In the latest round of unrest, Pakistani Rangers and police have turned their guns and batons on unarmed civilians demanding nothing more radical than subsidised flour, lower electricity tariffs and fair representation.
At least 15 people have been killed and many more injured as forces opened fire and lathi-charged demonstrators across PoK. This is not restoring order; it is collective punishment for daring to question Islamabad’s diktats. The protests, led by the Jammu Kashmir Joint Awami Action Committee (JAAC) – a platform of traders, professionals and civil society activists, have been branded a threat and banned. Bounties have been announced on prominent leaders. Peaceful assembly, the right to dissent, and freedom of association, all core human rights, have been trampled with complete impunity. A regime that answers bread-and-butter demands with bullets and sedition charges has forfeited any moral or political legitimacy. For decades, PoK has been run as a colony. The Mangla Dam, one of the largest in the world, was built without meaningful consent of those whose lands were submerged. Thousands were displaced and never properly rehabilitated. Their waters and hills power Pakistan’s cities, yet the same people are slapped with exorbitant electricity bills. Economic exploitation is enforced through military might, a double assault on livelihood and dignity. Over this sits a hollow political structure designed to keep real power out of Kashmiri hands. The so‑called Legislative Assembly functions more as an extension of Islamabad’s bureaucracy and security establishment than as a genuine representative institution. A recent Pakistan Supreme Court verdict on the reservation of seats has only deepened the sense that PoK’s politics is manipulated from afar. As analysts admit, bureaucrats in Islamabad and Rawalpindi script decisions while PoK’s elected representatives are reduced to extras. Underdevelopment, unemployment, poor public services and a dense security grid have created a climate of fear and frustration. Arbitrary arrests, intimidation of activists, curbs on media and the constant presence of armed forces are daily realities. Pakistan lectures India on Kashmir, but in the territory it illegally occupies, it has built an ecosystem of coercion, not autonomy. The unrest in PoK carries an unmistakable political message. A population that Islamabad claims as its own is openly rejecting the terms of Pakistan’s rule. People want dignity, fair treatment and real representation, not slogans coined in Islamabad and amplified from Rawalpindi’s barracks. Every protest crushed by bullets, every activist silenced by a ban, every inflated bill shoved down the throats of the poor adds to Pakistan’s charge sheet of human rights abuses. PoK has become Pakistan’s 1971 warning in slow motion. The more Islamabad clings to occupation through force, the more it exposes the fragile, coercive foundations of its control. What holds PoK today is not consent but fear – and fear is a crumbling pillar on which to rest any claim over occupied Kashmir. What the world is witnessing in PoK is not governance but a sustained, state-sponsored assault on a captive population.
