Islamabad: Dozens of people have been killed and hundreds injured as deadly clashes continue to take place between the law enforcement personnel and protesters in the Rawalakot city of Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK), several reports have indicated.
Earlier in the day, Sardar Waheed Khan, the Commissioner of Poonch district in PoK, was quoted as saying by leading Pakistani daily ‘The News International’ that only 12 people have been killed and several security officials injured in the clashes. He claimed that members of Joint Awami Action Committee (JAAC) targetted the security forces’ personnel and the miscreants possessed modern weapons and tried to disrupt law and order in the area.
However, several activists and journalists have posted on social media that the actual casualty figures is significantly higher and in several dozens even though those claims could not be independently verified.
The clashes have been reported days after the Pakistani authorities declared JAAC a proscribed group under anti-terrorism laws ahead of its planned protest on Tuesday. The JAAC had previously also held protests in PoK over economic issues and political rights.
Ahead of the June 9 protest, the Pakistani authorities launched a crackdown on JAAC on Saturday and arrested its several leaders and activists.
Videos which went viral on social media showed the brutality unleashed by Pakistani police personnel against citizens of the occupied territory and received wide condemnation from human rights activists all over the world.
UK-based Pakistani-origin human rights lawyer Sabine Kayani criticised the Pakistani authorities’ handling of the unrest in POK.
In a post on X, she stated that peaceful protesters seeking “bread, electricity, dignity” were responded in the “form of live fire, clouds of tear gas that choked the streets.”
In a post on X, she wrote, “They (people of PoK) demanded bread, electricity, dignity, and those rights stolen from their rivers and their future. They marched against the crippling electricity bills generated by their own dams, against subsidies vanishing into far-off pockets, and against a system that treats them as mere tenants on their ancestral land. The response came in the form of live fire and clouds of tear gas that choked the streets. Funerals turned into scenes of further violence, with reports of elders, women, and young men listed as martyrs—shot down as they buried their dead. Pakistan’s army, under the command of General Asim Munir, stands accused of turning grief into a massacre.”
The JAAC’s protest on Tuesday remained focused on a demand to abolish 12 seats in the legislative assembly that are reserved for refugees from Jammu and Kashmir living in Pakistan. The JAAC has stated that these seats are being used by political parties of Pakistan to influence government formation in PoK.
Shops and markets remained closed while vehicular movement was minimal in PoK’s capital Muzaffarabad on Tuesday as the JAAC observed a strike. Streets in Muzaffarabad remained empty, with hardly any vehicle seen on the road, Pakistan’s Dawn reported.
Hundreds of people gathered in Quaid-i-Azam in Mirpur while shops remained shut and there was no traffic movement on the road. According to witnesses in Kotli, people observed a complete shutter-down and wheel-jam strike. Hundreds of people led by JAAC core member Imtiaz Aslam were heading towards PoK’s Poonch district through Tatta Pani.
The rally led by JAAC core member Khawaja Mehran also entered Kotli for onward march towards PoK’s Poonch. Legal community of PoK boycotted judicial proceedings on bar council’s call to hold protest against the alleged arrest of senior lawyer Amjad Ali Khan, a core member of the JAAC, Dawn reported.
(IANS)
