MUZAFFARABAD, Dec 23: Activists of the Kashmir Students Liberation Front (KSLF), the student wing of the Jammu Kashmir Liberation Front (Rauf Kashmiri group), staged a token hunger strike here on Thursday
to draw attention to the perpetual incarceration of their leader by the Indian government.
Sardar Rauf Kashmiri, a resident of district Poonch, was arrested on the other side of the Line of Control in June 1991. Since then, he has been under detention in India or held Kashmir.
The hunger-strike camp was set up on a pavement outside the office of the United Nations Military Observers Group for India and Pakistan (UNMOGIP), located near the confluence of rivers Neelum and Jhelum, where the strikers remained for nearly six hours.
A protest note was also delivered at the UNMOGIP office at the conclusion of the strike. "This hunger strike is against the atrocities meted out to Sardar Rauf Kashmiri and the apathy of the UN towards it," read one of the several banners displayed by the strikers.
"Sardar Rauf Kashmiri be handed over to the International Red Cross," demanded a placard. Led by Sardar Naseem Iqbal, S M Ibrahim, Sardar Nasir Sarwar and other sitting and former KSLF office-bearers, the strikers also chanted pro-independence slogans and made victory signs upon seeing the media persons.
Talking to journalists, Mr Iqbal said that an Indian court had ordered on September 11, 2000 that "Mr Rauf Kashmiri should be safely released from the (Jodhpur) prison, but unfortunately India was blatantly disregarding the verdict of its own court".
He lamented that the UN and other international organizations had not taken any notice of the "utter violation of human rights by India despite our frequent appeals to that effect".
Mr Kashmiri, he said, was suffering from acute renal disorder. The fatal disease had also badly affected his eyesight which needed immediate and proper treatment to save his life. "If any harm occurs to him, its responsibility would lie on the UN, the Indian government and the international human rights watchdogs," he said.
