Gawkadal massacre: JKNF calls for shutdown on 21 January

Urges world community to hold India accountable for its crimes

Srinagar: Jammu Kashmir National Front has appealed to the Kashmiri masses to observe a complete strike on 21 January to pay homage to martyrs of Gawkadal who on this day in 1990 were mercilessly gunned down by the Indian occupation forces.

The JKNF spokesman, Shafiq-ur-Rehman in a statement issued here on Tuesday termed it as one of the most brutal massacres in Kashmir’s recent history. He said that on this fateful day at least fifty persons were killed on the spot when Indian occupation forces opened indiscriminate fire on a peaceful procession at Basant Bagh, Srinagar. He regrettably noted that since the onset of the ongoing resistance movement in 1989, a number of incidents of mass-killings have been reported in which hundreds of innocent and unarmed people including men, women and children fell to the bullets of the Indian military and paramilitary forces.

He said that despite the passage of over three decades the victims of the Gawkadal massacre were still wandering from pillar to post in search of justice. “Investigation reports submitted to the government had established the Indian army’s direct involvement in these horrendous incidents of the violence but no action whatsoever was taken against the perpetrators”, the spokesman said adding that it was high time that the international community should play its much-needed role to hold Indian government accountable for the crimes its troops have committed against Kashmiris.