Junaid Kathju
The Joint Resistance Leadership (JRL) comprising Syed Ali Geelani, Mirwaiz Umar Farooq and Muhammad Yasin Malik are mulling to shun the two-decade practice of calling strikes after every untoward incident.
Sources said the JRL is thinking about replacing the shutdowns with protests similar to ones carried against the proposal to repeal Article 35-A of the constitution.
They said during the ongoing consultation with all sections of the society that include religious organisations, lawyers, traders, transporters, employees, academicians, civil society members, it was agreed that continuous hartals were not serving any purpose to stop the killing spree in the Valley.
Sources said, according to the new strategy, on the JRL call, different organisation would carry out a protest on a particular day across the Valley to pressurise the government to stop the “killing of civilians” in Kashmir.
“The protests will be similar to ones that were carried during the protests against the attempts to abrogate the special status of Jammu Kashmir. Every day different sectors like transporters, traders, bar association, civil society, shikara owners, hoteliers will carry out protest rallies in various parts of the Valley,” sources said.
JRL has often come under severe criticism of the public for not finding any alternative to hartal calls that badly impacts the State’s economy.
On October 30, in a meeting held at Geelani’s Hyderpora residence, the three leaders had a thorough discussion on the prevailing situation in Kashmir.
Afterward, they announced they were going to have a wide-range consultation with all sections of the society to frame a comprehensive joint strategy against “Indian suppression”, which they said has reached “beyond tolerable levels”.
Sources said all the organisations that held meetings with the JRL for the last few days were on a common ground that the Hurriyat leaders should shun the idea of calling strike calls after every untoward incident and instead devise a well-thought out protest calendar.
“All the organisations have assured the leadership that they will religiously follow their protest calls and do their bit to highlight the deteriorating condition of human rights in the Valley,” the sources said.
They said apart from protest calls, JRL would also reach out to the international community by writing to all the High Commissioners to India to apprise them about the human rights violation in Kashmir.
