National News

ISLAMABAD, Jun 30 (APP): The joint resistance leadership
comprising Syed Ali Gilani, Mirwaiz Umar Farooq and Muhammad Yasin
Malik has called for peaceful demonstrations after Friday prayers,
to register protest against the US action of branding the Chairman
of Hizbul Mujahideen, Syed Salahuddin, as a terrorist.
KMS reported that, the leaders in a joint statement issued
in Srinagar,”This unjustified move by the US government to appease
the Government of India and their (US) silence regarding the
oppression and human rights situation in Kashmir is not acceptable
to the people of Kashmir who will strongly protest against it
across the Valley post Friday prayers.”
Demonstrations will also be held against the illegal and
arbitrary arrests and detention of resistance leaders, activists
and youth and raid on homes being conducted by Indian troops and
police across the Valley, they said.
The leaders deplored that the US government had strangely
designated as a terrorist the veteran freedom-fighter, Syed
Salahuddin, who supports the people’s right to self-determination
and was forced to take up arms to fight India’s military
occupation and oppression.
They said, the US is well aware that for the past 70 years
the people of Jammu and Kashmir are engaged in a long and peaceful
struggle for achieving their basic human and political right – the
right to self-determination – guaranteed by the UN, but ruthlessly
resisted and suppressed by the Indian state through use of brute
force.