The United Kashmir People’s National Party (UKPNP) has strongly condemned the hours-long load shedding, dangerously low electricity voltage, and the continued collapse of internet and mobile services across Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK). The party expressed solidarity with the people amid a shutter-down strike in the Rawalakot region of Poonch district in PoK.
In a social media post, the UKPNP’s spokesperson, Sardar Nasir Aziz Khan, said the region has been suffering from extreme load shedding, low-voltage electricity, and poor internet and mobile connectivity for several months. Daily life has become unbearable for ordinary people. According to the UKPNP, people across PoK have remained on the streets for more than two and a half years, staging peaceful protests for their basic rights under the banner of the Joint Awami Action Committee.
UKPNP said, instead of respecting democratic demands, brutal force was used against peaceful protesters in an attempt to crush the movement. Alongside this violence, propaganda, fabricated stories, and false information were deliberately spread to defame and discredit the people’s rights movement.
The party urged the United Nations, the European Parliament, the United States, the United Kingdom, and the wider international community to take serious note of these restrictions and punitive actions in the PoK, warning that continued silence will only embolden Pakistani authorities’ repression and deepen the humanitarian and political crisis faced by the people in PoK and Pakistan-occupied Gilgit Baltistan.
