India declares Kashmiri separatist party ‘unlawful’

By Nusrat Sidiq

SRINAGAR, Jammu and Kashmir (AA) - India announced Sunday that the Kashmiri separatist party Tehreek-e-Hurriyat (TeH) has been declared an "unlawful association.”

The party has been banned for five years under the country’s anti-terror law.

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 after they quit the Islamic party Jamaat-e-Islami Jammu and Kashmir, which was banned in 2019 by the Indian government.

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 in the 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 Jammu and Kashmir.

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