Srinagar, Aug 29: In a major departure from the routine assertions, Syed Salahuddin, Hizbul Mujahideen chief and United Jihad Council chairman, has batted for imparting “quality education to our children”.
In an emailed statement to The Kashmir Monitor on Tuesday, Salahuddin said that education was key to nation building and no nation could prosper unless its youth were armed with proper and quality education.
“Education to our younger generation must be first and foremost priority”, he said.
“As we carry forward our struggle for political independence we must not remain oblivious to the other equally, if not more, vital dimensions of our life as a nation. Children are the future of every nation and ensuring their proper education is the most important aspect of nation building,” the Hizb chief said, adding “this is a humble, earnest and urgent appeal, and I would like to direct it particularly towards teachers and senior students perusing their college and university education, to come forward and help the nation to navigate this challenge successfully”.
“Their assistance and guidance to students in primary, middle and high schools and beyond will enable them to catch up and no longer lag behind in any manner,” he added.
The Hizb chief said that quality education to “our” children was as important as “our liberation struggle”.
“Both need to be carried on simultaneously,” he said while adding: “We must take it up (education of our youth) as a national obligation”.
“Equipping our children with quality education is as much a liberation struggle, and teachers and senior students are the ablest to shoulder this responsibility,” Salahuddin said.
“Despite the brutal crackdown, the movement for self-determination is growing stronger with all sections of the population identifying with it and making every program of the freedom leadership a resounding success,” he added.
Salahuddin, as per the statement, said that massive protest demonstrations taking place in Kashmir were a “constant reminder that the Kashmiri people’s resolve to take their struggle for the right to self-determination to its logical conclusion could not be crushed or curbed through intimidation and terror.”
He said that youth are “on the forefront of the ongoing movement in Kashmir, and hence were the prime target of brutal policies”.
“In the past couple of years, hundreds of school children and college and university students have been killed, blinded and put behind bars under draconian laws like the Public Safety Act where they are routinely subjected to the worst methods of torture,” he alleged.
“On the top of all this are frequent raids on schools, colleges and universities wherein students’ are rounded up, harassed, thrashed and, at times, even imprisoned. Most of the army camps and bunkers are still located either in the educational institutions or in the immediate vicinity of the institutions,” he said.
