The first week of October 2025 has marked a turning point in PakistanOccupied Jammu & Kashmir, POJK. Streets that once echoed with the silence of enforced obedience have now erupted in the chants of defiance against the political and security establishment of Pakistan. The Jammu Kashmir Awami Action Committee, JKAAC, representing towns and villages from Mirpur to Kotli and Rawalakot to Muzaffarabad, has brought thousands into the streets. Their message is simple yet powerfulthatwe will no longer be treated as colonial subjects.
But the response from the Pakistani state has been brutal. Police opened fire on peaceful protestors and convoys. Communication blackouts cut families off from each other. Internet and phone lines went completely dead, shutting POJK off from the world. Ten people have been killed and over a hundred injured in just three days of unrest when this story was filed.
POJK’s streets are ablaze with anger. Years of exploitation, fake autonomy and military control have ignited a rebellion that Islamabad can neither justify nor contain. As the facade collapses, the myth of Pakistan’s moral authority on Kashmir lies in ruins.
This uprising has stripped Islamabad’s veneer of “concern for Kashmir” and exposed its longstanding policy of neglect, repressionand exploitation. It is not just a story of economic deprivation or political denial, it is the unraveling of a state project that for decades tried to sustain a false narrative of being the guardian of Kashmiris rights while strangling, killing and maiming its own people in the occupied Kashmir.
A history written in betrayals
For decades, POJK has been administered not as an autonomous territory but as a colonial outpost of Islamabad. What Pakistan projects to the world as “Azad Jammu and Kashmir”has been anything but free. Its government remains a puppet, with real power concentrated in Rawalpindi and Islamabad.
The so-called autonomy has been eyewash. POJK’s assembly may pass resolutions and frame budgetsbut all key levers like, security, natural resources and political direction and decisions remain firmly under Pakistan’s federal control. A glaring example is the 12 legislative seats reserved for Kashmiri refugees living in Pakistan. These seats are controlled by Islamabad’s political parties, ensuring their dominance and silencing genuine local representation.
The result has been decades of alienation. Islamabad has plundered POJK’s hydropower, timberand mineral resources yet the people of Muzaffarabad, Baghand Rawalakot continue to suffer unemployment, poor healthcare, redundant administration and collapsing infrastructure. Economic indicators for POJK are abysmal when compared even with Pakistan’s struggling provinces. The region contributes power and water to Punjab but receives little in return.The protests today are not sudden eruptions. They are the outcome of this long, systematic denial of dignity, development, fundamental rights and democracy.
The Jammu Kashmir Awami Action Committee, an umbrella coalition of civil society groups, traders, transporters and studentshas become the epicenter of resistance. Their demands are not radical. They just want abolition of reserved seats for refugees settled in Pakistan, fair share of local resources and hydropower revenues, end to arbitrary taxation and resource exploitation and restoration of political rights and genuine autonomy.In short, they demand what any functioning democracy owes its citizens – accountability, transparencyand justice.
But instead of dialogue, Islamabad responded with brute force. The October 1 march to Muzaffarabad became a bloodbath when police opened fire on convoys in Dhirkot and Dadyal, killing civilians. In Lal Chowk, Muzaffarabad, aerial firing and tear gas turned the heart of the capital into a war zone.The government’s negotiations have been hollow. The Chief Secretary issued notices inviting talks but simultaneously threatened strict action. This duplicity reveals Pakistan’s governance model in POJK with repression wrapped in rhetoric.
The Army’s heavy hand
Behind every decision in POJK lies the shadow of the Pakistan Army and its intelligence arm, the ISI. For decades, Rawalakot and Muzaffarabad were cultivated as launching pads for militancy against India. Youth were lured, coerced or misled into becoming foot soldiers for Pakistan’s proxy wars.But today, the same towns are hubs of resistance not against India but against Pakistan itself. Locals are dismantling containers placed as roadblocks, capturing police personnel and openly challenging the writ of the state. This shift is historic. Communities once divided by Islamabad’s divideandrule policies are uniting against their common oppressor.
