Jammu Kashmir Liberation Front

Seek votes in the absence of troops

Srinagar, January 02, JKLF Chairman Farooq Siddiqi in a statement issued today has said that the “Indian propaganda of mass participation” of Kashmiris in the recently concluded elections is in line with its continued pattern of throwing “smoke screen”. “The orchestra of election along with the mechanism and demographic manipulation that India devised to conduct the election in a phase wise manner for a time frame of more than a month has failed to give credence to its propaganda to convince the international community that the elections can replace referendum for self-determination,” said Siddiqi.

Terming the elections as meaningless and of no consequence given that the people of Kashmir were besieged with undeclared curfews and indiscriminate use of force, he said, “The people who represent the popular voice of freedom are imprisoned. Democracy does not work when the basic human right of freedom of expression is stifled.”

Coming down heavily on the mainstream political parties, he said, “The political agenda of these so called mainstream parties invariably gets reduced to personal agenda’s of leaders who head these parties understandably in a society that struggles to live in fear psychoses under the 8 lac Indian troops dispersed in civilian areas.”

“Their political agenda is based on acquiring seat of power to relish the benefits of authority for personal wellbeing or the wellbeing of a selected few in the society,” said Siddiqi. “Their agenda keeps changing from time to time based on the ambience of political trend in New Delhi. The rhetoric of self governance and greater autonomy which is in close proximity to each other was abandoned when both these two so called mainstream parties separately sought the support of New Delhi.”

Farooq Siddiqi further in his statement has said that JKLF challenges all the Indian “supervised and subsidised” parties to seek a single Kashmiri Muslim vote in the absence of Indian troops in Kashmir.