The Pakistani state banned a civil society coalition on June 5, 2026, listed it under anti-terrorism law, cut the internet across an entire territory of four million people, and then waited three days for the protests to come to it. When they did, it shot them.
What follows is not a reconstruction of events that happened somewhere else to someone else. This is Azad Jammu and Kashmir, a territory Pakistan has administered for seventy-eight years and has never permitted to govern itself. The people who came out in their tens of thousands to march toward Muzaffarabad were not asking for independence. They were asking for electricity tariffs they could afford, for reserved assembly seats to stop being used as patronage instruments for mainland Pakistani parties, for agreements already signed by the government to be honoured. The state’s answer was to call them terrorists and to begin shooting.
Everything that follows is either documented, attributed to named sources, or flagged explicitly as unverified. The communications blackout imposed since June 5 makes the distinction critical.
