Masarat Alam release: Why the outrage reeks of hypocrisy
Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) patron and Jammu and Kashmir chief minister Mufti Mohammad Sayeed ordered release of separatist leader Masarat Alam Bhat as there were no cases pending against him. Already the high court has quashed five detention orders passed under Public Safety Act (PSA) against him and he has secured bail in other criminal cases filed against him.
According to his lawyers, Bhat has served detention under the PSA from 1990 to 2005. He was arrested in 2010 again and since then, he has been booked six times under the PSA and kept in detention. The sixth detention order under PSA against him was going to expire this month.
The PSA is not an ordinary law. Amnesty International in its report on detentions in Jammu and Kashmir under the PSA has termed the PSA as "lawless law." The Amnesty time and again has called for abolition of the system of administrative detentions in J&K saying it facilitates the practice of torture.
"Hundreds of people are detained under the PSA in J&K, many of them political activists and youth suspected of throwing stones at security forces. Instead of trying persons suspected of committing offences in a fair trial in a court of law, the J&K authorities continue to circumvent the rule of law by resorting to the PSA," Amnesty said in its 2010 report 2010.
The Kashmir Bar Association says more than 50,000 have been detained under PSA since 1989. The law allows a district magistrate take anyone in preventive custody without trial up to six months if he is described as a threat to the security of the state. Earlier the law would allow a district magistrate to take anyone into preventive custody up to two years without trial.
But in October 2010, the Omar Abdullah government amended the law reducing the detention of one year to three months in cases where the accused are arrested for disturbing public order. And in cases where an accused is arrested for being a threat to security of the state, the detention period was reduced from two years to six months.
Senior separatist leader Mushtaq-ul-Islam was also booked under the PSA. He was released in January this year when the state was under governor's rule, and there was no reaction over it. And no one even noticed it. However, outside Jammu and Kashmir, Masarat Alam Bhat's release is being described as a sell out and with this act Mufti Mohammad Sayeed is being projected as a pro-Pakistan chief minister by a section of the national media. People here ask whether chief minister of J&K has any authority as is being often alleged by the separatists.
The arrest and release of separatist political activists is nothing new in Kashmir. The release of Masarat Alam could have passed like any small incident and no one would have even noticed it. With the home ministry and the PMO saying that they have been kept in the dark about Alam's release, the message is that the chief minister of Jammu and Kashmir, even though elected, has to seek consent from the home ministry for every decision. That is an impression in the state, particularly in Kashmir.
In 2010 the then chief minister Omar Abdullah faced huge embarrassment when the then Union home secretary announced lifting and imposing of curfew in Kashmir.
Ostensibly Mufti has tried to create an impression that the chief minister of Jammu and Kashmir could take decisions without taking direction and advice from the MHA and things would settle down in the state peacefully. But it has not gone well with the Centre. This will only help Mufti in the long run and his party will project him as someone who stood against the "diktats of the Centre even if it meant jeopardising the survival of his government". Same people who described last year's electoral process in which 76 per cent people voted as a mandate in favour of India and Indian democracy, now say the chief minister is pro-Pakistan thus contradicting their earlier assertion about the Kashmir election. Instead they end up conveying that Pakistan has a huge constituency among the mainstream political parties and even that the elected CM is pro-Pakistan.
As Omar Abdullah through his tweets justified Alam's continuous arrest while describing him as the architect of the 2010 agitation, his party insiders say they have a lot to answer as now they would be accused of toeing BJP's line on the issue.
Incidentally, since 2010 Omar Abdullah has consistently said the Machil fake encounter in which the Army killed three youths in April 2010 were the major trigger for the protests.
That year in his address in the legislative Assembly, Abdullah called Kashmir an "outstanding issue" and urged New Delhi to initiate a dialogue with Islamabad and Srinagar to address it.
"At forums, in Agra, Lahore, Delhi, we have always referred to Kashmir as an outstanding issue and it needs to be resolved. New Delhi should initiate a dialogue process with both Islamabad, and Jammu and Kashmir. The Union home minister has rightly stated that Jammu and Kashmir has entered into accession under unique circumstances and its solution has to be unique," Abdullah had said.
He has gone on record to say that the state has been going through uncertainty and the 2010 protests were part of that. "But till I die I will have to answer to myself whether I could have stopped the killing of 110 people. My government is against the highhandedness whosoever commits it. My government would give justice to all those who suffered during these months… To give justice is my duty, and as long as I am here I will provide justice," he had said.
Abdullah is no longer in the government. And so far not a single police or security forces personnel involved in firing that led to killings of 112 youths in 2010 has been chargesheeted by the state government. But after 2010, FIRs were registered in different police stations against 5,000 youths on charges of stone pelting and some were even booked for waging war against the state.
If Masarat Alam Bhat's release could evoke so much anger outside Kashmir, why is there silence that no one has been brought to justice for killing 112 youth in summer of 2010? Why is there silence over draconian laws like PSA. These are some of the questions which people in the streets of Srinagar are asking.