India declares Kashmiri pro-freedom party ‘unlawful’

SRINAGAR, Jammu and Kashmir (AA) – The Kashmiri pro-freedom party Tehreek-e-Hurriyat (TeH) has been declared an “unlawful association” by India.

The party has been banned for five years under India’ anti-terror law.

Indian Interior Minister Amit Shah said the outfit is involved in “forbidden activities” aimed at separating Jammu and Kashmir from India and the establishment of “Islamic rule.”

“The group was found (to be) spreading anti-India propaganda and continuing terror activities to fuel secessionism in the region,” Shah said on X.

It has also been accused of propagating a “false narrative” and “anti-national sentiments among the people of Jammu and Kashmir with the intention to cause disaffection against India and disrupt public order.”

Tehreek-e-Hurriyat Jammu Wa Kashmir, or Movement for Freedom Jammu and Kashmir, was founded in 2004 by the late pro-freedom leaders Syed Ali Geelani and Mohammad Ashraf Sehrai.

Sehrai died in May 2021 while in police custody and Geelani died under house arrest in September 2021.

Tehreek-e-Hurriyat has become the fifth pro-freedom party to be banned by India in the occupied region.

Last week, New Delhi banned a faction of Muslim League Jammu Kashmir led by incarcerated pro-freedom leader Masarat Alam Bhat on similar “charges.”

Earlier, it banned the Democratic Freedom Party of jailed pro-freedom leader Shabir Shah.

Tehreek-e-Hurriyat, Muslim League Jammu Kashmir and the Democratic Freedom Party are part of the All Parties Hurriyat Conference — an alliance of more than two dozen pro-freedom groups operating in Indian occupied Jammu and Kashmir.

In 2019, New Delhi banned the region’s largest socio-politico-economic party, the Jamaat-i-Islami, as well as the Jammu Kashmir Liberation Front, which was led by Muhammad Yasin Malik, who is imprisoned in Tihar Jail.

Muslim majority Kashmir is held under occupation by India, which has denied to it the right to self-determination enshrined by the UN Charter.