Pro-Azadi demonstrations continue in POJK

Story by  Aasha Khosa | Posted by  Aasha Khosa • 1 Years ago
A massive protest in Muzaffarabad in August (Twitter)
A massive protest in Muzaffarabad in August (Twitter)

 

New Delhi
Pro-azadi demonstrations across the Pakistan-occupied Jammu and Kashmir are going on for several days with angry people chanting slogans like “we want independence”, and “foreign forces go back.”
 
The recent spate of protests was triggered by the Pakistan government’s since shelved plan to create a Super authority in the name of tourism development in the area that had overriding powers to snatch any land for use. This was seen as an attempt by Islamabad to gradually convert the POJK land into federal spaces and further deprive the locals of their resources.

Videos of some of the protests are posted on social media by the political activists living in exile.
 
The latest protest was held in Kahuta town (not the city with the Nuclear laboratory) and its video was posted on Twitter by Prof Sajjad Raja, a UK-based POJK leader whose party, the National Equality Party of Jammu and Kashmir, Gilgit Baltistan liberation (JKGBL) stands for the unification of the state of Jammu and Kashmir (including the northern areas.)
Apart from Muzzafarabad, the capital of what Pakistan calls “Azad Kashmir” where the activists vandalized the venue of Pakistan’s Independence day celebration on the previous night, protests are being regularly held in places like Dadyal, Mirpur, and across the Line of Control in Poonch.
Sajjad Raja also raised the issue of how Pakistan is destroying the youth of POJK where the use of narcotics has been regularized by levying a local tax on the use of marijuana in Gilgit Baltistan.

He asked India to take cognizance of this delopment and intervene.