MUZAFFARABAD: A rally was held here on Thursday to condemn the US decision to designate Hizbul Muja­hideen as a terrorist organisation.

The US decision came weeks after the party’s supreme commander Syed Salahuddin was designated a global terrorist.

“The Hizbul Mujahideen is not a terrorist organisation but stands for the sentiments and aspirations of Kashmiris and is the centre of their hopes,” read a banner carried by protesters.

The demonstrators chanted anti-India and pro-freedom slogans while condemning the US decision as they passed through the city’s main thoroughfare. Earlier, leaders of several councils and parties delivered fiery speeches at the Burhan Wani Chowk.

“You can withhold our properties and [bank] accounts if there are any [in the US], but you cannot force us to give up our legitimate struggle for freedom,” said United Jihad Council secretary general Shaikh Jamilur Rehman.

“We will carry on our struggle, which is in accordance with the UN Charter, until the eviction of the last Indian soldier from our motherland,” he said. Mr Rehman rubbished what he called propaganda against Kashmiri militant groups as “an attempt to appease the Narendra Modi-led Indian government”.

“Hizbul Mujahideen is an indigenous organisation, engaged in a legitimate struggle for the right to self determination…. It cannot be dubbed as a terrorist organisation by any stretch of imagination,” he said.

Pasban-i-Hurriyat’s Uzair Ghazali regretted that the US had turned a blind eye towards state-sponsored terrorism in held Kashmir.

“If anyone has to be designated as a terrorist in today’s world, it is Indian premier Narendra Modi and Israeli premier Benjamin Netanyahu... but both are advancing their ghastly agendas under American patronage,” he said.

Published in Dawn, August 18th, 2017