M. L. Kak
Tribune News ServiceJammu, August 30
Following sharp ideological differences between the pro-Pak and pro-azadi elements in the All-Party Hurriyat Conference (APHC), Syed Ali Shah Geelani and Sheikh Aziz Ahmed, who support Kashmir’s merger with Pakistan, have received full support from the Pakistan-controlled electronic media.
The same electronic media has ignored APHC leaders who support independence for Kashmir and among them are the JKLF chief, Mohammad Yasin Malik, and Abdul Gani Lone. As far as Malvi Abbas Ansari and Abdul Gani Bhat are concerned, they no longer get as much footage in the electronic media in Pakistan after the two did not side with Geelani and the Sheikh. Molvi Umar Farooq Mirwaiz, too, has been ignored by the print and electronic media in Pakistan after reports reached Islamabad that the Molvi had gone nearer to Malik and Lone though he has been following an independent line.
Encouraged by the support Geelani and the Sheikh received from Pakistan, the two have been engaged in organising rallies against India and against the Indian security forces and getting their activities videotaped. The tapes are telecast by Pakistan Television in its night programme on Kashmir daily.
These cassettes are further edited in Pakistan and the viewers, wherever they are, get a feeling that a majority of Kashmiris want Kashmir’s incorporation with Pakistan.
Geelani and the Sheikh have in recent weeks organised demonstrations against alleged custodial killings. And again these video cassettes are sent across the border and either on the second or third day the PTV comes up with heart-rending scenes, most of them fabricated. The cries of “jeevo, jeevo Pakistan” (long live Pakistan are feeble inside Kashmir, but are very loud on the PTV.
Recently, the Sheikh succeeded in building an anti-Idnia hysteria among the people in Pakistan. He arranged activists of his People’s League and some supporters of the separatist movement and started digging at Chitr Naar in the Bandipore area. They were digging for unearthing mass graves. Reports had been circulated that before the Army unit was shifted from Chitr Naar, the troops had carried out a series of massacres of innocent people and all of them had been buried together. The state government had probed the reports which were found to be “baseless.”
But the Sheikh and his men carried out what is called symbolic digging. No evidence of mass graves was found. The digging was videotaped and on the third day the PTV telecast the video cassette in a highly edited form which gave an impression that mass graves were found. And the sordid scene was further given a melodramatic touch with women wailing and weeping and the Sheikh’s men raising slogans against India and the Indian troops.
Lone and Malik are aware of the open support Pakistan and its various agencies are giving to Geelani and the Sheikh. At one stage Lone had patronised a move to get Geelani replaced by some other leader from the Jamaat-e-Islami to represent it in the APHC.
Now Geelani and the Sheikh are trying to mount pressure on the APHC leadership to throw out Lone. It is almost a battle of wits between the two sides and as chairman of the APHC. Bhat is trying to dilute the crisis.
He has been trying hard to keep the “flock” together and the APHC constituents, too, have no other alternative but to remain under the umbrella of the conglomerate. Bhat had intervened and persuaded the JKLF
constituent not to pull out of the APHC. So far he has succeeded.
These moderates in the APHC feel disappointed because of the “I-care-Geast” attitude adopted by Pakistan and its agencies towards them. They are of the view that the APHC Executive Committee had decided that the constituents should stick to the demand for grant of right of self-determination for the people of Kashmir and desist from making public their pro-azadi or pro-Pakistan sentiments and ideology.
These moderates have blamed the pro-Pak elements in the APHC for violating the code. They are also annoyed over the way the Pakistan High Commission has been helping the pro-Pak Geelani and the Sheikh in sending the video cassettes to Islamabad through the diplomatic mail for telecasting on the PTV. It is because of this dispute that a majority of the people in Kashmir have become indifferent to the Hurriyat politics.
