By Staff Reporter
MUZAFFARABAD: A month-long protest movement led by a banned rights alliance, the Joint Awami Action Committee, barreled toward a government deadline this week with no sign of a breakthrough, as the group and police continued to clash over the death toll from the weekend’s latest bout of violence and neither side showed any appetite for talks.
The dispute over what happened in the town of Dadyal on Sunday remained unresolved as of Tuesday: JAAC leaders maintain that two protesters were killed and three wounded there in clashes with security forces, while the region’s police chief has disputed that any civilians died at all and accused protesters of firing first. Authorities have yet to release an official casualty count.
The unresolved clash is the latest flashpoint in a protest campaign that has swept the mountainous territory of Azad Jammu and Kashmir since early June, shutting down roads, disrupting trade, and pitting the banned group against a government that has moved aggressively to suppress it. With JAAC having set a July 8 deadline for the government to negotiate — after which it says it will announce its next move, potentially a long march on the regional capital — the standoff appeared no closer to resolution this week than it had a day earlier.
Liaqat Hayat, a local leader with the National Awami Party who has been hosting a JAAC-organised sit-in in the town of Rawalakot, said the Dadyal violence had been confined to that town alone, and that Sunday’s demonstration in Rawalakot — which he said drew roughly 60,000 people — passed without incident.
“There was no clash in Rawalakot despite massive turnout, but in Dadyal two protesters were killed and three others were injured,” Hayat said. He said JAAC had no verified information about any police casualties in the clash. “As far as the confirmed reports available to us are concerned, the casualties have been civilians,” he said.
The region’s police chief, Inspector-General Liaqat Ali Malik, offered a starkly different account, saying it was protesters who fired first. “They fired the first shot,” Malik said. “If this is a protest, then what kind of protest is it?”
Malik rejected the claim that two civilians had died and challenged JAAC to produce evidence. “They should go to hospitals and get the post-mortem done,” he said. “They should bring the evidence to me, and we will take action according to the law.” He said he encounters “15 to 20 such pieces of fake news every day” and characterised much of the competing narrative around the protests as “information warfare.”
The competing claims could not be independently verified, and authorities had not released an official casualty count.
A movement reshaped by a court ruling
JAAC has organised rallies and sit-ins across the region since early June, and its grievances have shifted over time. What began as a campaign focused on economic hardship — the price of flour and electricity, by one government official’s account — has evolved into a more pointed political demand: the elimination of 12 seats in the AJK legislative assembly that are reserved for refugees who fled Indian-administered Kashmir after the 1947 partition of the subcontinent.
JAAC argues that the reserved seats give Pakistan’s mainstream political parties outsized influence over how governments are formed in Azad Kashmir. The campaign suffered a legal setback last month, however, when the AJK Supreme Court found that the seats carry constitutional protection and cannot be eliminated through executive or administrative action alone — a ruling that left the group’s core demand in legal limbo even as its street campaign continued to grow.
The government responded by banning JAAC outright. On June 5, regional authorities designated it a proscribed organisation under the First Schedule of the territory’s anti-terrorism act. A day later, they launched a broader crackdown, arresting dozens of its leaders and eventually placing 147 of its activists under a more restrictive schedule of the same law. JAAC has continued to operate and organise despite the ban.
Casualties mount on both sides
The Dadyal clash was not the first to turn lethal. Last month, at least seven people — four police officers and three protesters — were killed in violence in Rawalakot, where authorities said JAAC supporters attacked law enforcement personnel and besieged a military-run hospital. JAAC has denied those allegations and instead accused security forces of firing on peaceful demonstrators.
Malik, the police chief, said 92 police personnel have been injured since the unrest began last month, many with gunshot wounds. “This is not a peaceful protest anymore,” he said. “It is an armed conflict.”
A region cut off, depending on who is asked
The demonstrations, along with a wave of business strikes and road blockades, have disrupted daily life across much of Azad Kashmir, though officials and JAAC leaders offer conflicting portraits of how severely.
