Kashmir’s chief cleric and separatist leader Mirwaiz Umar Farooq’s decision to drop the title of ‘Hurriyat chairman’ from X after an “official warning” evoked a range of reactions in the Valley. The Mirwaiz was not allowed to join the Friday congregation at Jama Masjid in the city.
In a post on X, Mr. Farooq said that for “some time now, I was being pressed by the authorities to make changes to my X (formerly Twitter) handle as Hurriyat chairman.”
“As all the constituents of Hurriyat Conference, including the Awami Action Committee that I head have been banned under the UAPA, making Hurriyat a banned organisation, failing which they will take down my handle,” Mr. Farooq quoted the officials as saying.
He said it posed a “Hobson’s choice”. “At a time when public space and avenues of communication stand severely restricted, this platform remains among the very few means available to me to reach out to my people and share my views on our issues with them, and the outside world,” Mr. Farooq, who was the first person to lead Hurriyat in 1993, said.
The All Parties Hurriyat Conference (APHC), as it was called in 1993, was an amalgam of more than 20 organisations in the 1990s, comprising separatist political groups, traders’ bodies and civil society groups. The APHC termed Kashmir as a “disputed territory” and demanded implementation of United Nations resolutions on Kashmir.
