Drug mafias, food blockades, internet blackouts: How Pakistan is bulldozing protesters in Occupied Kashmir? And losing the clock
&imwidth=600&imheight=450&format=webp&quality=medium "Drug mafias, food blockades, internet blackouts: How Pakistan is bulldozing protesters in Occupied Kashmir? And losing the clock")
From Left to right (Women protesters marching, JAAC member Khwaja Mehran, Protesters sit-in continues on 22nd June) Photograph: (X)
Pakistan-occupied Kashmir's now banned JAAC has set an 8 Muharram deadline, warning of a "major announcement" if demands go unmet. A JAAC organiser has publicly alleged Army and ISI collaboration with drug mafias to kill protest leaders.
Twenty days after Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK) erupted in mass protests, the movement's leadership has set a hard deadline and is warning of a "major announcement" if Islamabad does not act. The Joint Awami Action Committee, banned by the Pakistani government on June 5, said on Sunday that if their demands were not met by 8 Muharram, the organisation would escalate. In a statement issued directly by the JAAC, the committee urged residents to maintain voluntary shutdown strikes, wheel-jam protests, and sit-ins, while calling on the public to remain peaceful under all circumstances.
"The rulers can go to any extent to make their conspiracies succeed," the statement read, "but we must be clear in our minds that our focus is only and only our demands."
The committee also warned that deliberate propaganda would be used to divert attention from the movement's core objectives, and that the struggle would continue regardless. "This is a people's movement," the statement said. "As long as the last one of us is alive, there will be neither a shortage of leadership nor any compromise on demands."
The warning came as the committee acknowledged publicly what it called an irreversible cost of the loss of young lives it described as martyrs, and dozens of families it said had been destroyed by the crackdown. "We lost our precious youth forever," the statement said. "Now, this is the time for steadfastness."
Drug mafias, blockades, and a movement under siege
The most explosive allegation came from JAAC organiser Khawaja Mehran, who went live on Facebook on June 12, during a public rally at midnight, accusing Pakistan's Army and the Inter-Services Intelligence of orchestrating the violence on behalf of drug trafficking networks. In the broadcast, video of which has circulated widely among supporters, Mehran claimed to possess evidence linking these networks to two named senior Pakistan military officers operating in the region.
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WION has not independently verified Mehran's claims. They are presented here as allegations made publicly by a JAAC organiser, not as established fact.
Furthermore, Trucks carrying food and essential supplies remain stranded at the territory's entry points, the JAAC said. The blockade has entered its twelfth day with no resolution in sight. Each side blames the other for the breakdown, and with no talks imminent and a deadline now on the table, the standoff in what India regards as its illegally occupied territory is edging toward a new and uncertain phase where Pakistan is brutally crushing basic human rights.
The deadline announcement adds a new pressure point to a crisis that has already turned deadly. Security forces have killed at least 11 protesters since the government banned the JAAC on June 5, with more than 200 others injured in the crackdown that followed, according to local media reports. Internet services across Pakistan-occupied Kashmir have remained suspended since the same date, cutting residents off even as the movement deepened. (To knowindetail aboutthebackground oftheprotestsandthedemands raised read our earlier reporting.)
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