Alwaght-Indian-controlled Kashmir Monday observed complete shutdown to protest the summoning of Kashmir Traders and Manufacturers Federation President by India’s National Investigation Agency.
Call for the strike has been given by the representatives of the federation besides KTMF, Kashmir Economic Alliance and transporters, and backed by the joint resistance leadership and Kashmir Bar Association.
Shops and other business establishments and educational institutions are closed, while public transport is off the road in Srinagar and other parts of the territory.
Joint separatist leadership comprising Syed Ali Geelani, Mirwaiz Umar Farooq and Muhammad Yasin Malik also extended its support to the shutdown called against the NIA summon to a Kashmiri business leader Muhammad Yaseen Khan and others.
“New Delhi is using the National Investigation Agency as a war weapon to harass oppressed and suppressed people of the state,” the leadership said in a joint statement.
“The NIA is framing fabricated cases against pro-freedom leaders to defame the freedom movement as part of pre-planned psychological crackdown so that they (leadership and activists) surrender and stop voicing the sentiments of their nation,” the leaders said.
“The NIA has launched unfounded campaign against every section of the society and its main aim is to harass people on one pretext or the other. Since last seven decades, the state is facing suppression and oppression, unleashed by Indian forces. However, people are politically mature enough and realize the follies played by the Indian authorities,” they said.
Muslim-majority Kashmir has been divided since the partition of British colonial India into the dominion states of India and Pakistan in 1947. China also holds a small parcel of land.
The conflict in Indian-controlled Kashmir is basically a struggle for self-determination with residents of the region demanding a plebiscite while India rejects the call.
