{"id":16240,"date":"2019-01-30T10:22:29","date_gmt":"2019-01-30T04:52:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/kashmir.today\/?p=16240"},"modified":"2019-01-30T10:22:29","modified_gmt":"2019-01-30T04:52:29","slug":"no-official-invite-or-attempt-by-centre-to-reach-out-to-hurriyat-mirwaiz-umar-farooq","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kashmir.watch\/?p=16240","title":{"rendered":"No official invite or attempt by Centre to reach out to Hurriyat: Mirwaiz Umar Farooq"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Mirwaiz underscored that the government needs to realise that blocking the space for conversation has led to a situation where “anger, hate and resentment against India has gone up”.<\/i><\/strong><\/i><\/h3>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Days after Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh said that the government was ready to talk but Hurriyat leaders refused to talk and snubbed all-party delegation in 2016, Hurriyat chairman Mirwaiz Umar Farooq said there was \u201cnever any official invite or any attempt by the Government of India\u201d to reach out to the Hurriyat.<\/i><\/p>\n

He said the Centre\u2019s entire approach and agenda was military-driven, and that \u201cthere is absolutely no political process or thought in terms of dealing with Kashmir. They are dealing with Kashmir as we have seen in the last three or four years with an iron fist and their military policy is what is guiding BJPs policy on Kashmir.\u201d<\/i><\/p>\n

On the main issue, the political dispute of Jammu and Kashmir, on which talks and deliberations should be held, \u201cthere was never any clarity on that\u201d, he added. Stating that Singh\u2019s statement was not based on fact, Mirwaiz said that the Hurriyat and Joint resistance Leadership (JRL) had stated on record that \u201cwe want to engage and we want to see a political solution to this problem and we have always maintained that we want to engage with both India and Pakistan\u201d.<\/i><\/p>\n

On the Centre\u2019s special representative Dineshwar Sharma\u2019s attempts at holding talks with the Hurriyat, Mirwaiz said, \u201cThis exercise is not going to yield anything because in the past also we have seen interlocutors and special representatives coming and giving their reports. All these reports have never been taken up by the Government of India.\u201d<\/i><\/p>\n

The 45-year-old Mirwaiz, who spent 162 days in house arrest in 2017, said that the last time the NDA was in power, they reached out to the government and there was an \u201cunderstanding\u201d when Vajpayee wrote that they would deal with Kashmir in the ambit of humanity. \u201cAnd not only did we engage with the Government of India, but the GoI facilitated our visit to Pakistan and then we engaged with the government in Pakistan. There was a triangular approach. That is the only way out,\u201d Mirwaiz emphasised.<\/i><\/p>\n

He said the Hurriyat hoped that Prime Minister Narendra Modi would revisit that policy but that never happened, and it was clear that the government wanted to use military might and suppress the voice of the people.<\/i><\/p>\n

\u201cWhen Modi was elected, we welcomed it, but unfortunately, it\u2019s been a disappointment and now we have reached a point where we are in a situation where we are seeing political saturation at every level. All the space that was there for the Hurriyat and for political parties to engage was taken away, and we have seen the worst kind of violations in the past three years.\u201d<\/i>
\nMirwaiz underscored that the government needs to realise that blocking the space for conversation has led to a situation where \u201canger, hate and resentment against India has gone up\u201d and \u201cthey accuse us of inciting stone-pelters and a whole misinformation campaign was launched against us, but the fact is that two years down the line, what is happening is much worse. See what is happening in South Kashmir with young boys, it is very painful for us. But that is what their policy is. It is very clear that this is what the BJP has in mind.\u201d<\/i><\/p>\n

Asserting that \u201cpolls are not an alternative for a referendum\u201d, Mirwaiz said, \u201cWhen we say boycott polls, it is because time and again, GoI has been selling this as people\u2019s vote for Indian rule to continue.\u201d He said that under the garb of nationalism, \u201cevery space for debate and discussion has been lost. We have never seen so much hate and anger against India that we see today among the youth. Who is responsible for that? It\u2019s the Government of India\u2019s own policy.\u201d<\/i>
\nMirwaiz cautioned that by completely isolating and trying to marginalise the political players, the Hurriyat and JRL, \u201cwhat they have done is that they have left that space open. That vacuum has created a situation where people have lost hope of any political movement forward. Dialogue has become a word people have lost trust in.\u201d<\/i>
\nHe also blamed the Congress and other mainstream parties for their lack of initiative. \u201cMr Chidambaram speaks of Kashmir every day but during his time, they did nothing. Whether it\u2019s Congress or BJP or for that matter Left parties or regional parties, the time has come to take a broader look at what is happening in Jammu and Kashmir.\u201d<\/i>
\nOn engagement with Pakistan, he said that India\u2019s condition \u2014 that \u2018talks cannot be pursued in the midst of terrorist bloodshed\u2019 \u2014 does not hold since \u201c99 per cent of the militancy is local. Nobody can buy this theory that they are trying to sell, that Pakistan is instigating. This is all localised anger, and anger against the state because it is Kashmiris who are dying.\u201d<\/i>
\nHe said this was deliberate since India does not want to engage, \u201cProbably BJP has nothing to offer at this juncture, neither to the government in Pakistan nor to the people of Kashmir. They don\u2019t want to talk, that\u2019s why this pretext.\u201d<\/i><\/p>\n

Noting that since Imran Khan came to power in Pakistan, \u201cmore than once he has tried to reach out to the Indian government and to Mr Modi, but he has always been rebuffed and that is sad\u201d.<\/i><\/p>\n

With general elections around the corner, \u201cI don\u2019t think they will engage. This was a time to build on something, but unfortunately a lot of time was wasted,\u201d he said.<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Mirwaiz underscored that the government needs to realise that blocking the space for conversation has led to a situation where “anger, hate and resentment against India has gone up”. Days after Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh said that the government was ready to talk but Hurriyat leaders refused to talk and snubbed all-party delegation in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":16239,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16240","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-union-territory"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kashmir.watch\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16240","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kashmir.watch\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kashmir.watch\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kashmir.watch\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kashmir.watch\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=16240"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/kashmir.watch\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16240\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kashmir.watch\/index.php?rest_route=\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kashmir.watch\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=16240"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kashmir.watch\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=16240"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kashmir.watch\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=16240"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}