Kashmiri Women: Victims of Atrocity by Fatima Syed

According to a recent report of the Research Section of Kashmir Media Service in occupied Kashmir, 2278 women were among 93089 civilians martyred during the last 20 years of unabated Indian State terrorism.
Indian troops molested 9894 women during this period and the State terrorism rendered 22708 women widowed. The report maintained that Kashmiri women had been worst sufferers of the harrowing conflict since 1989. The repot deplored that the troops had been routinely involved in sexual harassment of Kashmiri women to suppress the ongoing liberation struggle. Due to the violence perpetrated by Indian troops women constitute a considerable number of mental patients. In the year 2008, the occupation troops during their raids, firing and shelling injured 4,824 persons, destroyed 106 residential houses, arrested 1,408 civilians and molested 93 women. The killing rendered 85 women widowed and 164 children orphaned. Forty four youth were reported missing in custody. Molestation of Kashmiri women by BSF officers and jawans has become a common practice in IHK. The Kashmiri women are so helpless and unlucky that the government officials are never ready to pay any heed to their miseries. Police is usually unwilling to resister an FIR and in a case an FIR is registered, the courts show a cold response. So the army, police and the courts all have joined hands against the poor Kashmiri women. And all are abusing and humiliating the women in their own capacity. Since long sexual violence has been used as a weapon of war to humiliate, punish, control, inflict fear and displace women and their communities and to advance one group’s political, economic, social or religious position over another. In Kashmir, the Indian Security Forces are employing harassment, torture and rape of women as a regular tactic to suppress the freedom movement of the Kashmiri people. Even UN Security Council has voted unanimously in favour of a resolution classifying rape as a weapon of war. UN Secretary General Ban-Ki-moon said violence against women had reached “unspeakable proportions” in some societies recovering from conflict. A study by the Medecins Sans Frontiers revealed that the Kashmiri women were among the worst sufferers of sexual violence in the world. According to the study “Sexual violence has been routinely perpetrated on Kashmiri women, with 11.6 percent of respondents saying that they were victims of sexual abuse”. Dr. Maiti, a professor of political science at Rurdwa University, West Bengal, explains, “Rape continues to be a major instrument of Indian oppression against the Kashmiri people while the majority of the victims are civilians”. Cases of rape and molestation abound in Kashmir and many goes un-reported because of the fear of social stigma, and of reprisal by State agencies. After being the victim of sexual assaults these women faced social problems. People refrained to marry them due to the stigma of rape attached to them. In 1991, forty women of Konan-Poshpura village of Kupwara were raped by Indian troops. Despite passage of eighteen years these women are still waiting for justice and no girl belonging to the village has been married. Apart from sexual harassment and molestation, the miseries of Kashmiri women further aggravated after the killing or disappearance of their husbands, sons and fathers as this thing increased their economic problems side by side with the social insecurities. There are hundreds of half-widows whose husbands disappeared in custody of Indian troops, leaving them to fend for themselves. In the hope that their husbands might come one day 90 percent of the half-widows didn’t remarry. Surveys have shown that more Kashmiri women commit suicide than men. Prominent sociologist, Dr Bashir Ahmed Dabla said, “Throughout the world, it’s found that suicide rates are highest among men and more intense in urban areas, but in the Valley the reverse is true”. Women constitute more than 60 percent of the patients visiting Kashmir’s lone psychiatry hospital in Srinagar for treatment, with most of them suffering from post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Dr. Arshad Hussain, a senior psychiatrist, said that hundreds of women didn’t turn up because of the social taboos attached to the psychiatric hospitals and hence they continue to suffer silently. Sexual assault is a grave crime and its consequences lasted for the rest of the life of a woman. The Geneva Convention related to the Protection of Civilian Persons in the Time of War, 1949 and additional protocols of 1977 provide that women shall especially be protected against humiliating and degrading treatment; rape, enforced prostitution or any form of indecent assault. The Vienna Declaration and Programme of Action adopted by the World Conference on Human Rights in Situation of Armed Conflicts states that violation of human rights of women in situation of armed conflict are the violation of the fundamental principles of international human rights and humanitarian law. The violence against Kashmiris in general and women in particular raised several questions that why the international community is practicing silence over the Indian state terrorism in IHK? Why America which attacked Afghanistan and Iraq to curb the menace of terrorism is not even paying any attention to the atrocities committed by world’s largest democracy against the Kashmiri Muslims? Despite so much clarity and unanimity among the civilized nations that rape and molestation of women are war crimes why no action is being taken to improve the plight of the Kashmiri women? The fact is that all the nations and international actors have their own parochial interests and they don’t want to damage them by criticizing India. The Indian State has to be held for breach of its obligations under various relevant treaties and customary international law. As the domestic courts and military courts have failed to provide justice than there is a need that individuals who have committed rape should be prosecuted by the international criminal tribunal.

Comments