The All Parties Hurriyet Conference led by its incarcerated chairman Mirwaiz Umar Farooq, in a statement released this Tuesday, condemned the “gruesome killing of civilians at Hyderpora.”
“The bereaved family says that the Mohammad Altaf Bhat of Hyderpora was killed after being used as a human shield. He had no affiliation with any ‘group’ as claimed by the authorities,” Hurriyat’s statement reads.
It says that his niece “Saima stated that no gunfight took place. “He was taken as a human shield three times for checking, when they couldn’t find anything, he was murdered.””
“The family since yesterday has been demanding the returns of their loved ones for burial. The Indian authorities have ceased the bodies and later without any consent of the family buried them,” says the statement.
The APHC says in the statement that another civilian reportedly is senior dental surgeon Dr Mudasir Gul of Rawalpora and that he is “being labelled as “OGW” to justify the cold-blooded murder.”
“Such is the fear of reprisal among the local media that only the state version of these killings gets reported and the truth lost to the world,” said the APHC.
The silence of the international community in the face of such human rights violations has made the lives of people in Kashmir a living hell, the statement reads further.
The APHC demanded, in the statement, that justice be delivered and “the bodies of the deceased should be immediately returned. So that they can give them a proper family burial.”
“The families, like many in Kashmir, will continue to carry the pain and the scars,” the APHC concluded.
It is pertinent to mention that the Jammu Kashmir police said that an encounter had erupted between the government forces and the militants on Monday evening, at Srinagar’s Hyderpora, and that 2 militants and “an O.G.W”, Mohd. Altaf, had been killed during the encounter.
However, Mohd. Altaf’s family protested at the Barzullah Bridge, in the middle of the night pleading innocence and demanding body of the slain. It also emerged the next morning that 4 people were killed the same day. Another slain, Mudasir Gul’s family, too, pleaded his innocence and demanded the body of the slain.