Post teen killing, separatists share dais

Azhar Qadri

Tribune News Service

Srinagar, April 20

The divided house of separatists came together on stage for the first time in seven years at a rally on Monday in central Kashmir’s Budgam district to protest the recent killing of a teenaged student.
Chief of the hardline faction of the Hurriyat Conference Syed Ali Geelani, moderate Hurriyat chief Mirwaiz Umar Farooq and Jammu Kashmir Liberation Front chairman Yasin Malik jointly addressed a crowd of mourners in Budgam’s Narbal locality, where a teenager Suhail Ahmad Sofi was killed in police firing last week.
It is not clear whether the sharing of stage by the region’s frontline separatist leaders, who rarely see eye to eye with each other, was premeditated or a coincidence. A separatist leader, who was present at Narbal, said it was “completely a coincidence” that all reached the spot at almost the same time.
The statements issued by Mirwaiz and Yasin mentioned the presence of all three separatist leaders in an unusually reconciliatory tone.
The trio had last time shared the stage at the Eidgah ground in the city here when thousands had assembled in the summer of 2008 during an agitation over the Amarnath land transfer controversy. Since then, the separatists have fractured away from each other and also got involved in several bouts of infighting.
The coming together of the separatist leaders has taken place at a time when the new state government led by Chief Minister Mufti Mohammad Sayeed has reversed the policy of the previous government, which had regularly barred separatist rallies and frequently detained separatist leaders.
Geelani, who spent most of past four years under detention at his residence, was allowed to go to Narbal after the police deployment, which had restricted him to his home here for the past three days, was removed.
The three leaders were accompanied by mid-rung members of their separatist amalgams and parties during the demonstration to protest the teenager’s killing. The state government had reacted swiftly in the case by arresting two policemen involved in the shooting.
Geelani broke away from the main separatist amalgam Hurriyat Conference in 2003 when he accused one of its constituents of fielding proxy candidates in the election. He later formed his own separatist block, reusing the name Hurriyat Conference, while Mirwaiz went on to head the other Hurriyat Conference which adopted a moderate policy and engaged in several rounds of talks with the union governments.