Pakistan terms extrajudicial killing of Kashmiri leader condemnable

ISLAMABAD: As the Valley heated up again this month with security forces in Indian Held Kashmir (IHK) taking out over a dozen Kashmiri protesters and injuring others, Pakistan says that the extrajudicial killing of the young Kashmiri leader Burhan Wani was not only ‘deplorable’ but also ‘condemnable’.

“Such acts are a violation of fundamental human rights of Kashmiris and cannot deter the people of Jammu and Kashmir from their demand for the realisation of the right to self-determination,” stated the spokesman at the Foreign Office when there appears to be no realisation that this new wave of militancy against New Delhi is more dangerous than movements in the past.

The killing of Burhan Wani, who was a Hizbul Mujahideen militant commander, will now unleash another wave of militancy in the Valley where the danger of global terrorist groups feeding off the Hizbul Mujahideen cannot be ruled out.

As one Indian commentator noted, “It was indeed a strange coincidence that just when Prime Minister Narendra Modi undertook a train journey in South Africa on Friday, from Pentrich to Pietermaritzburg, to relive Mahatma Gandhi’s transformative moment in life, a wave of violence swept across Kashmir Valley following the killing of militant commander Burhan Wani and two of his associates.”

Indian security forces are facing a difficult time as despite imposing a curfew, the protesters continue to come out in large numbers.Already, the Indian media is reporting on a daily basis the detention of young Indian men who had either joined Daesh or were in the process of traveling to Syria to join this global terrorist network.

“Pakistan also has serious concerns over the detention of Kashmiri leadership in the IHK and calls upon the Indian government to fulfil its human rights obligations as well as its commitments under the United Nations Security Council resolutions,” the spokesman said in a statement.

“For, in life, Burhan had become the poster boy of new-age militancy, in which educated young men from the Valley took up arms for the first time after the 1990 uprising and trained themselves locally to wage a battle against what they saw as an occupation,” wrote Kashmir journalist Muzamil Jaleel in The Indian Express.

Pakistan reiterated that the resolution of the Jammu and Kashmir dispute is only possible by the realisation of the right to self-determination of the people of Jammu and Kashmir, as per the UNSC resolutions, through a fair and impartial plebiscite under the UN auspices.

Jaleel quoted a senior police officer who remarked, “There is a lot of anger among youth. There is a lot of anxiety, as well. A lot will depend on what will happen at the time of his funeral in Tral. If there are more deaths, it may well be the beginning of another cycle of protests. What Burhan started won’t end with his death, it may get a fresh life with his death.’’