Srinagar, Mar 11: Jammu Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF) chairman Mohammad Yasin Malik on Sunday termed the statement of Minister for Finance Dr. Haseeb Drabu as an “ample specimen of a sold-out mentality”.
Malik said Drabu is “classic example of a person trying to act like a lawyer in politics, who has no ideology, faith and ethics, but is always ready to present his clients’ wishes and whims.”
In a statement issued here, Malik said “issuing ridiculous and absurd statements in a pursuit to distort historical facts can only be termed as naivety and ignorance.”
Malik said “Drabu-like collaborators want to prove their loyalty to their masters in Delhi and Nagpur by issuing statements likes these, but these people should know that facts don’t change by mincing words and coining new terms.”
The JKLF chief recalled that in 1996, Drabu came to APHC’s Kashmir Awareness Bureau (KAB) office at Delhi with his friend, Sideeq Wahid in an auto Rickshaw.
“Drabu talked to me for hours and while praising our efforts for liberation of Jammu and Kashmir from illegal occupation of India, presented several ideas and concepts for it. He in front of KAB office-bearers including the then KAB bureau chief Ghulam Muhammad Butt, who is lodged at Tihar jail Delhi from last many years, swore that whenever he (Drabu) is in Bombay (Mumbai), he always visits the ancestral house of Quaid-e-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah and bows his head in respect for his wisdom about Hindu chauvinist mindset, which in his words is always anti-Muslim,” Malik said.
Malik said that Drabu and Sideeq Wahid joined JKLF and worked ‘with us for many months. During these times his emphasis remained on preparing economic blue print for independent Kashmir.’
JKLF chairman said that after few years Drabu “got what he wanted, and was awarded with the chairmanship of JK Bank.
“Betraying his nation, he renounced resistance movement for his petty selfish gain and switched over to other side of the divide and joined Indian political system,” Malik said.
“Not only this, making a complete U-turn about Hindu mindset he used to denounce, this person joined hands with RSS and is serving as main link between PDP and Nagpur now, and delivering ridiculous statements in trying to hoodwink international opinion on Jammu and Kashmir,” JKLF chairman said.
“It is this hypocritical attitude of Haseeb Drabu-like educated people, who advocated freedom through their ideas, especially write-ups and articles that are even now available on Internet, which enthused thousands of young and old to join freedom struggle and sacrifice their lives for it,” Malik said.
He said time has come to “expose these charlatans, who for their petty interests are harming the national interests of the people of Jammu and Kashmir.”
Meanwhile, Hurriyat-M while reacting to Drabu’s assertions, said “such falsehood is part of the propaganda being deliberately built to mislead and misdirect audiences in order to dilute the reality of the Kashmir dispute and weaken the discourse on Kashmir.”
In a statement here, Hurriyat-M said while the people of Kashmir are strongly resisting military control to assert their will, “the self-serving ambition and extreme opportunism of such individuals (referring to Drabu) for power, fame and wealth greatly raises the cost for them (people).
“These individuals for the realization of their ambitions become voluntary tools in the hands of oppressors and act as their mouthpiece whom the oppressor uses and discards as suits its interests,” Hurriyat-M said.
It said the “successive governments in India have patronised and promoted such people, to systematically weaken and erode the Kashmir cause and gradually strengthen its own grip over J&K.”
