J&K: Mirwaiz removes Hurriyat from social media handle; cites ‘government pressure’

SRINAGAR: Mirwaiz Umar Farooq removed on Thursday his designation as Hurriyat Conference chairman from his social media handle, blaming the move on “pressure” from J&K authorities and calling it a “Hobson’s choice”.

“For some time now, I was being pressed by the authorities to make changes to my X (formerly Twitter) handle as all constituents of Hurriyat Conference, including Awami Action Committee that I head, have been banned under UAPA, making Hurriyat a banned organisation, failing which they would take down my handle,” Mirwaiz said.

He bemoaned the alleged “pressure” that had shut out a key outreach outlet for him since Thursday. “At a time when public space and avenues of communication stand severely restricted, this platform remains among the very few means available to me to reach out to my people and share my views on our issues with them and the outside world,” Mirwaiz said.

Most of Hurriyat’s 20-odd constituents have been proscribed since the Aug 2019 abrogation of Article 370 and J&K’s conversion into a Union territory.

The social media curbs came as Mirwaiz was put under house arrest, preventing J&K’s chief cleric from addressing Friday prayers at Srinagar’s historic Jamia Mosque. Since his release in Sept 2023 after being under house arrest for four years following the abrogation of Article 370, Mirwaiz has frequently faced such restrictions, with police often detaining him at home on Fridays without offering any explanation.

The social media move unleashed trolling against Mirwaiz, with many accusing him of compromising on Hurriyat’s ideology. But former CM and PDP president Mehbooba Mufti described the removal as “immaterial”, arguing that Hurriyat “is an idea and reflects alienation”. “You can remove names from any platform but you have to address this idea of Hurriyat,” Mehbooba said.

PDP MLA Waheed Parra backed Mirwaiz, saying choosing “peace over rigidity is not weakness, it is leadership”.

Tanvir Sadiq, spokesperson for J&K’s governing National Conference (NC), slammed the alleged coercion. “Mirwaiz is a religious scholar, and if he is being pressured, then it is wrong,” Sadiq said.

BJP described Mirwaiz’s move as the “right decision”. “It is a message to J&K’s youth that the road of separatism has ended,” spokesperson Altaf Thakur said.
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