At least 30 people have been killed in Pakistan-administered Kashmir over two days of violence, with the Joint Awami Action Committee (JAAC) alleging that Pakistani security forces opened fire on unarmed protesters in Mirpur on July 28, 2026, after already killing 25 people the previous day. The deaths occurred as the territory held the first phase of a three-round election that local groups have disputed, and as a severe communications blackout cut the region off from the rest of Pakistan. The Guardian, which broke the story, could not independently verify the death toll because media were barred from the area and internet services remained shut down. Pakistani media largely ignored the protests and alleged killings.

The JAAC, also referred to as the AJK Rights Movement, traces its protest campaign back to a call for peaceful demonstrations announced on September 29, 2025. The movement has demanded political and economic rights, electoral reforms, and specifically the abolition of a system of reserved legislative seats for refugees from Indian-administered Kashmir. Twelve seats in the local legislature of Azad Jammu and Kashmir (AJK) are reserved for Kashmiri refugees, a framework the JAAC argues distorts representation. The Associated Press reported that the violence erupted after the Supreme Court of Pakistan-administered Kashmir ruled on those 12 reserved seats.

The current escalation follows a full year of escalating unrest. In October 2025, at least eight people were killed in four days of violent protests in Pakistani-controlled Kashmir, according to Reuters. Separate protests over food and electricity subsidies had already left four dead and over 100 injured, the AP reported. In June 2026, the trajectory steepened sharply. Reuters recorded 11 killed in Rawalakot on June 8, with more than 70 injured ahead of a JAAC rally. By June 18, Reuters reported the death toll had surpassed 20. On July 14, Reuters documented nine more deaths in clashes across Tararkhal and elsewhere. Cumulative fatalities since June are now estimated at roughly 40, according to The Guardian's reporting.

The local government's response has been forceful. After imposing a ban on the organization, the AJK government proscribed JAAC as a terrorist organisation and arrested its political workers en masse. A "clearance" operation on July 27 saw protesters and law enforcers clash directly. Dawn reported that the opposition group Ayeen-i-Pakistan was itself blocked from traveling into AJK and staged a nearly two-hour sit-in in response. Bilawal Bhutto Zardari publicly called for an end to the AJK protests on June 14, arguing the unrest was damaging Pakistan's reputation on the global stage.

JAAC spokesperson SA Khan accused Pakistan's security agencies of firing on unarmed protesters in Mirpur on July 28 and then removing evidence. Khan stated that security forces took away dead bodies and locked away the local hospital. He claimed JAAC possesses photos and video evidence of dead bodies lying on streets in pools of blood. An anonymous Mirpur resident corroborated elements of this account, telling The Guardian that violence erupted early Tuesday afternoon when people gathered to protest the previous day's killings. The resident said bodies were shifted to hospital and then went missing, and that all nearby shops closed after the violence.

Amnesty International's regional director for South Asia, Isabelle Lassée, said disturbing reports were emerging from Rawalakot consistent with a Pakistani state crackdown. The organization called on Pakistani authorities to immediately lift the communications blackout. UN human rights chief Volker Türk called for an investigation into the deadly violence.

Pakistani authorities rejected accusations of state involvement in killing civilian protesters. Information minister Atta Tarar alleged at a press conference that the protests were receiving funds and instructions from India. Khan rejected the accusation of Indian sponsorship outright. The cross-border recrimination is a familiar feature of Kashmir's political landscape, where both Islamabad and New Delhi routinely attribute unrest on their respective sides of the Line of Control to the other's intelligence services.

The elections, scheduled across three rounds of voting with July 27 as the first, proceeded against this backdrop of lethal unrest and institutional breakdown. Al Jazeera reported that polls opened in a violence-wracked vote. The JAAC, which had called for a complete shutdown leading to widespread sit-in protests, disputes the legitimacy of the electoral framework itself.

The broader context here is a territory where the mechanisms of accountability have been systematically dismantled. A communications blackout prevents independent verification, the domestic press has largely self-censored or been directed away from the story, and the principal protest movement has been legally reclassified as a terrorist organization. That combination makes any external assessment of what is happening on the ground dependent on accounts from actors who are themselves parties to the conflict. The UN's call for an investigation and Amnesty's appeal for restored communications are, at this stage, the principal international pressure points. Whether they translate into access for independent observers will depend in large measure on whether Pakistan's civilian government can act independently of the security establishment's operational preferences in AJK, a question that the historical record of civil-military relations in Pakistan does not answer optimistically.

What distinguishes the current moment from the episodic unrest of the past year is the convergence of three simultaneous events: a disputed election, a mass protest movement that has survived proscription and mass arrests, and a security response that has escalated from crowd-control tactics to alleged lethal force against unarmed civilians in public streets. The next two rounds of voting, dates for which remain scheduled, will test whether the electoral process can absorb the political grievances driving the protests or whether the cycle of repression and resistance deepens.