The Army’s response remains predictable. Instead of engaging with grievances, it deploys Rangers, imposes curfews, enforces communication blackouts and launches propaganda campaigns blaming external agencies. Just as the insurgency in Balochistan is ridiculously branded as Indian-sponsored and the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan is framed as foreign-driven, the POJK protests too are dismissed as “fitna inspired by India.”This narrative convinces no one in POJK anymore. The blood on the streets is not from foreign conspirators but from their own people shot by Pakistani rangers and police.
The broader pattern
What is happening in POJK mirrors the unrest across Pakistan’s other marginalized regions. Balochistan bleeds under enforced disappearances, military excesses and economic deprivation despite being resource-rich.Khyber Pakhtunkhwa suffers heavy militarization and civilian deaths under counter-terror operations.South Punjab and Interior Sindh languish in poverty while the elite of Lahore and Islamabad prosper.Pakistan’s governance model is simple that’s to extract resources, suppress dissentand externalise blame.The protests in POJK are now part of this larger story of Pakistan’s crumbling peripherieswhere the social contract between state and citizen has been broken beyond repair.
The uprising has resonated beyond POJK. At the 60th UN Human Rights Council session in Geneva, Nasir Aziz Khan of the United Kashmir People’s National Party accused Pakistan of gross human rights violations in POJK. He urged the global community to act against Islamabad’s repression and reminded member states of obligations under the UDHR and ICCPR.
In London, JKAAC workers staged protests outside the Pakistan High Commission, ensuring the world sees what Islamabad wants to hide. With over two million people from POJK living abroad, diaspora activism is amplifying the local struggle into a global cause.
Contrast with Jammu & Kashmir
For years, Pakistan projected itself as the champion of Kashmiris’ rights, spotlighting protests in Indian Jammu and Kashmir. Islamabad invested billions in propaganda portraying India as repressive and itself as the savior of Kashmir but today the mask has slipped. While the streets of Srinagar, Shopian, Baramulla or Jammu no longer erupt in mass protests over governance, Muzaffarabad, Kotliand Mirpur are aflame with cries of betrayal.
Yes, J&K faces challenges of development and governancebut unlike POJK, people are not on the roads for basic survival rights. Elections are held, institutions function and despite political contestations, governance continues. In contrast, POJK burns because its people have been denied even the minimum economic dignity, political rights and freedom of expression.
The contrast could not be starker as in J&K, protests were historically driven by Pakistanbacked separatists and not by hunger for governance.In POJK, protests erupt precisely because governance has collapsed and autonomy exists only on paper.Pakistan’s claim of being the voice of Kashmir stands hollow when it cannot even ensure justice in the territories under its own control.
The events of October 2025 present Islamabad with a stark choice that’s to reform or repress further.If it continues with its old playbook of bullets, curfewsand blackouts, it risks turning POJK into another Balochistan, a festering wound of resistance that delegitimises the state’s authority but meaningful reform is unlikely. The Pakistani establishment thrives on crises. It cannot afford to let POJK become a genuinely autonomous region because that would weaken its strategic leverage over India. Nor can it tolerate a democratic awakening that may inspire Baloch, Pashtunor Sindhi movements.Thus, repression will intensify and with itso will resistance.
The protests in POJK are not just about local demands; they are about exposing a state built on contradictions. Pakistan lectures the world about Kashmir while silencing Kashmiris under its control. It parades “Azad Kashmir” from UN speeches to cricket commentary as free while shooting unarmed protesters demanding rights. It condemns India for governance issues while its own people die on the streets for the lack of governance altogether.
The uprising of 2025 has ripped apart this hypocrisy. The images of grieving families in Dhirkot, of youth defying curfews in Kotliand of slogans echoing through Lal Chowk in Muzaffarabad will haunt Islamabad’s narrative for years to come.
For India, the lesson is clear that while Pakistan manufactures noise on Kashmir internationally, its own house is in disarray. The world must be reminded that the true crisis lies in POJK, Balochistan and Pakistan’s peripheries, regions abandoned and betrayed by a state that survives on exploitation and repression.The people of POJK have spoken. The world is watching. And Islamabad’s mask is slipping.
