Srinagar: Pakistani origin spouses of ex-Kashmiri militants today held a protest march in city centre Lal Chowk here urging the government to issue travel documents to them so that they could visit their parental homes situated across the Line of Control (LoC).
Accusing the government of giving a cold shoulder to their “genuine demands”, the aggrieved women marched in protest from the Press Enclave here towards the Clock Tower in the city centre Lal Chowk.
These women, who arrived in Kashmir along with their spouses in the year 2010 under the then government’s rehabilitation policy for former Kashmiri militants, appealed to the Prime Minister Narendra Modi to resolve their issues “on humanitarian grounds” so that they could meet their families.
Holding placards in their hands which read “deport us, if we are Pakistani, issue travel documents to us”, these women along with their children, amid sloganeering had assembled at Press Enclave and staged a protest to press for their demands.
They said if the government has no issues to grant citizenship to Pakistani singer Adnan Sami and others, “what stops it from according same rights to the us?”
“If government could grant Indian citizenship to singer Adnan Sami, if tennis star Sania Mirza could represent India despite being married in Pakistan, why we can’t we visit our parental home in Pakistan administered Kashmir,” Safiya Sayeed, a woman from Muzzafarbad, questioned.
She appealed to the Prime Minister of India and his Pakistani counterpart to resolve their issues on humanitarian grounds so that they could visit their parental homes in Pakistan.
“We are legally wedded wives of those Kashmiri youth who returned to Kashmir under the then government’s rehabilitation policy in the year 2010. We haven’t seen our families, our siblings living on the other side for the last ten years. What crime have we committed that government is not allowing us to meet our parents?” said Safiya Sayeed.
“If the government does not accept us, they should deport us to Pakistan. In the first place, they should accept us because our husbands are Kashmiris and we have not committed any crime by marrying them. Kashmiri people are citizens of India and so are we,” she said.
