Opposition People’s Democratic Party (PDP) on Saturday asked the Centre as well the state government to try to learn lessons from the collapse of the Hosni Mubarak government in Egypt under the weight of people’s power in Egypt and help the people of Jammu and Kashmir in finding their destiny.
It also made a strong plea for Jammu and Kashmir’s “economic independence” by virtue of making the borders irrelevant and agreeing to reunification of the state presently divided between Indian and Pakistani controlled parts. It, however, clarified that it was not in favour of political independence of Jammu and Kashmir as that would not be economically viable.
“When we do talk about independence we mean economic independence of the state which is possible by allowing free trade and commerce and travel by the people between all its regions including those under the control of Islamabad. We also ask for opening up trade routes beyond the borders of Jammu and Kashmir into Afghanistan, China, Iran and the Central Asian countries as was the case prior to the Partition,” said PDP president Mehbooba Mufti at a press conference here.
Replying a question, she said that the PDP’s self-rule roadmap does not talk about independence of Jammu and Kashmir as the changing political scenario and economic concerns have made that somewhat extraneous. “By asking for making the borders irrelevant and reunification of Jammu and Kashmir we denote that there should be openings for the people of the state to become economically independent and self-contained. If that happens the state would flourish. Political independence, on the other hand, could well lead us to hold a begging bowl before others,” she asserted.
She accused the state government of pushing the people of Kashmir Valley to the wall by criminalising their dissent. “We have seen that in Egypt the Hosni Mubarak government has surrendered before the people’s will and one can only appreciate the role that country’s army played during the crisis. But here in our state the government and the forces and agencies under its command have tried everything they could to bottle up the resistance movement. Initially, it was said that Lashkar-e-Tayyaba is behind the protests even after seeing that tens of thousands of people are out on the streets, then the civilian unrest was blamed on money power provided by the opposition and now they claim that those who would indulge in stone-throwing were actually drug addicts and had family problems,” she said. She alleged that the youth of the Valley are being subject to harassment by police which had also implicated many of them in false cases besides detaining dozens others under tough law Public Safety Act. “Police brutalities against the peaceful protesters led to sections of our youth taking up stones in their hands.”