Statement of Solidarity

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2nd Aman Mela Stockholm — Divergent Voices of South Asia

In Support of the Joint Awami Action Committee, Pakistan-Administered Kashmir
Stockholm, 4 July 2026

We, the organisers and participants of the 2nd Aman Mela Stockholm, gathered under the banner “Divergent Voices of South Asia: Rethinking Partition, Reimagining Peace,” extend our unconditional solidarity to the Joint Awami Action Committee (JAAC) of Pakistan-administered Kashmir and to the ordinary citizens who have taken to the streets to demand their basic rights.

This gathering exists precisely because we believe that peace in South Asia cannot be built on silence, coercion, or the suppression of legitimate grievance. The people mobilising under the JAAC’s banner are not acting against the idea of Kashmir, Pakistan, or South Asia — they are acting for it. Their demands for fair electricity and wheat subsidies, an end to unrepresentative taxation, employment opportunities, transparent governance, and the constitutional rights promised to them are not separatist claims; they are the ordinary claims of citizenship that people across every part of this region — Indian, Pakistani, Kashmiri alike — continue to be denied.

We affirm the following:
The right to peaceful protest is a basic human right, not a concession to be granted or withdrawn at the convenience of any state. It must be protected, not policed into silence.

Economic and political grievance is not disloyalty. A population asking for accountable governance and a fair share of resources is exercising the most basic form of civic participation.

The people of Kashmir — on every side of the Line of Control — deserve to be the primary authors of their own future, not bystanders in decisions made about their land and their lives.

Violence, intimidation, or the criminalisation of protest against demonstrators is unacceptable, wherever and by whomever it is carried out, and we call for full restraint, accountability, and dialogue in its place.
As voices gathered from across India, Pakistan, and Kashmir in the diaspora, we reject the idea that solidarity with the JAAC’s demands is a threat to any nation. Genuine, lasting peace in this region will not come from state-to-state hostility or from silencing dissent, but from people-to-people solidarity — from recognising that the dignity and rights of Kashmiris are inseparable from the dignity and rights of every person across South Asia.

We stand with the people mobilising for their rights in Pakistan-administered Kashmir, and we call on all parties — local and national authorities included — to listen, to de-escalate, and to meet these demands with good-faith dialogue rather than force.

Issued on behalf of the participants and organisers of the 2nd Aman Mela Stockholm, hosted by Mela Nordic — Art, Culture, and Human Rights. See less