If you kill one militant, 10 more ready to pick up gun: Mirwaiz

Cautioning New Delhi that Kashmir problem can't be resolved by killing the militants, moderate Hurriyat Conference chairman Mirwaiz Umar Farooq Friday said that if the Indian Army kills one ultra, 10 more are ready to pick up the gun.

"Each day young educated boys are being killed and there is a belief in New Delhi that once all of them are killed the problem will be over. But they forget that these boys took to arms as a reaction to repression and for the resolution of Kashmir dispute," Mirwaiz said while addressing a Friday congregration at historic Jamia Masjid here after his release from 57-day house detention. 

While justfying the militancy, he said, "You may kill one militant, ten more will stand up. So killing them will not kill the sentiment as is evident in their funeral processions. For the past 70 years people of Kashmir are born, raised, live and die with the fact that Kashmir is a disputed place waiting a final resolution."

The moderate separatists, whose father was assassinated by the militants on 21 May 1990, alleged that south Kashmir has been turned into a "killing zone as the youth are being killed in a phased



manner."

"Aggression and repression can never resolve anything but only aggravate it," he said. "The agitation and protests by students in colleges and universities across the valley that force the state to frequently shut them down, again indicates how the youth of Kashmir sees the situation and his reaction to it."

He also lashed out at National Investigation Agency (NIA), probing terror funding to Kashmiri separatists. "Persecution of leadership through so called investigations and spreading lies and creating a huge propaganda through print, electronic and even social media against them, involving their families, friends and acquaintances, and harassing them in order to defame and intimidate leadership and demoralize people will also prove futile as people of Kashmir know such ploys and do not buy them. It will only worsen and complicate matters further," the Mirwaiz said.

He appealed to all people in India to see Kashmir as a territorial dispute between two hostile neighbors "but as a human issue concerning hundreds of thousands of people and divided families hanging fire since the last 70 years, leading to great sufferings and loss of life on all sides that begs for a just resolution."