PoJK activist Amjad Ayub Mirza condemns Muzaffarabad rally seeking Yasin Malik's release

Political activist Amjad Ayub Mirza criticised a Muzaffarabad rally demanding Yasin Malik's release, saying it blurred civil rights activism with militancy. He warned that linking governance protests with militant narratives undermines genuine reform efforts and harms Kashmiris.

Political activist from Pakistan-occupied Jammu and Kashmir, Amjad Ayub Mirza, condemned the participation of civil rights leader Shaukat Nawaz Mir in a protest rally held in Muzaffarabad demanding the release of jailed JKLF leader Yasin Malik, calling it a dangerous convergence of civil rights activism and militant politics. In a video statement, Mirza said the rally marked a deeply troubling moment for the civil rights discourse in PoJK, noting that Yasin Malik is currently imprisoned in India following convictions related to terrorism and crimes against civilians.

Mirza expressed strong disapproval of the presence and speech of Shaukat Nawaz Mir, leader of the Joint Awami Action Committee (JAAC), at the rally. He said that Shaukat Nawaz Mir, who had previously led a large-scale civil rights movement in PoJK, publicly declared during the rally that it was now the responsibility of JAAC to raise the issue of Yasin Malik. "Until recently, this individual was leading the largest civil rights movement in PoJK, mobilising thousands of people on issues of governance and rights. However, when a rally was called for Yasin Malik, only a few dozen people attended," Mirza said.

According to Mirza, the episode reflects a deliberate attempt to blur the distinction between civil rights advocacy and political militancy in PoJK. He stressed that civil rights movements are built on moral clarity, inclusiveness and universal principles, whereas militant political movements rely on polarisation and the romanticisation of violence.

"By sharing a platform with a JKLF leader whose actions contributed to decades of bloodshed, the civil rights movement has been reframed, weaponised and delegitimised," he added. Mirza further alleged that the development fits a long-standing pattern employed by Pakistan's security establishment in PoJK, including allowing public anger over misgovernance to grow, channelling it through civil movements, and later injecting militant narratives to redirect dissent outward rather than towards local accountability.

He said the insertion of Yasin Malik's narrative into a civil rights space undermines legitimate demands for governance reform and repackages them into what he described as an outdated militancy discourse that has already inflicted severe harm on generations of Kashmiris. (ANI)

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