Separatists slam Rawat’s comment on 'azadi'

Separatists on Thursday said truth triumphs and not the military might while reacting to Army chief General Bipin Rawat’s assertions that youth in Kashmir must understand that “azadi will never happen”.

“If assertions of Indian army chief regarding Azadi (freedom) contained any ingredient of reality, more than half of the world, including India, would have been still reeling under foreign occupations today,” JKLF chief Yasin Malik said in a statement.

Terming Rawat’s statement as self-contradictory and most illogical, Malik said, “The General needs to revisit basic historical facts before issuing such threats to a nation that has resolved to achieve freedom. General Rawat wants Kashmiris to surrender before Indian might without even realising that many generals before him failed to achieve this wishful goal despite using all their military might and deceitful political and diplomatic games.”

He claimed that sooner or later India has to free Jammu and Kashmir from its “occupation as it is the truth that prevails at the end, not the military might which the general is boasting about.”

Chairman of the moderate faction of Hurriyat Conference Mirwaiz Umar reacting to the Army chief’s statement said, “The British forces like the Indian forces of today had all the means and methods to keep India occupied. But yet they had to abdicate because the will and desire of people to be free to choose their destiny and be masters of their fate is far stronger than every military power.

“Indian army chief acknowledges that killing one resistance youth with arms will make 10 others pick up guns.”

In an interview with a New Delhi-based national daily, General Rawat had said that he was concerned that the youth in the strife-torn state are picking up guns and “those who tell them (that) this path will bring azadi … misleading them”.

“These numbers (of militants who are killed in gunbattles with the army) don’t matter to me because I know this cycle will continue. There are fresh recruitments happening. I only want to stress that all this is futile, nothing is going to be achieved by them. You can’t fight the army,” he said.