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| Winds of change in Kashmir: tearful farewell for cop slain in encounter | | |  Asif Iqbal Naik
Early Times Report
Jammu, Apr 3: After successful Assembly elections wherein people voted in large numbers, there is another development in Kashmir Valley: people are now participating in funeral of policemen.
On Thursday, a large number of people participated in funeral prayer of a policeman who was slain in a gun battle with militants in Hardshoora village of Kunzar area in Baramulla district of north Kashmir.
Reports said as soon as the news of Special Police Officer Mohammad Shafi's death spread in his native village Chanibal, Pattan, thousands of people from adjoining villages rushed to his residence and participated in the last rites along with senior police and civil officers.
The coffin of Shafi was wrapped in the National Flag and was carried by the people on their shoulders. The body was later laid to the rest at local graveyard. The huge participation in the funeral of the cop who had been killed in a gun battle with the militants surprised many as it has never happened in the past.
"It suggested that the people of Jammu and Kashmir were fed up of the gun culture and want to see its eradication from the Valley to pay way for long lasting peace," said some people who took part in the cop's funeral.
It is pertinent to mention that in January 2011, while addressing a seminar on 'Role of intellectuals in the Kashmir movement' organized at a local hotel by JKLF, former Hurriyat chairman Prof Abdul Gani Bhat exonerated the Indian forces of long-held allegations of assassinating prominent Hurriyat leaders Mirwaiz Maulvi Muhammad Farooq, Abdul Gani Lone and JKLF ideologue Prof. Abdul Ahad Wani. Bhat admitted for the first time that the killings of the Hurriyat leaders were actually "an insider's job."
"Lone sahib, Mirwaiz Farooq and Prof. Wani were not killed by the army or the police. They were targeted by our own people. The story is a long one, but we have to tell the truth," Bhat had said, stopping short of naming any militant group which killed them or delving into the circumstances under which the murders took place.
When asked to identify the killers, Bhat said, "What is the need to identify them.... They are already identified."
The slain Mirwaiz Maulvi Farooq's son, present Hurriyat Conference chairman Umar Farooq also did not contradict Bhat when he spoke at the seminar after him.
Bhat had also said that "if you want to free the people of Kashmir from sentimentalism bordering on insanity, you have to speak the truth. Former Prime Minister of Pakistan Zulfikar Ali Bhutto once said that sometimes truth escapes the mouth. Here I am letting it out." He was also forthcoming in saying that the "present movement against India was started by us killing our intellectuals."
Bhat added: "Wherever we found an intellectual, we ended up killing him. Let us ask ourselves: Was Prof Wani a martyr of brilliance or a martyr of rivalry?"
Bhat, considered a moderate separatist, also seemed to be criticizing hardliner leader Syed Ali Shah Geelani when he said: "There was a hartal for five months and 112 people died (in 2010 summer unrest) and at the end of it there is nothing by way of achievement. This is what happens when there is no thinking, no strategy. If you want to rid people of Kashmir of sentimentalism bordering on insanity, you have to speak the truth."
Bhat had also criticised those who have been politicizing the deaths of Kashmiris: "These leaders still hail these sacrifices as if their only purpose is to get people killed... for the sake of it."
Bhat said that his brother Mohammad Sultan Bhat also fell to the bullets of those espousing the separatist cause. "I had said this then and I am saying it now. There is no ambiguity or confusion in my mind," he said.
Reacting to Bhat's expose, then Director General of Police Kuldeep Khoda had told "Early Times" at that time that "the person involved in the killing of Mirwaiz Farooq is also buried in the same 'martyrs' graveyard' where the senior Mirwaiz was laid to rest. So this explains a lot; the killer and the killed are both declared as martyrs by them."
Senior National Conference leader Ali Mohammad Sagar at that time also described the admission by separatists as a "good development".
"It has taken them very long to admit the reality but it is better late than never," Sagar said. He said the separatist leaders have to be "realistic" if they are serious about resolution of the Kashmir issue and should stop treating the mainstream parties as "untouchables".
"We have to sit together if Kashmir issue has to be resolved permanently. The separatists should support and strengthen the efforts of Chief Minister Omar Abdullah in this direction," he said.
After his remarks, Bhat clarified at that time and said that he might have to suffer but will not seal his mouth.
"By recognizing this stark reality, I am afraid I may also suffer, but let me suffer, let me not seal my mouth," Bhat said.
The Hurriyat leader said he was determined to speak the truth irrespective of whether others do so or not. "I have said what I have said and I stand by it," he said. |
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