By Sapan Web Desk
STOCKHOLM: The Second Aman Mela, themed “Divergent voices of South Asia: rethinking Partition, reimagining peace,” took place in Stockholm, 4 July 2026. The event, organised by Mela Nordic, brought together artists, academics, journalists and activists from across borders to build bridges across old divides.
At the end of the event, participants and organisers issued a statement in solidarity with the Joint Awami Action Committee in Pakistan-administered Kashmir, as ordinary citizens there continue to mobilise for basic rights, demanding fair electricity tariffs, wheat subsidies, and representative governance. The Stockholm statement sees the resistance not as distant geopolitical games, but fundamental demands of daily survival and civic dignity and recognised that these economic and civic grievances mirror the struggles of ordinary citizens across India, Pakistan, and the wider subcontinent.
The demands of the Joint Awami Action Committee are deeply practical:
- Fair energy tariffs: Protesting soaring electricity bills in a region that produces significant hydroelectric power for the national grid.
- Essential subsidies: Demanding fair, stable prices for wheat and other daily staples.
- Civic voice: Challenging unrepresentative taxation and advocating for transparent local governance.
Text of the statement below:
Statement of solidarity
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 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 borders 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.
Why do we write ‘Southasia’ as one word? Because our histories are intertwined, our futures interlinked, and our struggles deeply connected.
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