The assassination of Rising Kashmir editor Shujaat Bukhari last week in Srinagar served as a severe blow to peace talks in the Valley, revived fears about the safety of journalists, and according to Ram Madhav, served as one of the final nails in the coffin of the BJP-PDP breakup.
As the country struggles to comprehend Bukhari’s senseless murder, the suggestion that his peace activism led to his death is gaining ground.
A day after Bukhari’s murder on 14 June, The Quint published a report that a conference in July 2017 of Kashmiri activists in Dubai (which Bukhari attended) had irked several pro-jihadist leaders including Hizb-ul-Mujahideen chief Muhammad Yusuf Shah aka Syed Salahuddin.
Syed Salahuddin lashed out at the participants, saying that “while funerals were being held in Kashmir, they were backstabbing the tehreek [movement] in the back,” the report read.
The Hizb chief even said, “Those who participated in the conference are working on someone’s payroll.”
The Quint’s report added that Lashkar-e-Taiba had joined in, warning “humanitarian mission workers to not get themselves played in the hands of perpetrators but to the righteous cause”.
In the fallout of the conference, in several pro-jihadist blogs and social media campaigns, Bukhari topped the list of “touts who are betraying the Kashmir struggle.”
Six days after The Quint’s report, The Tribune revealed that Shujaat “forcefully” pleaded for the inclusion of Hizb and other Hurriyat leaders in the dialogue process.
Ershaad Mehmood, a political activist who attended the Dubai meet, told the newspaper that even before the Gulf conference, Bukhari had inputs that he was on the hit-list. “Please talk to Peer saheb (Syed Salahuddin) about it,” Bukhari had told Mehmood, according to the paper.
The report adds that Mehmood did meet Salahuddin, who rubbished the alleged threat, saying he was too big to order the killing of journalists.
A Call Minutes Before The Gunshot
A personal account written by senior journalist Iftikhar Gilani in DNA, adds that the hate campaign against Shujaat Bukhari, which began after the Dubai track-II conference, had resurfaced last month, "leaving Shujaat scared".
Minutes before his death, he called me from Srinagar and advised me to take care as the campaign against us from fake social media accounts was getting shriller. His voice was wobbly, so I asked him to call later in the night to discuss in detail. Barely 20 minutes later, news of his cold-blooded murder started flashing.Iftikhar Gilani wrote in DNA
The Quint had reported last year that days after the British non-profit organisation Conciliation Resources (CR) organised a get-together of the Kashmiri activists in Dubai, fissures were created among Kashmiri separatists.
The event was attended by several Pakistani leaders from PoK (Pakistan Occupied Kashmir), activists, Kashmiri journalists, and leaders from Congress, BJP and National Conference.
This was no ordinary feat. But it did cause heartburn to a few people in London and Islamabad because they had not been invited to enjoy Dubai. They started a vicious campaign. A screaming headline in a Pakistani newspaper was: ‘Kashmiri blood was sold in an air-conditioned hotel in Dubai’.Iftikhar Gilani wrote in DNA
Writer and human rights activist Junaid Qureshi also pointed out on Thursday on Twitter that a blog that hit out at people ‘living in both sides of Kashmir’ and ‘playing as pawns & touts for Indian agencies’ had listed Shujaat Bukhari as well.
The reports by DNA and Tribune reiterate how Bukhari’s attempts to initiate talks in Kashmir led to his brutal silencing. In his piece, Iftikhar Gilani added,“There is a case to look into all those IP addresses and their sources and identify people who were a part of this malicious campaign.”
(At The Quint, we are answerable only to our audience. Play an active role in shaping our journalism by becoming a member. Because the truth is worth it.)