Kashmiri civil rights activist Khurram Parvez on Monday appealed to the people of Tamil Nadu to show solidarity with the people of Kashmir.
“We in Kashmir were watching the Sri Lankan Tamil struggle closely and we were outraged at the genocide of Tamil civilians in that country. People in Kashmir feel there is a lot in common between what happened in Sri Lanka and what is happening in Kashmir,” he said, explaining why he thought people in Tamil Nadu could empathise with the struggle of Kashmiris.
Mr. Parvez had previously been arrested under the Public Safety Act and was released from Kotbalwal jail in Jammu in November last year after the Jammu and Kashmir High Court declared his detention to be illegal.
Mr. Parvez said Syed Ali Shah Geelani of the Hurriyat Conference and Syed Salahudeen of the Hizb-ul-Mujahideen had all started out as members of mainstream political organisations, but had changed tack after completely losing hope in the democratic process.
Medha Patkar, spokesperson of Narmada Bachao Andolan; S.P. Udayakumar, convenor of the People’s Movement Against Nuclear Energy; Kavita Krishnan, Secretary of the All India Progressive Women’s Association; and Gautam Mody of the New Trade Union Initiative (NTUI) had travelled to Kashmir in the first week of November 2016 to study the protests there. Mr. Parvez’s address on Monday was part of the event held to release the report titled ‘Why are the People of Kashmir Protesting?’ which was prepared based on the visit.
