NEW DELHI: Raziyah Sultan, the daughter of illegally detained Hurriyat leader Muhammad Yasin Malik, has appealed the United Nations Secretary General, António Guterres, to avert her father possible murder in cold blood, as Delhi court would hear his capital punishment case today (Tuesday).
Raziyah Sultana along with her mother Chairperson of Peace and Culture Organization Mushaal Hussain Mullick on Monday led a rally in Muzaffarabad to record their protest against the possible murder in cold blood of the Kashmiri leader in a fake, fabricated and politically motivated case.
In a heartfelt letter submitted to representatives of the UN office in Muzaffarabad, Raziyah Sultana said: “I am writing to you at a time when words fail 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 the trauma my mother and I are going through as my father faces a death row for demanding what the UN has mandated as our right, or should I just tell myself that justice is dead?
Raziyah Sultana stated that he (Yasin Malik) currently rots in a death cell of the notorious Tihar Jail in India since 7 May 2019, who is kept in inhumane imprisonment with no rights of a fair trial for the last four year, adding that he spent 25 such years in multiple Indian jails. “Are we waiting for him to die and crown him Kashmir’s Mandela,” she asked.
“I am practically an orphan and my mother is living the life of a widow but does the English language have a word to describe a child whose father she has not met in almost a decade,” Raziyah said.
Yasin’s daughter stated that she was neither a legal expert nor did she have the luxury of time to engage one, but it should not take a law degree for her to appeal to your sense of basic human dignity.
She said that her father was in perpetual mental and physical torture, solitary confinement in a death cell with an open toilet, besides facing multiple ailments.
“My mother and I have been deprived of meeting my father Yasin Malik in a safe environment for the past eight and a half years because each time we visit Srinagar and New Delhi we are harassed, attacked, assaulted by radical goons of RSS, abused and humiliated by the Indian authorities and my father gets jailed for indefinite periods or goes into hiding for leading processions of Kashmiris against gross human rights violations committed by Indian forces,” she rued.
Razia went on to say that the Indian government created an atmosphere of horror and panic, thus making it impossible for a daughter and wife to meet her jailed father and husband.
“Let me explain more and beseech your mercy. My father lives in extremely unsanitary conditions, unworthy of any human, with failing 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 daughter to meet him without the risk of being mistreated by the Indian Authorities,” she asked. “Or are we all just waiting for him to meet his end and call it a medical related death,” she feared.
The little Raziyah stated: “Excellency, with Indian General Elections on the horizon I sense imminent danger to my father’s life.”
She revealed that her father repeatedly protested against these unfair and biased proceedings, who never pleaded guilty but did not allow 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.
“He has been denied physical appearance in the courts throughout the trial without plausible reason and has been unable to hear majority of the arguments made by the prosecuting team over video link. Consequently, he has not been able to respond effectively to the allegations against him; a travesty of justice,” she added.
“My father, 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 Kashmiri’s. But Excellency, I am the daughter of a political prisoner. I can’t but appeal to you to intervene for the release of my father, the most popular Kashmiri leader, on medical/ humanitarian grounds and his immediate transfer to a life care facility which he badly needs,” she appealed.
She asked the UN to help not only in the release of her father on medical humanitarian grounds but his immediate transfer to a life care facility. A large number of youth associated with the Democrat Hurriyat Front also participated in the rally.
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