‘Tunnel can’t resolve conflict’
Kashmir’s chief Muslim cleric Mirwaiz Umar Farooq said no development works can appease the ‘freedom-loving’ people of Kashmir Ex-CM Farooq Abdullah said the tunnel is not an alternative to political initiative but an indication of a sustained effort to
Srinagar: Kashmiri separatists Sunday said that construction of ChenaniNashri tunnel and other such projects will not stop the people of the state from asking for their “inalienable” right to self-determination. Separatist leader Syed Ali Shah Geelani said Kashmir was a “serious and sensitive issue” which required “extraordinary and exemplary courage” from the Indian leadership to resolve it.
Kashmiri separatists on Sunday said that construction of Chenani-Nashri tunnel along the JammuSrinagar highway and other such ventures will not stop the people of the state from asking for their “inalienable” right to selfdetermination.
“I have said it before and I reiterate it today that even if India macadamises the roads across the state instead of coal tar with layers of pure gold and diamonds, the people of Kashmir are not going to give up their inalienable right of self-determination,” said Syed Ali Shah Geelani.
He asserted that Kashmir is a “serious and sensitive issue”, which required “extraordinary and exemplary courage” from the Indian leadership to resolve it once for all. Endorsing him, Kashmir’s chief Muslim cleric Mirwaiz Umar Farooq, who along with Mr Geelani and JKLF’s Muhammad Yasin Malik form part of an alliance called ‘Joint Resistance Leadership’, said no development works, howsoever important or costly may be, can appease the “freedom-loving” people of Kashmir. “Kashmir is a political issue and not a problem related to governance, economic packages, incentives or law and order. It is about the future of 15 million people of the state,” he said.
Mr Malik, in a statement from Srinagar Central Jail, said if tunnels and roads would have been a substitute to freedom and dignity, then British should have never left India as they developed Indian infrastructure enormously. Reacting to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s statement that the youth of the Valley have to choose between ‘tourism and terrorism’ and that their preference would determine their future, the separatist leader said it is “absurd” to call youth as “misguided.”
He said, “Our reply to Modiji is the same that was given by Gandhiji to a British envoy who had posed same type of question to him that how can poor Indian survive independently...(Gandhiji had retorted) that he would prefer a non-competent poor independent rule over a competent and wealthy slavery.”
Former chief minister Farooq Abdullah too said the tunnel was not an alternative to political initiative. “The Chenani-Nashri tunnel is being portrayed as an alternative to a political initiative. It is yet another indication of a sustained effort to brush the political issue in Kashmir under the carpet,” he said.