No Eid prayers, no sacrifice of animals in IOK

Srinagar, August 12, 2019 (PPI-OT): In occupied Kashmir, people could not offer Eid prayers and slaughter sacrificial animals on Eid-ul-Azha, one of the biggest Muslim festivals, due to continued curfew and communication blackout on the eighth straight day, today.

The entire occupied territory including Doda and Kishtwar areas of Jammu region is facing a clampdown since last Monday when India unilaterally revoked Article 370 of the Indian Constitution that granted special status to Jammu and Kashmir. Announcements were made on loudspeakers and people were warned not to come out of their houses. An Indian TV channel while reporting on Kashmir admitted that restrictions were so harsh that even a fly was not allowed to move. All the mosques and the shrines including Kashmir’s largest mosque, Jamia Masjid Srinagar, were closed. The observers said that no such restrictions were witnessed in the valley in the past in the occupied territory.

Eid prayers were allowed only in a few small mosques located in peripheral areas of the Kashmir valley. As the people finished prayers, they started anti-India protests, and the authorities immediately re-imposed curfew. The web pages of all local newspapers could not be updated since that day and the internet as well as telephone lines remained suspended. The political leadership including Syed Ali Gilani, Mirwaiz Umar Farooq, Muhammad Ashraf Sehrai and former puppet chief ministers Farooq Abdullah, Omar Abdullah and Mehbooba Mufti are in house detention or in jails. Over 900 people have been arrested during the past one week.

Meanwhile, students from occupied Kashmir enrolled at the Aligarh Muslim University boycotted a so-called feast organised by University Vice Chancellor on Eidul Azha as a mark of protest against the abrogation of the special status of Jammu and Kashmir.

A group of Kashmiri Pandits, Dogras and Sikhs through a petition filed in Indian Supreme Court condemned the abrogation of Article 370, and asked India to immediately lift the siege of the Valley. Prominent among those who signed the petition included Air Vice Marshal (retd) Kapil Kak, film actor MK Raina, cardiologist Upendra Kaul, senior journalists Sharda Ugra, Pradeep Magazine and Anuradha Bhasin. The petition was signed by 64 civil society members, journalists and politicians. CPI-M General Secretary, Sitaram Yechury, in a statement said that the people of Kashmir had been kept imprisoned in their own homes and he didn’t know the condition of his party colleagues in Kashmir.

In London, leader of UK’s opposition Labour Party, Jeremy Corbyn, in a social media message, called for resolving the Kashmir dispute through the relevant UN resolutions.

US Democratic Congressman Tom Suozzi through a letter appeared on the social media asked US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to make Kashmir a major focus of the Trump Administration. He said the action by the Indian government risks provoking mass social uprising in the territory.
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