held at his Srinagar resident shortly before he was placed under house arrest again on Thursday afternoon that he had asked the people to stage only peaceful sit-ins in front of the Army camps whereas elders of respective areas will hand over copies of a letter to the officials at each of these requesting the troops to leave Kashmir and remind them that “they have “occupied our land against our wishes”.
He said, “I had while issuing the fresh calendar of protests on Monday said and I reiterate it today that the protest sit-ins will be totally peaceful. We are not asking people to attack the camps or convoys but only to tell them politely to leave our Kashmir.”
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Yasin cousin succumbs
Age Correspondent
Srinagar
Yasir Hameed Sheikh, a cousin of pro-independence Jammu Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF) faction leader Muhammad Yasin Malik, who was among four person shot by police while they were playing a board game inside a backstreet of Srinagar’s Maisuma locality recently, died in Delhi’s Apollo Hospital on Thursday heightening tensions in Srinagar which with the rest of the Valley is under strict round-the-clock curfew for the past five days.
His body is being flown here from Delhi by an Air India flight, said Mr Malik. The authorities have pleaded with him not to allow his supporters to indulge in any protests or create a law and order situation during the funeral.