When activist Shahzaib Habib was killed by unidentified men on the night of June 6 in Rawalakot, Pakistan, protesters took custody of his body from the combined military hospital and staged a sit-in outside the hospital, demanding that an investigation be opened into his murder. Habib was a close associate of the leadership of the Jammu Kashmir Joint Awami Action Committee, or JAAC, a coalition of local traders, civil society members and political activists who spent the past three years organizing demonstrations across Pakistan-administered Kashmir.
According to JAAC, security forces opened fire on the vehicle Habib was traveling in. Police say they intercepted a “suspicious vehicle” whose armed occupants fired first.
Habib’s killing came in a week when a crackdown on the JAAC was intensifying day by day. Two days earlier, on June 5, Pakistan’s government had banned JAAC, declaring the nonviolent coalition — which came together around electricity bills and wheat prices — a proscribed organization under the 2014 anti-terrorism act. In the days that followed, a curfew was imposed on Rawalakot, phone and internet were cut across the region of Azaad Jammu and Kashmir, and the government deployed the Pakistan Rangers, a paramilitary force. Protests were met with violence, leaving 11 dead.
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Kashmiri human rights defenders continue to fight injustices amid growing repressionSince the June 5 declaration, dozens of protesters have been arrested and many have reportedly been killed. But putting a precise number on either remains difficult. Media access to the region has been tightly restricted since the crackdown began, with phone and internet remaining suspended across much of the region.
Among those killed was one of the main student organizers: Usama Jamil, a PhD student at Quaid-i-Azam University in Islamabad who was deputy secretary general of the Jammu Kashmir National Students Federation, or JKNSF. On July 27, according to student groups and civil society organizations, he was marching in Rawalakot, chanting for people’s rights, when he was shot and killed by security forces.
The crackdown was not confined to Kashmir. Solidarity protests in Lahore, Islamabad and Karachi were met with arrests. In Lahore, police arrested activists and dozens of bystanders outside the press club during a peaceful demonstration on July 31. In Islamabad, the capital, 88 people were sent into 14-day judicial remand after a solidarity protest the same day. Human rights groups called the arrests part of a broader attempt to criminalize solidarity with Kashmir.
I asked Omer Khan, a member of JKNSF, about the current situation. “I don’t know how to answer this or where to begin,” he said. “A living hell was unleashed upon us, something this region has not witnessed in recent history. Our region was once one of the most peaceful, and now it has almost been turned into a war zone.”
“Dozens have been killed through direct state violence, and countless others have been injured,” he continued. “Food and medicine have been blocked. Frisking, raids and searches have violated the privacy and sanctity of people’s homes” and the entire region is under an undeclared curfew.
He describes collective punishment as one of the more visible forms of state pressure, but says the psychological toll is harder to measure.
But for now, despite the killings, crackdowns and internet restrictions, the movement the government tried to outlaw is still organizing. On Sept. 9, the JAAC led a region-wide shutter-down and wheel-jam strike, a form of general strike that aims to shut down all businesses and halt all road traffic. As of today, protesters remain in the streets.
How the movement got there
Organizers say that the keys to the movement’s durability have been its flat structure, the strong participation of women, and how it has built trust and solidarity by delivering victories that affect people’s everyday lives.
“I consider it the world’s most modern and well-organized movement, and its biggest achievement is that it built solidarity among people,” said Haris Ahmed Khan, a member of Progressive Student Collective, or PSC, who was arrested at a peaceful solidary protest in Lahore on July 31 and later released. “When a call is given, everyone gathers.”
The movement began on May 8, 2023, when residents of Rawalakot, the capital of Kashmir’s Poonch district, held a sit-in over the sharp increase in government-subsidized flour prices. Out of that sit-in came the district’s first organizing body, initially called the Poonch Awami Action Committee.
The movement might have stayed local if the government hadn’t handed it a second grievance. When electricity bills for the month of August 2023 arrived from the state-owned power department, people with higher usage rates found their bill had roughly doubled. What began as a flour protest in one district spread across Azad Jammu and Kashmir, as the Poonch district organizing committee folded electricity into its demands, and organizers in the Muzaffarabad and Rawalakot district joined in with a call for a shutter-down and wheel-jam strike. What started as scattered demonstrations turned into a sit-in in Rawalakot that stretched on for months.
Young leaders, lawyers and journalists all joined in. And slowly, the movement started gaining traction on social media.
“They had two or three pages [on Instagram and Facebook] that people trusted, so whenever news came from these pages, people knew it was authentic,” Haris Ahmed Khan explained. Speeches and announcements shared on these pages quickly spread, he said.
