‘Pressed by authorities to make changes to my X handle’: Mirwaiz Umar Farooq on removing Hurriyat title

Srinagar: Senior religious leader and chief priest of Kashmir, Mirwaiz Umar Farooq, said on Friday that he was pressured by authorities to drop the title of ‘Hurriyat Chairman’ from his profile on X and the “circumstances gave him a Hobson’s choice”.

Mirwaiz Umar said on X, “For some time now, I was being pressed by the authorities to make changes to my X (formerly Twitter) handle as Hurriyat chairman, as all constituents of Hurriyat Conference, including the Awami Action Committee that I head have been banned under the UAPA, making Hurriyat a banned organisation, failing which they will take down my handle.”

“At a time when public space and avenues of communication stand severely restricted, this platform remains among the very few means available to me to reach out to my people and share my views on our issues with them, and the outside world. Under such circumstances, it is a Hobson’s choice I was left to make,” Mirwaiz Umar Farooq said.

The Mirwaiz was the first chairman of the separatist conglomerate, the All Parties Hurriyat Conference (APHC), formed in 1993. The conglomerate comprised separatist political groups, traders’ bodies and civil society groups. The APHC termed Kashmir a “dispute” and demanded the “implementation of United Nations resolutions on Kashmir”.

After 2019, when Article 370 was abrogated, APHC was declared a banned group and all its constituents were brought under the scanner of the intelligence agencies to dig out their background and financial support, which were found to have their origin in Pakistan and through intermediaries of ISI outside Pakistan.

Since 2019, the APHC has been defunct, and all its constituents have one by one distanced themselves from the separatist politics propagated by the conglomerate.

Earlier, all the separatist programmes, including shutdowns and protests, were announced by the terrorist groups using the APHC as their platform.

After Jammu and Kashmir came under direct Central rule in 2019, street protests, shutdowns and separatist marches called by the APHC have become a thing of the past.

Educational institutions, businesses, tourism and other activities of life are going on normally in Kashmir without any interference in business or academic exercises by the separatists.

The Awami Action Committee (AAC), formed by late Mirwaiz Maulana Mohammad Farooq, the father of Mirwaiz Umar, in 1963 during the Holy Relic agitation, was also basically a separatist organisation and has since been banned.

IANS