Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK) has been gripped by one of the fiercest waves of public anger in recent years, with at least eight people killed and over 100 injured on Wednesday alone, bringing the death toll over the past three days of protests to ten.
According to local reports, Wednesday’s casualties included four deaths in Dhirkot (Bagh district), two in Muzaffarabad, and two in Mirpur. Two more civilians had died in Muzaffarabad a day earlier, when security forces opened fire on demonstrators.
Streets on fire, markets shut
The unrest, spearheaded by the Joint Awami Action Committee (JAAC), has plunged the region into near paralysis. For 72 hours straight, markets, shops, transport, and public services have remained completely shut.
On Wednesday morning, defiant protesters hurled stones at security personnel and pushed giant shipping containers, placed on bridges to block their route, into rivers below. Viral videos showed scores of demonstrators working in unison to dismantle the barricades, underscoring the scale of public mobilization.
Pakistani forces accused of firing on civilians
The JAAC has directly blamed Pakistani Rangers for shooting unarmed civilians in Muzaffarabad. Other deaths, it claimed, were caused by artillery shelling and heavy gunfire unleashed by the Pakistan Army on protest gatherings.
Yet, despite the bloodshed, the long march to Muzaffarabad has not stopped. Caravans of protesters have broken through military blockades, converging on the capital in defiance of Islamabad’s crackdown.
Political demands: Beyond electricity and bread
The protesters are not just demanding relief from rising living costs and power tariffs, they have listed 38 structural demands, including the scrapping of 12 assembly seats reserved for Kashmiri “refugees” living in Pakistan. Locals argue these seats dilute their voice and keep the region under Islamabad’s thumb.
JAAC leader Mir warned that the strike is merely “Plan A.” If Islamabad continues to ignore the movement, he hinted at escalating to a drastic “Plan D” already drawn up by the leadership.
A region already on edge
The fresh protests come in the shadow of a devastating airstrike last week, when 30 civilians were killed after Pakistan Air Force JF-17 jets dropped Chinese-made LS-6 precision bombs on a village in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.
That incident triggered widespread anger, as local communities accuse the Pakistani state of treating them as expendable. The situation has been further aggravated by the growing presence of terror outfits such as Jaish-e-Mohammed, which have shifted operations into the frontier region following India’s Operation Sindoor, deepening the sense of insecurity among ordinary Pakistanis.
