Mirwaiz ‘under house arrest’ for 2nd consecutive Friday

Hurriyat Conference chairman and chief cleric of Jamia Masjid, Mirwaiz Umar Farooq, said on Friday he was placed under house arrest for the second consecutive Friday and wasn’t allowed to deliver Friday sermon at the historic Jamia mosque.

Mirwaiz wrote on X that he remained “under house detention — with every lane and bylane to my residence barricaded, causing inconvenience to the entire neighbourhood.”

“Let me make it clear to the rulers…the memory of our martyrs cannot be regulated by them. It resides in our hearts,” he said.

Mirwaiz said, “Facts and history cannot be erased by lockdowns and barring people from visiting the martyrs graveyards or stopping me from going to Jama Masjid on Fridays , not by appeasing narratives or shameful communal distortions if it resides in the collective memory of people, which it does.”

“The martyrs of July 13, 1931 were the frontrunners of the political movement in Kashmir — a people’s just struggle against oppression. They are and will remain our inspiration,” he said.

Last week, on the July 13 Martyrs’ Day, Jammu and Kashmir Police had prevented Kashmiri leaders, including ministers, from visiting the martyrs’ graveyard in Srinagar by arresting them.

A day later (on Monday), the Chief Minister had said he was “pushed, shoved and grappled” by the “protectors of the law” and had to scale the graveyard wall to pay tributes to the 22 civilians killed by the Dogra army on July 13, 1931. Omar and other NC leaders paid tributes on Monday to the 22 civilians killed on July 13, 1931.

Martyrs’ Day commemorates the killing of 22 civilians by the Dogra forces on July 13, 1931, during a protest against autocratic rule.

The day has traditionally been marked by visits and tributes at the Nowhatta graveyard and was once a state-sanctioned function. After 2019, the tradition was stopped by the L-G administration.

J & K