Srinagar, Jan 28: Hurriyat Conference (G) chairman Syed Ali Geelani has strongly condemned the alleged ill treatment meted out to Kashmiri prisoners outside jails especially Tihar Jail and appealed the ICRC’s South Asian chief and world forums of human rights to use good offices to end the long and continued custody of these political prisoners.
Despite being political prisoners they are kept in a very humiliating condition and kept with criminals and other social convicts, Geelani said in a statement issued to KPS.
Referring to the recent report from Tihar jail, the pro-freedom leader said that from the last week of December 2018, all the Kashmiri and Pakistani prisoners were shifted to jail no. 8/9 and kept in a two storey building of ward no. 12, which is devoid of any ventilation or sunlight, making the poor inmates to shiver in this chilling cold of winter.
Although the prisoners repeatedly requested the jail authorities to allow them to go out in the lawn in front of the bark, but instead of allowing them to do so, they imposed more restrictions, he said.
Hurriyat (G) chairman said that authorities intended to bring in more convicts, which will further make the prisoners’ life miserable. “The list of relatives to meet them is also shortened, which deprives them to meet their relatives. The food and drinking water supplied is also unhygienic and below standard, by which many prisoners are suffering from various health issues and sick inmates are left to battle for their life as no proper medical care is provided to them,” he said.
Geelani further said that doctors and other health officials posted in the jail come for their duties and show their faces even after months. Even some lab investigations are performed on court orders but their reports are withheld for unknown reasons and poor prisoners don’t even know what these reports are, he said.
The pro-freedom leader said that these “inhuman actions” by the authorities are deliberate attempts to physically and psychologically harm these “helpless” people.
“This biased and revengeful attitude of the fascist authorities is just to satisfy the collective conscience of their vote bank even at the cost of such humanitarian tragedy,” he said.
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