Films like The Kashmir Files do not create atmosphere for return of KPs to Kashmir: Omar
BUNTY MAHAJAN
JAMMU, MAY 19: National Conference vice president Omar Abdullah on Thursday said that the film (The Kashmir Files) has been used to spread hatred and defame one entire community (Muslims) in Kashmir.
Without naming `The Kashmir Files’, Omar who also happens to be the former Chief Minister of the erstwhile Jammu and Kashmir State, told media persons at Kalakote in border Rajouri district said that “we want communal harmony to be restored and an atmosphere created in Kashmir that these people do not need to stay in the camps, but they return safely to their homes’’. “However, it is also true that such atmospheres are not created through such films,’’ he added.
Earlier defending NC president and sitting Lok Sabha member from Srinagar, Dr Farooq Abdullah for seeking ban on films like The Kashmir Files as these are spreading hatred, Omar asked “isn’t it true’’. “The film Farooq Sahib was talking has been used to spread hatred here and defame one entire Kashmiri community,’’ he said, adding that Farooq Abdullah did not say anything wrong about the film.
Today, the situation is such that people are afraid of telling the truth, the NC leader said, adding that some Kashmiri Pandits who came to meet him said that the film has become a stumbling block in their return to Kashmir. “I am not saying it, but this is what they told me,’’ the NC leader added.
He refused to say anything about the conviction of JKLF supremo Yaseen Malik by a Delhi court in a case of money laundering to fund terror in Jammu and Kashmir. “It is the right of the court to give its verdict after hearing parties in a case and the person against whom the verdict is announced too has a right to appeal in the next higher court. When the court has announced it verdict and thereafter what Yaseen Malik does, I donot want to say about it,’’ he added.
When asked as to when the continued incidents of targeted killings by militants will stop, Omar said that one shall ask this question to the present government. “They had told the entire country that after August 5, 2019, the situation will normalise. They had told the entire world that if there is gun and people with separatist ideology in Kashmir, it is because of Article 370,’’ he pointed out .
Now, two and a half year after the abrogation of Article 370, if people from minority community are getting killed whether at office or inside a shop and if brave policemen are getting killed inside their houses, one shall put this question to the government and ask it as to what it going to do to improve situation, he added.
