Daily Times

SRINAGAR: All Parties Hurriyat Conference (APHC) Chairman Mirwaiz Umar Farooq on Monday condemned the Indian government for honouring a soldier who had tied a Kashmiri to the bonnet of a jeep.

“The decision to commend and honor the Indian army officer for forcibly tying a Kashmir civilian to his jeep to use him as a human shield and parade him through villages for hours just shows that the Indian government as well as its institutions that operate here have internalised the occupational mindset toward the people of Kashmir. They treat people as their serfs and hence have no compunction in endorsing and justifying such abhorrent inhuman behaviour,” Mirwaiz said. Mirwaiz said that such a fascist mindset was increasingly on display in India, especially in dealing with the people of Kashmir and minorities in the name of nationalism. “The jingoistic Indian media is fanning the flames. When arrogance of power and might corrupts the distinction between right and wrong all is lost and all becomes fair in war,” he said.

Mirwaiz said that such decisions had exposed the much-flaunted democratic credentials of Indian government globally. “This reassures us about the justness and fairness of our struggle against an oppressor by standing up to his oppression and indignity for asserting our basic right to realize our will and aspirations as granted to humans being world over,” he said.