Kashmir Center Lahore held a protest outside the Press Club on the martyrdom anniversary of renowned Kashmiri pro-freedom leader Muhammad Afzal Guru. Muhammad Afzal Guru was hanged in New Delhi’s Tihar Jail on February 9, 2013, in what legal experts and human rights defenders have consistently termed a judicial killing, carried out to appease India’s majoritarian political sentiment.

His remains were buried inside the jail premises and never returned to his family for a proper burial. Speakers at the protest condemned India for the illegal execution of Afzal Guru, calling it a grave violation of human rights. They noted that even the Indian Supreme Court had acknowledged the absence of substantial evidence against him. By executing him despite this, they said, the Indian judiciary demonstrated that the Constitution, law, moral values, and human rights hold little significance in India. 

Afzal Guru was remembered as a shining star of the Kashmir freedom movement, who sacrificed his life for the liberation of his homeland. Speakers expressed outrage that the Supreme Court admitted the lack of evidence yet still imposed the death penalty, questioning the very nature of justice and law in India. They further said that Afzal Guru, by embracing martyrdom on the gallows, showed the world that Kashmiris are ready to make the ultimate sacrifice for freedom from Indian occupation.

They demanded that the mortal remains of martyrs Afzal Guru and Muhammad Maqbool Butt be exhumed from the Tihar Jail cemetery in Delhi and returned to the Kashmiri people for proper burial in their homeland. Senior leaders who addressed the protest included Ghulam Abbas Mir of the Pakistan People’s Party, Inam-ul-Hassan Kashmiri.

In-charge Kashmir Centre, former MPA Farzana Butt, senior PML-N leader Begum Safia Ishaq, prominent religious scholar Allama Ashiq Syed Hussain, General Secretary Kashmir Action committee Farooq Azad, Captain Mushtaq, Professor Asma Hassan Sheikh, Kashmiri leader Nazia Butt, Leader Muhaz-e-Rae Shumari Aftab Nazki, prominent religious scholar Allama Mushtaq Qadri, renowned intellectual Nazar Bhinder, Sheikh Amjad Iqbal, Mahmood  Trazee, and others. 

Credit: Independent News Pakistan (INP)