In the first such admission by a separatist leader in the state, top Hurriyat leader Prof Abdul Ghani Bhat said here today that Abdul Ghani Lone and Maulvi Farooq weren't killed by government forces but "their own people".

"Time has come to speak the truth. Neither the Army nor the police killed Lone sahib and Maulvi Farooq sahib but our own people," Bhat said while addressing a seminar on the role of intellectuals in the separatist movement.

Hurriyat chairman Mirwaiz Umar Farooq, the son of Maulvi Farooq, didn't contradict Bhat in his subsequent speech, and neither did Bilal Lone, the son of Abdul Ghani Lone.

"This movement started with the assassinations of thinkers and the people who held an opinion," Bhat said, adding that if the separatist movement had to get anywhere, its leaders in the state needed to take into account their own follies.

"We have to first accept and speak the truth about ourselves. We can't build a movement on lies," Bhat said in what may be one of the boldest criticisms of the separatist movement. A former Hurriyat chairman, Bhat is a moderate separatist and one of the ideologues of the conglomerate.

Maulvi Farooq and Lone were killed in 1990 and 2002, respectively.

The seminar was organised by the JKLF in the memory of academician Abdul Ahad Wani, a JKLF ideologue who was also assassinated by unidentified gunmen in December 1993.

Bhat said Wani too was the victim of "mutual rivalry" between militant organisations. "India didn't kill him either."

Bhat also obliquely took on Hurriyat hawk Syed Ali Shah Geelani, saying the policy of hartals and martyrdom, without any strategy, had only damaged the Kashmir cause. "There was a hartal for five months and 112 people died. And at the end of it there is nothing by way of achievement. This is what happens when there is no thinking, no strategy," Bhat said. "If you want to rid people of Kashmir of sentimentalism bordering on insanity, you have to speak the truth."

... contd.

Please read our terms of use before posting comments