Observe Jan 26 as ‘black day’: Hurriyat

Tribune News Service

Srinagar, January 22

Three key separatist leaders in the Kashmir valley on Tuesday urged the people to register a protest and observe January 26 as “black day”.

The appeal was made by Syed Ali Geelani, Mirwaiz Umar Farooq and Yasin Malik under the banner of the joint resistance leadership.

They urged the people to register a “strong protest against the Government of India’s policy of non-resolution of the Kashmir dispute and the subsequent severe repression unleashed on people”.

“For the past 71 years, people of J&K are demanding the right to self-determination that the Indian leadership promised them not only in the United Nations or the Parliament, but was reiterated at Lal Chowk in Srinagar by none other than the then Prime Minister of India, Pandit Jawahar Lal Nehru,” the leaders added.

“Till this day, not only the commitment has been unfulfilled but those that remind them of it are rewarded with bullets and pellets and are incarcerated and gagged,” they added.

Meanwhile, the separatist leaders paid tributes to the six militants killed in two separate gunfights since Monday in central Kashmir’s Budgam and south Kashmir’s Shopian districts.