Mushaal seeks Guterres’ intervention to save Yasin Malik’s life

ISLAMABAD: Peace and Culture Organisation Chairperson Mushaal Hussein Mullick has written a letter to United Nations Secretary General António Guterres, requesting his immediate intervention to save JKLF Chairman and her husband Yasin Malik’s life from Indian judicial murder, a news release said.

“I am Mushaal Hussein Mullick, the distraught wife of an unlawfully incarcerated husband and mother of an 11-year-old girl who has been denied a father’s hug for almost 9 years. I am writing to you at a time when words fall me, yet with great hope in the office you hold and the principles you represent,” she said.

“Help me articulate the right sentences to explain to an 11-year-old that her father is on death row for demanding what the UN has mandated as our right, or should I just tell her justice is dead?

“My husband Yasin Malik, 57, is the face of Kashmir’s non-violent political struggle, which stems from a resolution of the very organisation you head today,” she maintained.

Mushaal stated that Yasin Malik has given away his youth, his family, and his health in the belief that the people of Kashmir deserve, as the most basic of human rights, the right to self-determination: “all so with the most non-belligerent, orthodox political ethos for that he currently rots in a death cell of the notorious Tihar Jail in India since 7 May 2019 with no rights of a fair trial”.

She said that Yasin has spent 25 such years in multiple Indian jails. “Are we waiting for him to die and crown him Kashmir’s Mandela? I am practically a widow, but does the English language have a word to describe a child whose father she has not met in almost a decade? I am no legal expert and nor do I have the luxury of time to engage one, but it should not take a law degree for me to appeal to your sense of basic human dignity,” she added.

“Let me bring to your notice Yasin Malik’s plight. He was last arrested from our residence in Srinagar on 22 Feb 2019 under the Public Safety Act (PSA), A law, whose business end is borne by out of line, rights demanding Kashmiris; a law which many an expert has labelled as a draconian and oppressive legal instrument. Since then, he is in perpetual mental and physical torture, solitary confinement in a death cell with an open toilet. He is frail in health with multiple ailments.

“Our daughter and I have been deprived of meeting Yasin Malik in a safe environment for the past 8 and a half years because each time we visit Srinagar and Delhi we are harassed, attacked, assaulted by radical goons of RSS, abused and humiliated by the Indian authorities and my husband gets jailed for indefinite periods or goes into hiding for leading processions of Kashmiris against gross human rights violations committed by Indian forces,” Musaal lamented.

She said that the Indian government has created an atmosphere of horror and panic, thus making it impossible for a wife and daughter to meet her jailed husband and father, adding that how much more is the world willing to watch him endure before they intervene?

“Let me explain more and beseech your mercy. My husband lives in extremely unsanitary conditions, unworthy of any human, with ailing kidneys and an artificial heart valve, which require specialised medical care and life-saving drugs,” she requested.

“Does it make sense to you that the Indian government will give him all that while not allowing his 11-year-old to meet him without the risk of being mistreated by the Indian authorities? Or are we all just waiting for him to meet his end and call it a medical-related death,” she asked.

She stated that with Indian general elections on the horizon, “I sense imminent danger to my husband’s life because, since his arrest, Modi’s BJP government had tasked NIA to engineer politically motivated cases of terror funding against Yasin to link his peaceful political struggle with terrorism”.

Mushaal revealed that on 25 May 2022, he was given two life imprisonments without following the due course of law and in the most opaque manner, adding that not finding two life terms enough to satisfy their egos and political agenda, the BJP government on 26 May 2023, moved NIA’s plea in the Delhi High Court to seek capital punishment for Yasin to garner public support in the upcoming ballot.

“My husband has repeatedly protested against these unfair and biased proceedings, he has never pleaded guilty but has not been allowed to prudently present his case; a denial of his fundamental human right, but that’s just one in the long list of rights trampled under a fascist regime,” she added.

She stated that Yasin has been denied a physical appearance in the courts throughout the trial without plausible reason and has been unable to hear the majority of the arguments made by prosecuting team over a video link, resultantly he has not been able to respond effectively to the allegations against him, a travesty of justice.

“In Yasin’s case, the government of India is in blatant violation of the Geneva Conventions, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment and Punishment, as well as customary international law codified in Standard Minimum Rules for Treatment of Prisoners adopted by the United Nations General Assembly and Security Council,” she said.

“I am clueless as to what influence the Indian government holds over the world to stay quiet at this,” she asked.

“My husband, I know, will never have let me write this mercy petition for his life. He would have told me to write for the rights of Kashmiris. But Excellency, I am a mother and the wife of a political prisoner. I can’t but appeal to you to intervene for the release of my husband, the most popular Kashmiri leader, on medical/humanitarian grounds and his immediate transfer to a life care facility which he badly needs,” she appealed.