Statement by the Jammu Kashmir National Students Federation
The Jammu Kashmir National Students Federation (JKNSF) unequivocally condemns the ongoing state repression against the People’s Rights Movement in Pakistan-administered Jammu Kashmir.
For the past two days, the Pakistani state has imposed a complete internet blackout across the region to cut people off from one another, suppress information, and weaken the right of the masses to organize. Alongside this digital siege, the state has deployed additional contingents of the FC, Rangers, and police forces from Pakistan to crush the people’s movement for basic democratic rights and popular sovereignty.
Dozens of innocent Kashmiri youth have been brutally injured and killed during this crackdown. On the night of 6 June, Shahzaib Habib was extrajudicially murdered by state forces—a cold-blooded assassination that exposes the true savage face of the occupation regime. The repression has only intensified since then. Yesterday, in Rawalakot, the state has once again unleashed tear gas and fired bullets at peaceful protesters and imposed curfew. Scores more have been injured and many lost lives, in an act of unparalleled cruelty, even the wounded are being denied basic medical treatment in hospitals.
The state is also waging a vicious propaganda war through its media machinery to distort a legitimate popular movement into an “ethnic” or “foreign-funded” conflict. This is a deliberate distortion of facts. The people of Jammu Kashmir are not fighting against the working class of Punjab or any other region. They are fighting exploitation, political subordination, class oppression, and the very structures of capitalist-colonial control through which the Pakistani ruling elite maintains its stranglehold over Pakistan-administered Jammu Kashmir.
JKNSF rejects this repression, censorship, and propaganda in the strongest possible terms. This people’s movement cannot be crushed—not by bullets, not by blackouts, and not by lies!
We demand:
- Immediate lifting of the curfew in Rawalakot and surrounding areas, and unconditional restoration of internet services across Pakistan-administered Jammu Kashmir.
- Registration of an FIR and an independent, people-led investigation into the murder of Shahzaib Habib, with all responsible officials, commanders, personnel, and the puppet “Prime Minister” publicly named, tried, and punished.
- Immediate and complete withdrawal of the FC, Rangers, and all additional forces from Pakistan-administered Jammu Kashmir.
- Immediate cessation of tear-gassing, arbitrary arrests, detention, intimidation, and all forms of state violence against peaceful protesters.
- Immediate, free, and full medical treatment for every injured protester, with no state interference or denial of care.
- Immediate withdrawal of any proscription imposed on the All Jammu Kashmir Awami Action Committee. Any attempt to declare it an “unlawful organization” is a direct attack on the people’s right to dissent.
- Full and immediate fulfillment of all legitimate demands of the Awami Action Committee, including the abolition of the 12 seats, which have for decades been used as a political weapon to subvert popular will and maintain ruling-class control over the people of Jammu Kashmir.
The Jammu Kashmir National Students Federation calls upon students, workers, peasants, trade unions, progressive organizations, leftist collectives, and all oppressed peoples across Kashmir, Pakistan, and the world to stand in revolutionary solidarity with the masses of Jammu Kashmir.
Knowledge, Struggle, Victory!
