Nazia Nazar
Indian soldiers tried to rape a woman in Hidwara (IOK) the other day. Local gathered to protest, but police fired to disperse them and two locals embraced martyrdom. One woman named Raja Begum who was injured in the firing succumbed to her injuries. Jawaharlal Nehru University Students’ Union (JNUSU) president Kanhaiya Kumar, on the occasion of International Women’s Day, alleged that some Indian army personnel rape women in Jammu and Kashmir. “No matter how much you try to stop us, we will speak up against human rights violations (in Kashmir). We will raise our voice against AFSPA,” Kanhaiya Kumar said in the video uploaded on YouTube by Zee News. Kanhaiya had been arrested on 12 February for allegedly raising anti-national slogans at an event organised on 9 February against the hanging of Parliament attack convict Afzal Guru. Kanhaiya was granted interim bail and released from prison later.
Sexualized violence in Kashmir – rape, sexualized abuse, and harassment often accompanied by torture in cases where the woman is from an alleged militant’s family – is systemic and institutionalized. It can be located within a larger framework of collective punishment meted out to the civilian population. And with an estimated 600,000 to 700,000 members of the Indian armed forces still deployed there, the Kashmir valley remains one of the world’s most militarized zones. In 2013, some 50 Kashmiri women had in a demonstration demanded that police reinvestigate a well-known case of mass rape. The women-teachers, students, journalists, human rights workers, lawyers, and other professionals had filed a public interest litigation case before India’s Jammu and Kashmir high court. The Kunan Poshpora incident happened more than 25 years ago, on February 23, 1991, when armed forces allegedly raped at least 32 teenaged, adult, and elderly women.
During a search operation in the Kupwara district, troops had taken men from their homes to interrogate them and allegedly raped the women who were left behind. The survivors, who at the time ranged from 13 to 80 years old, are still waiting for justice. This is but one infamous example of conflict-related rape in the state of Jammu and Kashmir. Around that same time, the government also extended a draconian law, which had been passed in 1958 to deal with unrest in India, so that its jurisdiction included Jammu and Kashmir. The law, called the Armed Forces Special Powers Act, allows Indian security forces to kill suspected civilians in “disturbed” regions-and prevents security personnel from being prosecuted. As a result, not a single soldier or paramilitary member has been tried for rape, murder, or destruction of property.
This belied claims by India about being the largest democracy and secular state. As Human Rights Watch reported in 1994, security forces have used rape and other forms of violence to target women who may be “militant sympathizers.” Soon after the Indian government’s crackdown against Kashmiris who started armed struggle in January 1990, reports of rape by security personnel began to surface. In 1992 alone, according to a United Nations report, Indian security forces in the region reportedly gang-raped 882 women. And a study conducted by Médecins Sans Frontières in 2005 found that “11.6 percent of interviewees said they had been victims of sexual violence since 1989” and that “one in seven had witnessed rape.” However, Reports abound that India’s security forces use torture and rape as a weapon to punish, intimidate, humiliate and degrade the victims in Kashmir and elsewhere in India.
The pattern of Army’s misconduct was also observed when contingent of Indian army performed duties as UN peacekeeping mission abroad. In Congo, army personnel had raped women that resulted in unlawful pregnancies. Twelve officers and thirty nine soldiers were probed in Meerut, Uttar Pradesh, India, for sexually abusing the local women and for having fathered children while on UN peacekeeping mission in Congo in 2008. UN authorities have been putting pressure on Indian Government to investigate the issue. The Indian soldiers had exploited women of Congo, and sexual abuse cases reached to hundreds. These girls and women were raped either through coercion or by taking advantage of hunger to provide food items and Indian-made cosmetics. UN authorities ordered DNA tests and asked Indian government for legal proceedings against these officers and soldiers.
In March 2008, three officers were charged with sexual abuse of a local woman while on a holiday in South Africa. However, there is no parallel to the atrocities perpetrated on Kashmiris in Indian Held Kashmir where Indian soldiers’ stories of rape and murder are very common. In order to suppress the freedom movement in IOK Indian Army used religious prejudice and hatred against Muslims while using rape as a weapon against Kashmiri women, whereas the Indian authorities turned a blind to their heinous crimes. Hence, the habitual criminals not only got away with their crime against Muslim women in IOK but also got promotions and postings of their choices. On 29th May 2011, a complete shutdown was observed in Shopian town in Indian occupied Kashmir to mark the second anniversary of rape and murder of two Kashmiri women, Aasiya and Neelofar by Indian soldiers.
Some human rights organizations have been exposing Indian soldiers and officers involved in sex scandals and rapes. The Indian government had started crackdown against Kashmiris in the disputed territory of Kashmir in January 1990, after Kashmiris had started armed struggle in 1989. Rape by Indian security forces most often occured during crackdowns, cordon-and-search operations during which men were held for identification in parks or schoolyards while security forces searched their homes. In these situations, the security forces frequently engaged in collective punishment against the civilian population by assaulting residents and burning their homes. Rape has also occurred frequently during reprisal attacks on civilians. Women who are the victims of rape are often stigmatised, and their testimony and integrity impugned. Social attitudes which cast the woman and not her attacker, as the guilty party often enjoys clout with the judiciary, making rape cases difficult to prosecute and leaving women unwilling to press charges.
