Hurriyat chief Syed Ali Shah Geelani on July 14 rejected stone throwing by the Kashmiri youth as a form of resistance and exhorted people to pursue a peaceful struggle for settlement of the Kashmir issue. “Stone throwing will not help the cause of Kashmir’s fight for freedom. A peaceful resistance will,” Geelani said at the book release function of his autobiography.
“Stone throwing gives government excuse to kill our people. Our youth are booked under the Public Safety Act. We are projected as terrorists to the outside world. So we shouldn’t do anything that gives the government excuse to use its full force against us and get away with it.”
“In 2008 while entire Kashmir was on the road demanding Azadi through summer; in winter the same people came out in droves to vote. In summer it was ‘we want freedom’ and in winter it was ‘we want transformers and roads’,” Geelani said. Laying out the guideline for a new form of separatist struggle in Kashmir, Geelani urged people “to develop a good character and eradicate social evils” before they can hope to achieve their political goal in the Valley.