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Journalism of Courage
A DAY after Union Defence Minister Rajnath Singh said at election rallies in Jammu that the four Opposition MPs who had sought to meet Hurriyat Conference leaders in September 2016 had gone as part of the Centre’s outreach for peace talks, the leader of the moderate faction of the conglomerate, Mirwaiz Umar Farooq, said it was no more than “a fragmented effort to meet Hurriyat leaders separately when all leaders were jailed in separate places”.
Noting that he wanted to “set the record straight”, Mirwaiz said it was the first time the conglomerate was hearing that the initiative was taken at the behest of the government of India, and asserted that the Hurriyat has never shied away from dialogue with the government as talks were the only way to ensure peace and stability.
Addressing a rally in Banihal in the Jammu province Monday, National Conference vice-president Omar Abdullah expressed surprise at Rajnath Singh’s claim, pointing to Union Home Minister Amit Shah’s stand that they will not talk to the Hurriyat Conference.
“Who is telling the truth?… The people want you to come here and speak the truth,” Omar said, as per a PTI report.
Mirwaiz said that at the time the Opposition MPs went to Hurriyat hardliner Syed Ali Shah Geelani’s residence in September 2016, he himself was detained in Chasmashshi sub-jail. He said that inside the jail he was delivered a letter by then J&K Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti requesting him to meet a visiting delegation of Opposition MPs and talk to them.
Mufti wrote “in her capacity as president of PDP” and not as CM, Mirwaiz said, adding that following this, AIMIM chief Asaduddin Owaisi came to meet him at the sub-jail. “During the meeting, Mr Owaisi told me that a delegation of MPs wants to meet the Hurriyat leadership regarding the grim situation” in the Valley, Mirwaiz said.
The Hurriyat leader said that he then requested Owaisi to urge the Centre “to stop killings and allow the Hurriyat leadership lodged in different jails and under house arrest to meet with each other and discuss the situation among themselves first” to decide if they could collectively talk to the delegation. He said he also told Owaisi that they needed to “figure out if the Opposition MPs can help in some serious attempt at long term engagement, or if it is just another attempt at crisis management, which will be dumped once the crisis is over, as past experiences have shown”.
No Hurriyat leader was in a position to take a decision regarding this individually, Mirwaiz said. “Mr Owaisi… said he will convey this request to the government and left. After that, nothing was heard of it.”
Mirwaiz said the Hurriyat has “always strongly and repeatedly advocated engagement and dialogue”. “Right from the time of its engagement with Prime Minister Shri Atal Bihari Vajpayee, Shri L K Advani to PM Shri Manmohan Singh, it has participated in every opportunity that was made available by the government of India. Even at its own peril, and despite the huge personal costs borne by the Mirwaiz and other Hurriyat leaders and their families for such engagements, it never shied away from them,” he said.
Mirwaiz, who has had only brief intervals of being allowed out of his residence since he was put under house arrest immediately before the abrogation of Article 370, has always criticised the August 5, 2019, developments but also advocated talks.
The visit of the 26-member all-party delegation, in the first week of September 2016, had followed violence in the Valley leaving 72 people dead. Four of the Opposition MPs – the JD(U)’s Sharad Yadav, CPI(M)’s Sitaram Yechury, CPI’s D Raja and RJD’s Jay Prakash Narayan Yadav – then went to meet Geelani, who was under house arrest. But he did not open the doors to his residence.
Two days earlier, Geelani had, in fact, issued a statement declining to meet the MPs, stating: “We believe that even after deadly conflicts and destructive wars, things are settled only through dialogue. But given the long and deceptive nature of the talks on Kashmir, we have witnessed this exercise more than 150 times without yielding any results till date.”
At the time, Rajnath Singh had said the MPs visited Geelani on their own. “Neither did we say yes, nor did we say no,” he had told reporters.
Raja told The Indian Express Sunday that he does not remember Rajnath Singh telling them that they should meet the Hurriyat leaders. “As part of the all-party delegation… the understanding was that the members are free to meet anyone we want and hear them out. And we went,” the CPI general secretary said.
