Srinagar, Apr 21 (KNS): The British Kashmiri Diaspora has vioced its serious concern over the notice of the Enforcement Directorate (ED) to Shabir Shah’s daughter Sama Shabir Shah in an alleged funding case.
According to a statement mailed to KNS, the prominent members of the British Kashmiri Diaspora on last Saturday converged in the city of London from the length and breadth of the country. Amongst those present included political leaders, socialist activists and lawyers who shared and expressed serious concerns about the issuance of summons by the Enforcement Directorate against Sama Shabir Shah, daughter of senior Kashmiri leader Shabir Ahmad Shah (President-JK Democratic Freedom Party).
As per the statement issued to KNS, those in attendance included, inter-alia, Dr Misfar Hassan (President JK Liberation League), Abbas Butt (Chairman Kashmir National Party), Shamma Nazir (Chairperson British Kashmiri Women’s Forum), Mehmood Kashmiri (Chairman JK National Independence Alliance), Tahir Bostan (President JK People’s National Party), Adv Zakir Kayani (JK Muslim League Noon), Amjad Yousaf (President United Kashmir People’s National Party), Barrister A Mughal (Sec General JKLL), Dr Sarfaraz, Adv Ansar Mahmood (Snr Leader Muslim League N and President Lawyer’s Forum UK), Solicitor Mohammad Saleem Butt, S Qazi Adv, Manzoor Shah Adv, Naseer Shah (Solicitor), Burhan Malik (T.Sol), Shams Rehman (historian writer and TV anchor), Sajid Janjua spokesman Kashmir Writer’s Forum, Ulfat Zargar, Dr G. N Falahi (Author), Professor Shahid Iqbal (Kashmir Human Rights Organisation President), Ershad Malik Adv (London based Kashmiri solicitor), Sadiq Subhani (Advocate), Labour Counsellor M Hussein (Chairman Kashmir Freedom Movement) and Dr Saboor Javed.
Sama Shah, who, in the face of abject adversity, outperformed her peers and scored highest marks in the central Year 12 examination in May last year, is directed by the Enforcement Directorate to appear before the courts in New Delhi for her alleged association with the property belonging to her father, Shah as he remains incarcerated at the notorious Tihar Jail in New Delhi, at the time of writing.
Dr Misfar expressed stern disapproval of the Directorate’s decision as 'yet another arrow from the loaded quiver of tactics designed, specifically to intimidate and harass the family of one of the most senior and revered leaders of the people of Kashmir’. In his opinion, it was a concerning state of affairs that the establishment is now seeking to pursue the children of Shah punitively in an attempt to ‘further his suffering’ and that this should not be allowed to continue.
Abbas Butt highlighted that the Directorate’s decision is an unequivocal and relentless abuse by and of the State’s might against one hapless individual and his family, in particular a vulnerable teenager who cannot ‘by any reasonable person or body deemed to have any involvement in the political affairs of her father’
Shamma Nazir shared her concerns about the demeanor and attitude of the Indian establishment towards the people of the Valley.Click Here To Follow Our WhatsApp Channel‘This inhuman approach of New Delhi towards Sama Shabir Shah and by extension, her father Shabir Shah is proof that India is only concerned about the land not its people,’ said Ms Nazir whilst addressing the attendants.
Advocate Ansar Mahmood also raised concerns about the relentless and whimsical ‘harassment and ridicule’ to which senior Kashmiri leaders, including Shabir Shah, Yaseen Malik and Nayeem Khan to name a few, are subject with little to no checks or intervention from the human rights organisations purporting to operate through-out the sub-continent. He added that it is an affront to natural justice that Shah is allowed to languish and suffer indefinitely without any respite.
Others in attendance, particularly those of legal profession were also unanimous in their condemnation of the Directorate’s decision to summon Miss Shah and expressed grave concerns that New Delhi was holding Miss Shah answerable for the political alignment and affairs of her father. Burhan Malik called upon for a legal challenge to the validity and legitimacy of the summons against Miss Shah and declared it akin to the antiquated concept of ‘collective punishment’ or ‘sippenhaft - liability for a kin.’ He added that ‘no judiciary, worth its name, ought to allow an arm of the State to operate with impunity and without checks, in oppressing the basic human rights of its own subjects’.
Shabir Shah has spent more than half of his life across the several jails in India, for which he was dubbed ‘Prisoner of Conscience’ by Amnesty International – the first Kashmiri to have earned this title. He is also rightly called ‘Nelson Mandela of Kashmir’ due to his prolonged and unjustified imprisonment on account of his political beliefs, a basic human right which we in the West take for granted. He remains in prison today on account of a baseless and frivolous case in which he was actually exonerated 5 years ago. Mr Shabir Shah is also the only Kashmiri leader, to date, to have met an American President namely, Late George Walker Bush Snr.
At the conclusion of the proceedings, the host Ershad Malik Adv. thanked the attendants and proposed to circulate a communiqué amongst Amnesty International, All Parties Parliamentary Group on Kashmir, Commonwealth and Foreign Office and to the senior members of the British House of Commons including the leader of the opposition, Jeremy Corbyn and Shadow Foreign Secretary, Ms Emily Thornberry. The attending members, in agreeing with the proposition, also expressed interest in sending the communiqué to their respective MP’s. (KNS)