At least 22 people were arrested in the Pakistan Occupied Kashmir during a pro-independence protest on Saturday, 7 September.
According to a report by Al Jazeera, the clashes broke out between authorities and protesters near Tatrinote village, which is close to the Line of Control and about 80 km south of Muzaffarabad, the capital of PoK.
The village observed a sit-in on Monday, while the mobile phone services in the area were disrupted.
The police had stopped thousands of participants of a “Freedom Long March” called by Sardar Mohammad Saghir-led faction of the Jammu Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF) who were on their way from Dawarandi village of the Hajira area to Tetrinote, Dawn reported.
The cops used tear gas on the protesters when they tried to get closer to LoC as they were leaving a designated protest space, Al Jazeera reported quoting District police chief Tahir Mahmood Qureshi.
"We were giving them a safe route, but they wanted to go to an exposed area where Indians could have shelled them," Qureshi said.
Qureshi cited preventing killings by Indian shelling as the reason behind the clashes with the demonstrators. Twelve policemen were injured in stone pelting, one of them critically, the DIG told Dawn.
He said 25 people were taken into custody after midnight, but three of them were released for not being involved in the activity.
‘Send Back Armies of Both Countries From Kashmir’
According to the report, the protesters belonged to a faction of the Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front, which advocates for independence from both the countries for the territory.
"Our main demand is that the international community must take steps to resolve the issue of Kashmir and take steps to send back the armies of both countries [from Kashmir]," Toqeer Gilani, a senior JKLF leader in Pakistan-administered Kashmir, told Al Jazeera.
According to Dawn’s report, while speaking to the activists in Tatrinote, Sardar Mohammad Saghir demanded “restoration of the revolutionary government of AJK and Gilgit-Baltistan” that he said was established on 24 October 1947.
“Pakistan should open the embassy of this government in Islamabad and then get it recognised from all friendly countries so that it may take the reins of freedom movement in its own hands,” he said.
Gilani told Al Jazeera that more than 40 JKLF members had been arrested overnight, and they were being pressured to end their protest.
DIG Qureshi denied the protesters were arrested for their political views, saying the action was taken because they had acted illegally.
"They have not been arrested on their stance on independent Kashmir or anything like that," he said. "They are criminals."
The sit-in was initiated by the JKLF protesters on Friday, who demanded international community’s intervention in India’s move to abrogate Article 370 which granted special status to the erstwhile state of Jammu and Kashmir.
(With inputs from Dawn and Al Jazeera)
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