If Jihad is so pious why don't Kashmiri separatists or their children pick up guns: Junaid Qureshi

Reacting sharply over the killing of young Hizbul Mujahideen district commander Burhan Wani by security forces, Junaid Qureshi, son of Kashmiri separatist leader Hashim Qureshi, on Saturday said the Kashmiri youth need to understand and need to ask this question to these separatist leaders if Jihad is so pious then why don't they or their children pick up guns?

"All the children of these leaders are tucked away in safe environments in schools in Malaysia, America, London or India, and poor people's sons are dying on streets and they are glorifying it. The Kashmiri youth need to understand and need to ask this question to these leaders if Jihad, if this gun is so pious why don't you pick it up, why don't your children pick it up? This bloodshed must stop," said Junaid, an Amsterdam-based Human Rights activist.

"A youth of Kashmir has lost his life. Many people, many youth in Kashmir, whether justified or unjustified, have a lot of resentment. They are angry, but we can see what it does when you chose violent ways to give vent to your resentment and to your anger. At the end, Burhan Wani met his inevitable fate, he was killed. It's sad to see Kashmiri youth dying like this," he added.

"This young boy (Wani, 22), who is just the age of my brother, could have been a doctor, an engineer, a writer, a poet, or an actor. He could have found so many other ways to give vent to his resentment, and to make an appeal for his genuine demands. But, we must understand and the Kashmiri youth must understand that picking up guns is not the way which will get us somewhere," said Junaid, whose father had hijacked an Indian plane to Lahore in 1971.

"One Burhan Wani died today, another will die tomorrow until and unless we understand that the picking up the gun is not a way out. India has lakhs of army stationed in Kashmir. We have already picked up the gun 26 years ago, what did we achieve? People died. This must end. This violence, this bloodshed must end," he added.

Making an appeal to the Kashmiri youth to shun violence and opt for some other civilised way to vent their resentment, Junaid said, "The youth of Kashmir must understand and their leaders should understand as well that one Kalashnikov, a hundred Kalashnikov, a thousand Kalashnikov are not going to make a difference to the Kashmir issue."

"The Kashmir issue can only be solved on the table and you have to deserve a place to get to that table, you have to have your arguments ready. You need to give vent to your resentment in some other civilised way," he added.

Wani and two other terrorists were killed in an encounter with a joint operation launched by the Rashtriya Rifles (RR), Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) and the Jammu and Kashmir Police in Anantnag district of Jammu and Kashmir on Friday.

The 22-year-old Internet-savvy Kashmiri terrorist was a resident of Dadsara village in south Kashmir's Tral area. He left his home in 2010, days before taking the Class 10 examination to join the region's frontline indigenous militant outfit Hizb and soon rose to become its district commander and figured in the list of most wanted militants.

Wani had last month released a video warning of attacks on separate colonies for Sainiks and Kashmiri Pandits if they were set up in the Valley. The major part of the video message, however, was directed at the Jammu and Kashmir Police warning them of more attacks.