JKLF LONDON PROTEST AGAINST APHC LEADERS' ARRESTS

Friday, November 21, 1997

LONDON

Members of the UK-Europe chapter of the pro-independence Jammu Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF) held massive pickets at the Indian High Commission in London on Friday to protest against the recent arrest of the APHC and JKLF leaders and their subsequent imprisonment since 4th November.

Kashmiri demonstrators gathered from London, Luton, Watford, Birmingham, Bradford, Accrington and Nelson , displaying banners and posters of JKLF martyrs Maqbool Butt, Ishfaq Wani and Hameed Shiekh Shaeed shouted anti-India and pro-independence slogans for 3 hours and demanded that all foreign troops should be withdrawn from the Jammu-Kashmir territory immediately. They condemned the excesses by armed forces and paid tributes to those struggling for the freedom of their motherland.

JKLF and the Human rights activists in London have taken up the issue of recent arrests and harassment with International human rights organisations such as Amnesty International and have drawn the attention of certain members of British Parliament to the plight of Kashmiri prisoners in Srinagar and in Delhi. An Indian workers association known as South Asia Solidarity Group also held a similar picket at the Indian mission on Wednesday to coincide with the Champa-the Amiya and B.G. Rao Foundation protests in Delhi against the resurgent state repression in Kashmir.

The UK-Europe secretary general, Azmat A Khan, has also written to the British foreign secretary, Robin Cook and the OIC secretary general, Mr Azzedin Laraki, drawing their attention to the reports of raids on Kashmir leaders houses in Srinagar and about the increasing violations of human rights in the country. In his letter to the British foreign secretary it was claimed that claimed that the scale of oppression had gone on the increase since the British foreign secretary's last visit to India. END