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to hear Maqbool Butt MESSAGE
"My only crime is that I have rebelled against, slavery, oppression, poverty, ignorance and exploitation of my people".
Mohammed Maqbool Butt has been called Baba-e-Quam, father of the movement and Shaheed-e-Kashmir. He was the first Kashmiri to be judicially murdered on Indian soil, making him the first authentic martyr of the Kashmiri independence movement. Friends knew him as a true nationalist with a passion for Azadi. The enemies of Kashmiri freedom movement dubbed him as an 'enemy agent'.
Born in Trehgam (Kapwarha), buried in Tihar jail (Delhi), he was wrongfully imprisoned in Pakistan and unlawfully hanged in India exactly one week before his 46th birthday, on 11th February 1984.
He lived and died for his nation. Today, millions of Kashmiris on both sides of the forcibly divided land aim to follow his footsteps in their quest for national freedom.
"For us, Azadi (independence) means not just getting rid of foreign occupation of our beloved motherland but also to remove hunger, poverty, ignorance and disease and to overcome economic and social deprivation. One day, we shall achieve that Azadi "
Last year, the Interior Ministry of government of Pakistan banned the circulation of a book, Shahoor-e-Farda, published by the National Institute of Kashmir Studies in Mirpur. It is a compilation of 39
personal letters Maqbool Butt wrote to his friends and acquaintances during his long years of captivity in Indian and Pakistani prisons before he was hanged by India in 1984. These letters give a rare insight into his vision for tomorrow. Despite the ban the first edition was sold out within months and a reprint is underway.
17 YEARS AFTER HIS DEATH THE ENEMIES OF KASHMIRI INDEPENDENCE ARE BUSY TRYING TO SUPPRESS HIS MESSAGE FOR TO HIS NATION, WHICH WAS FOR THE RE-UNIFICATION AND INDEPENDENCE.
The colour portrait was painted by a Kashmiri,Mohammed Sofi of Sialkot and the background portrait was designed by another Kashmiri, Mehammood Butt, a cartoonist working for
Pakistan Times, Lahore.
