Save my Father: Raziyah Sultana seeks global intervention to save ailing father
Fears Tihar Jail authorities’ deliberate negligence endangers Yasin Malik’s life
ISLAMABAD ( WEB NEWS )
Raziyah Sultana, the daughter of Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front Chief Mohammad Yasin Malik, has made a heartfelt plea to the international community and human rights organizations to intervene and save her father’s life, who has begun a hunger strike unto death in Tihar Jail against the denial of life-saving medications despite being a chronic heart and kidney patient.
In a statement on Sunday, Raziyah Sultana said that her father was like ‘Nelson Mandela’ of Kashmir’s Azadi Movement, who has been illegally sentenced to death by Indian courts and kept him in the Death Cell of Tihar Jail. The notorious Tihar jail authorities’ deliberate negligence endangered the life of the most popular and prominent pro-freedom political leader, she feared.
She stated: “My father has fought tirelessly for the basic human rights of the people in Indian Illegally Occupied Jammu & Kashmir (IIOJK). Today, he has started a hunger strike unto death, protesting the severe restrictions and brutalities inflicted upon him and other Kashmiris by the occupation authorities.”
Raziyah Sultana recalled that she last saw her father as a two-year-old baby over 10 years ago. Since then, she added, he has been denied visits from family, access to legal defense, no life-saving drugs and any opportunity to voice his case. She expressed apprehension that as a chronic heart and kidney patient now on hunger strike, she feared deeply for his life whose only “crime” was standing up for the oppressed people of Kashmir.
Talking about her father’s health condition, Raziyah Sultana revealed that after diagnosing a severe Aortic Heart Valve disease, his valve was replaced with a metallic Heart Valve during a surgery in 1992 and his surgeons put him on lifelong anticoagulant and advised regular INR test to keep vigil at the functioning of his heart and blood coagulation process etc.
She stated that he had suffered a facial nerve paralysis in 1990 which is still active, left hydronephrosis in 2016 and for the past 25 years now he is suffering with intermittent Coagulopathy along with recurrent renal stones and renal cortical cyst for which he had to go through five different surgeries during the last twenty years.
Raziyah Sultana lamented that the deprivation of proper medical care to a towering political prisoner of his stature was a serious human rights violation, insisting the world bodies especially the human rights organization and the human rights defenders to intervene to save the precious life of Mohammad Yasin Malik. “I urgently appeal to the Permanent five countries, governments of China, the USA, United Kingdom,Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Overseas Kashmiris, to the UN Secretary-General, the High Commissioner for Human Rights, Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, the Committee Against Torture, ICRC and all international human rights bodies—please focus on my father’s case and help us secure his release,” she added.
Raziyah Sultana demanded that they asked for justice, for his right to life, and for his freedom, who was the worst victim of political vendetta by the Narendra Modi led government despite the fact that he was the strong proponent of nonviolent peaceful struggle and dialogue to make the dream of Kashmiris right to self-determination a reality.