But organizers in Kashmir did not consider social media alone to be enough. They went to village councils and formed local committees. In Poonch district, they walked through every bazaar and convinced people to join the movement. They explained to people how they could get flour and electricity at lower prices.
The movement won on its material demands when flour and electricity prices were lowered in 2024. With these wins, Omer Khan said, the movement proved something to people who’d been told for decades they had no power.
“It instilled confidence in people across the state that it is possible to fight and to win,” he said. “In particular, securing the right to electricity at the cost of production was an unprecedented achievement in South Asia.”
By building confidence in the movement, these successes led to bigger demands and marked it as a threat to the state, Haris Ahmed Khan said. “People are now demanding public spending and want the state to spend for the people,” he said. “The state does not want people to reach this point in such a peaceful and organized way. So, this has become a threat to the state structure because people are demanding that the state work for them.”
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Repression backfires in Pakistan, as oppressed Baloch people hold historic mass protestIn September 2025, Omer Khan joined more than 60 others at a protest outside the Islamabad Press Club. The demonstration didn’t go long. Police with batons charged the crowd, made arrests and held people for over eight hours.
“Women were treated especially badly,” Omer Khan said. “Locked up, they struggled to breathe and were refused basic things like light and fans. Some came out with bruises.” One woman who traveled in from outside the region to show solidarity was questioned by a male officer and had her phone searched, Omer Khan said.
Women have been at the center of the movement from the start, and Omer argues that’s not incidental to its resilience. “The movement was banned because it had spread across the state, especially among women, who have been suffering for a long time, arguably even more than the men,” he said. “This was reflected in the extraordinary mobilization of women, in earlier marches as well. They were the ones who organized and sustained the marches wherever they went.”
Both Omer Khan and Haris Ahmed Khan credit the movement’s flat, local and deliberately decentralized leadership, as well as its delivering on concrete demands, for its ability to survive repeated crackdowns.
“The JAAC was not centered around one or a few leaders,” Omer Khan said. “Instead, it was based on representatives from each district. This horizontal structure gave the movement remarkable flexibility, allowing it to absorb pressure and withstand repeated shocks.”
An election without a mandate
The movement has “evolved beyond purely economic demands and began to raise broader political questions, including the right to ownership and the right to self-rule,” Omer Khan said.
The demands have extended to more, harder targets, including an end to special privileges and perks for the political elite, political and constitutional reforms, stronger local government, accountability for deaths and violence during the protests, withdrawal of cases against protesters, and improvements in public services and infrastructure, including health, education, roads and water supply. The government acquiesced to some of the movement’s demands in an October 2025 peace agreement, but JAAC says many of those commitments remain unfulfilled.
One major demand opposed by the government is the abolition of 12 seats in the 45-seat Azad Jammu and Kashmir Legislative Assembly that are reserved for refugees from Indian-administered Kashmir who live elsewhere in Pakistan. JAAC argues the arrangement lets mainstream Pakistani parties engineer the region’s government from outside; Islamabad says the seats are constitutionally protected and can’t be touched without an amendment.
The elections Omer Khan predicted would lack legitimacy have now concluded, with Pakistan Muslim League–Nawaz party, or PML–N, securing the majority. The movement boycotted the elections, arguing that they could not be legitimate while its leaders were facing a ban and the region was emerging from months of unrest.
JAAC had called for the elections to be annulled and for the establishment of a caretaker government, electoral reforms and a new Election Commission before fresh polls. Government officials rejected those claims, saying voters had given the PML–N a clear mandate and that the elections had been conducted fairly.
Tensions in Azad Jammu and Kashmir remain unresolved. In the massive shutter-down and wheel-jam strike on Sept. 9, JAAC demanded implementation of the October 2025 agreement, while the government says it has fully implemented some demands and is working on others.
Internet access has been partially restored in several districts, but remains completely suspended in Rawalakot and Sudhnoti, while other areas have restricted access mainly for educational institutions and banks. The banned JAAC continues to demand the withdrawal of its proscription, the release of detained activists and an independent judicial inquiry into the June violence, including the killing of Shahzaib Habib and injuries to other protesters. Meanwhile, police continue to accuse the movement of attacking law enforcement personnel and using protests to challenge state authority.
“So many people have died that the movement has reached a point of no return,” Haris Ahmed Khan concluded. “People are demanding the U.N. intervene and ask Pakistan’s government to remove the Rangers from the ground.” Despite everything, he says, people are still standing with the movement and demanding justice.