Main the Friday prayers at Jamia Masjid right here, Mirwaiz Umar Farooq hoped that the scenario between India and Pakistan, “getting worse by the day” for the reason that Pahalgam assault, is resolved with out going to struggle.
He additionally regretted the “vilification” of Kashmiris in some quarters after the assault that left 26 useless, and urged the Centre to “rethink” deportations of these holding Pakistani passports following revocation of visas by India.
It was the second Friday in a row after the April 22 Pahalgam assault that Mirwaiz, the Valley’s chief cleric, was allowed to provide his customary sermon on the Jamia Masjid.
In considered one of his strongest remarks on authorities actions in a sermon, since his launch from a four-year home arrest after the 2019 abrogation of Article 370, Mirwaiz mentioned: “The occasions unfolding after the horrendous Pahalgam incident have once more proven that each time such issues occur, it’s the folks of Kashmir who bear the brunt and undergo. Regardless of their unanimous condemnation of it, folks of Kashmir are being held to account and focused.”
Many college students and professionals had returned dwelling to Kashmir from different components of the nation after dealing with “harassment”, he mentioned. “How is all this serving to in punishing the perpetrators, if that’s the intention?”
Pointing to the deportations for the reason that Pahalgam assault, after India revoked nearly all classes of visas to Pakistanis, Mirwaiz mentioned that is resulting in “the division of households, with moms being separated from little youngsters and husbands from wives” in Kashmir. He talked about the dying of a paralysed 80-year-old Abdul Waheed Bhat on a bus whereas ready to be deported to Pakistan.
“In Kashmir, it’s sorrow after sorrow and grief after grief that visits us,” Mirwaiz mentioned, urging the Central authorities to revisit a coverage “inimical to precise peace and stability in Jammu and Kashmir”, on “humanitarian grounds”.
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Mirwaiz additionally raised circumstances of alleged extrajudicial killings up to now, and questioned actions reminiscent of demolition of homes of kin of militants, “rendering households homeless and desolate”. At the least 9 such demolitions have adopted the Pahalgam assault, with events which have in any other case provided assist to the Centre in any motion it takes towards the terrorists additionally urging it to chorus from this “counterproductive” measure.
In his handle, Mirwaiz addressed the ban on his get together Awami Motion Committee by the Centre just lately, calling it “unjust and politically motivated”. “Individuals know that this organisation has all the time stood for peace and reconciliation and perceive that these are fear-building techniques. It could be higher to win over folks than to intimidate them into submission,” he mentioned.
Because the chief of the average faction of the Hurriyat Convention, Mirwaiz has all the time advocated talks.
On April 25, in his first Friday sermon after the Pahalgam assault – allowed by the authorities after the hole of a month – Mirwaiz had led a one-minute silence for the useless, and had condemned the killings as “surprising and chilling past perception”. He had additionally commented on how the folks of the Valley had “opened their hearts and houses” for outsiders, whereas regretting the “communal rhetoric of hate” directed at Kashmiris.