LAHORE, August 1 (NIA): The Jama’at ud Dawa (JuD) chief, Hafiz Saeed, has warned of a countrywide protest in Pakistan if the Indian Minister Rajnath Singh attends the SAARC ministerial conference to be held in Islamabad on August 3, Press Trust of India reports.
“I want to ask the Pakistani government: Will it not add insult to the injury inflicted on Kashmiris by welcoming Rajnath who is responsible for the killing of innocent Kashmiris?,” Sayeed said in a statement issued in Lahore on Monday.
“It will be ironical. On the one hand the whole Pakistani nation is protesting against Indian atrocities in Kashmir and on the other hand Pakistani rulers will be garlanding Singh,” Sayeed said.
Believed to be the mastermind behind the 2008 attack on Mumbai, Sayeed said: “If Singh comes to Islamabad, the JuD will hold countrywide protests to tell the world that the Pakistani rulers might have compulsions to receive the Kashmiris’ killers but the people of Pakistan are siding with oppressed Kashmiris.”
Protest demonstrations will be held and rallies taken out in Islamabad, Lahore, Karachi, Peshawar, Quetta, Multan, Faisalabad, Muzaffarabad and other cities of the country, he announced.
Saeed, who is carrying a USD 10 million US bounty on his head, warned the government that Singh’s presence in Islamabad may create “unrest” among Kashmiris as well as Pakistanis in the face of deaths of Kashmiris “at the hands of Indian forces”.
The people of Kashmir had refused to meet Singh during his Srinagar visit, he pointed out and added that the Pakistan Muslim League League-Nawaz (PML-N) government “must also refuse to receive the BJP leader giving the excuse that it may hurt and incite the feelings of Kashmiris and Pakistanis.”
Break With India Demands Sayed Salahuddin
Meanwhile, the Hizbul Mujahideen Supreme Ccommander, Syed Salahuddin, asked Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif to immediately recall Pakistan’s Ambassador from New Delhi and “suspend trade and diplomatic ties” with India in the wake of the unrest in the Kashmir Valley over the killing of Hizbul’s Kashmir leader, Burhan Wani, that has left more than 50 dead.
The Pakistani government should not have invited Singh to the SAARC conference, Salahuddin said.
“Pakistan’s rulers should give up hypocrisy and the Pakistan government should either plead the case of Kashmiris or make friends with India,” Salahuddin said addressing the ‘Azadi Kashmir March’ on Sunday.
Kashmir has been under curfew for the past 23 days and the Valley has turned into a “volcano for India that could erupt any time.” The Hizbul leader said.
