Senior Kashmiri leader and chief of Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF), Yasin Malik, arrived in Pakistan on Monday to participate in an exhibition in connection with "Safar-e-Azadi", a 114-day long journey which was carried by his party across the Kashmir valley last year.
The JKLF leader told reporters at Karachi airport that dialogue between Pakistan and Indian has failed to deliver. "Dialogue between Pakistan and India is the last hope of the people of Kashmir. God forbid, if it failed the situation would be worst," Malik said.
Malik said he will meet Pakistani political leaders and government officials to invite their attention to his Freedom march. Besides hundreds of photographs related to the march, a documentary on the campaign would be screened at Islamabad in the first week of June.
"Pakistan and India have held talks for four years but they could not deliver anything on Kashmir. The people were told to show patience but the people are disappointed," Malik said. He said Kashmir is not border dispute between India and Pakistan, but the question of future of 12 million people of J&K.
"We want the dialogue process should be accelerated to find out solution. The issue should not be kept pending and pending," the Kashmiri leader said. "Every Kashmiri has rendered sacrifices and they can again take extreme step if the problem was not resolved".
He said that Kashmiris are the fundamental party and they must be included in the dialogue process. He said the aim of Safar-e-Azadi was to educate the people about the Kashmir dispute and finding a solution as per their aspirations.
The JKLF chairman said that Safar-e-Azadi was one among the biggest non-violent political exercises carried in the world. "Safar-e-Azadi is the mandate of people and we will exhibit it before everybody. Government of India has been projecting so-called elections as people's acceptance of the present political set-up, which was not true. I started Safar-e-Azadi to let the world know what the aspirations of Kashmiris are," Malik revealed.
The 114-day long march kicked off from a remote south Kashmir village of Matigawran on May 21 last year and it travelled across the Valley including border areas of Uri and Tanghdar. The second part of Safar-e-Azadi in Jammu division was stopped by the authorities after Hindu organisation Shiv Sena threatened to use force against JKLF activists.