Malik said major routes into and out of the territory remained largely functional. “Jhelum is fully open. Muzaffarabad is fully open. Kotli is fully open. Haveli is fully open,” he said, adding that disruptions were largely limited to parts of Mirpur district.
Hayat, however, described a supply chain strained by fear rather than deliberate obstruction. He said truck drivers have grown reluctant to enter the region because they worry about being stopped or harassed, a dynamic he said has led to bare shelves soon after goods do arrive. “Transporters are afraid to travel because they fear being stopped, harassed or delayed by the authorities,” he said. “When supplies do reach the markets, people buy everything quickly and the shelves are empty within a short time.”
He pushed back on any suggestion that JAAC was intentionally cutting off essential goods, framing continued access to supplies as central to the movement’s own credibility. “We want essential goods to continue reaching people because if ordinary citizens suffer, public opinion will naturally turn against us,” Hayat said.
An AJK police spokesperson offered a different explanation for the disruption, alleging that JAAC members have looted goods carriers and physically abused drivers, and said the force intends to restore normal supply lines and clear blockades. The spokesperson also alleged that JAAC members used firearms on July 4 to intimidate the public and to advance a narrative that the state had launched a crackdown, and said the group’s leadership now has one remaining option: surrender to law enforcement.
No talks, and no agreement on why
With the July 8 deadline just days off, there is no indication that negotiations between the two sides are imminent, and each blames the other for the impasse.
Malik questioned what any negotiation would even address, given his characterization of the protest movement as one that has repeatedly turned to violence. “What negotiations should we hold?” he asked.
Hayat, for his part, said the government has shown no genuine interest in dialogue since the movement began in early June. “There has been no serious indication from the government that it wants negotiations,” he said. “No committee has been formed and no formal offer for talks has been made.” He said that could change quickly if the government were willing. “If the government appoints representatives, negotiations could begin within 12 hours,” he said.
JAAC has said that absent serious engagement by the deadline, it will announce its next steps the following day — a decision Hayat said could include a long march on the regional capital of Muzaffarabad, potentially beginning July 13.
Government alleges foreign funding behind the movement
The dispute has taken on a geopolitical dimension as well. At a press conference in Muzaffarabad this week, Muhammad Rashid Hanif, secretary of the AJK Information Department, said state institutions have credible evidence that Indian funding is behind JAAC’s campaign, naming UK-based activist Amjad Ayub Mirza as someone he said had been mobilised as part of an effort to advance what he called an anti-Pakistan agenda among overseas Kashmiris.
Hanif urged residents to reject what he described as a disinformation campaign spreading on social media and to instead engage with the formal political process. He traced the movement’s origins to a people-centred campaign that emerged after the coronavirus pandemic in 2023, one he said the government had taken seriously and worked to address. Over time, he said, individuals with a more particular political agenda took on greater influence within JAAC, and its tactics shifted accordingly.
“This apparent human rights movement has held the entire region hostage,” Hanif said, adding that in the Poonch belt, JAAC members had made daily life difficult through harassment and fear. “They tried to misdirect the youth, replacing the pen with the baton,” he said.
Hanif displayed images to reporters that he said showed JAAC members blocking roads with felled trees, targeting hospitals, and making statements critical of Pakistan. He put the economic toll of the unrest at 15 billion rupees in losses to a government he described as already operating with limited resources.
He also alleged that some of JAAC’s foreign-based leadership have promoted the idea of an independent Kashmiri state, recalling being told that other territories with smaller populations than Kashmir’s have achieved independence. JAAC, he noted, was never formally registered in the region. He further alleged that JAAC members have used civilians, including women and children, as human shields during confrontations with authorities — an allegation Arab News could not independently verify, and one JAAC has not addressed directly in comparable terms.
Elections loom over the standoff
The unrest comes weeks before legislative elections scheduled for July 27 in Azad Jammu and Kashmir, a territory that sits within the broader Kashmir region claimed in its entirety by both India and Pakistan, and administered in separate portions by each. How the standoff resolves — or fails to — in the coming weeks is likely to shape the political climate heading into that vote.
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