Third martyrdom anniversary of Syed Ali Gilani being observed today

Muzaffarabad: The third martyrdom anniversary of veteran Hurriyat leader Syed Ali Gilani is being observed across the Line of Control on today (Sunday).

The veteran freedom fighter passed away while under house arrest in India-occupied Kashmir’s capital Srinagar, where he had been confined for more than a decade.

President Asif Ali Zardari and Azad Jammu Kashmir Prime Minister Chaudhry Anwarul Haq have paid tributes to Syed Ali Gilani.

Public gatherings, seminars, and rallies will be held across Azad Jammu and Kashmir under the Kashmir Liberation Commission, Pasban-e-Hurriyat, Hurriayat organisations, and education institutions wherein tributes will be paid to the slogan ‘Hum Pakistani Hain, Pakistan Hamara Hai’ of Syed Ali Gilani.

According to KMS, the All Parties Hurriyat Conference (APHC) has urged the people in Indian illegally-occupied Jammu and Kashmir (IIOJK) to visit his grave in Hyderpora graveyard to pay him respects. The APHC’s call has been supported by all pro-freedom organizations.

The APHC has also urged imams and khateebs to conduct special prayers for the veteran pro-freedom leader and other Kashmiri martyrs in mosques. Additionally, the APHC has appealed to the Kashmiri diaspora to hold peaceful demonstrations worldwide to highlight the ongoing human rights abuses in occupied Jammu and Kashmir.

Syed Ali Gilani was born on September 29, 1929, in Zurimanz village in Bandipora tehsil of Baramulla district of North Kashmir. He was the son of a landless labourer in the Canals Department. He received early education in Sopore and went to Lahore for higher studies. He also studied in a madrasa attached to the Masjid Wazir Khan of Lahore. Later, he enrolled in the Oriental College. He completed Adib 'Alim, a course in Islamic theology.

Syed Ali Gilani helped found the All Parties Hurriyat Conference (APHC) in 1993 and served as its chairman from 1998 to 2000. In 2003, he formed his own faction of which he was later elected as the lifetime chairman. He founded the Tehreek-e-Hurriyat party in 2004, which became the leading organisation in the separate "Geelani faction" of the Hurriyat Conference. Geelani served as its chairman until he quit the position in March 2018, though remaining the chairman of his faction of APHC. He quit politics due to failing health in 2020.

On November 29, 2010, Syed Gilani, along with writer Arundhati Roy, activist Varavara Rao and three others, was charged under sections 124A (sedition), 153A (promoting enmity between classes), 153B (imputations, assertions prejudicial to national integration), 504 (insult intended to provoke breach of peace) and 505 (false statement, rumour circulated with intent to cause mutiny or offence against public peace...) to be read with Section 13 of the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act of 1967.

The charges, which carried a maximum sentence of life imprisonment, were the result of a self-titled seminar they gave in New Delhi, "Azadi - the Only Way" on October 21, at which Syed Ali Gilani was heckled.

He was a member of Jamaat-e-Islami Kashmir since 1953, and was regarded as one of its most significant leaders. He was also elected Member of the Legislative Assembly from the Sopore constituency, elected on a Jamaat-e-Islami ticket in 1972, 1977 and in 1987.