Muzaffarabad: The Joint Awami Action Committee (JAAC) on Sunday announced an indefinite shutdown, shutter-down and wheel-jam strike across all three divisions of Azad Jammu and Kashmir, as fresh violence left a young man reported dead in Dadyal and a policeman critically wounded in Kotli.
JAAC member Sardar Umar Nazir Kashmiri announced that the protest would continue indefinitely across the Muzaffarabad, Poonch and Mirpur divisions, appealing to traders, transporters and the general public to keep businesses closed and stay off the roads until the committee’s demands are addressed.
The committee said security forces opened fire in Dadyal during the night and again on Sunday morning, killing a young man identified as Chaudhry Usman and injuring two others. It alleged that local residents took possession of the body from the security forces, while the wounded were later detained from hospital. The circumstances surrounding the firing and the casualty figures could not be independently verified, and the authorities had not issued a detailed account of the Dadyal incident.
In Kotli district, police confirmed that Constable Abdul Rauf was shot and critically wounded during unrest at Kala Dab near Charhoi. According to police, protesters had blocked the road and disrupted traffic; when a police party arrived to clear the route, shots were fired directly at its personnel, hitting Rauf in the chest. The wounded constable was shifted to the District Headquarters Hospital in Mirpur, where police said his condition remained critical. A case has been registered and search operations announced to arrest those responsible.
A movement that began over tariffs
The JAAC movement initially emerged around electricity tariffs, subsidised wheat, governance and political representation. The government has maintained that 37 of its 38 demands have been addressed, but the committee disputes that claim and says several commitments made during previous negotiations remain unimplemented.
The committee was proscribed by the AJK government under the Anti-Terrorism Act in June following an earlier round of deadly unrest, a decision the JAAC has strongly contested. Since then, the confrontation has widened beyond the original economic demands, with the JAAC accusing the authorities of arrests, restrictions and excessive use of force, while the government increasingly portrays violence surrounding the protests as a security issue.
Unlike earlier protests announced for specified periods, the JAAC has not set a date for businesses to reopen or public transport to resume, raising the prospect of a prolonged disruption to normal life across the territory.